25,000 km of Awesomeness!

August 12 is when my FZ got an year older. 2 years and 25,000 kms! Pheww!

No no! This isn't me getting all emotional. The first 10K might have been about falling in love with biking, getting a hang on routes, convincing people to ride pillion, but the next 15,000... no sir.. its been much more than that!

Its been about reliability and selflessness! About camaraderie born out of tripling from office to the nearby bus-stand. Dropping colleagues off en-route and towing the bike from the middle of a traffic jam to a petrol pump 3 kms away, just because somebody forgot to refill! Oh and Yes.. dragging my ass back home from a 3 am party. The harshest of summers to the coldest of Delhi winters, swerving on potholed and flooded monsoon roads, its seen everything!

Not almost. Where do I go next? 

The mysterious sands of Rajasthan, dew filled mountains of Himachal and Uttarakhand and the aroma of the daal ( lentils ) cooking slowly over the tandoor heat from the dhabas in Punjab seem to be too strong an attraction right now. And whatever India I've seen apart from my destination has mostly been from a train window or peering outside the bus. On the bike, you just feel closer to the road, feel every bump, and can always stop in the middle of nowhere to take a detour into a village on a 'kaccha' road and sit by the side of the canal and bite on sugarcanes! And yes, bask in the smell of fresh jaggery getting prepared.

Ooh. Too much to fit into the next 10,000. Its going to be one helluva ride!

The Drives of Digha!

Nowhere in the country have I seen such a vast collection of drives around town!

A small hamlet on the east coast, 200 kms south west of Kolkata is where you will unearth the mystery.
Where do I even start ? Let's take the Biggest-to-Smallest route!

1. Buses! Oddly oval shaped, precariously overloaded and very characteristic of this part of the country. They frequent Digha from all possible nearby towns with regular service to and from Calcutta.

2. Vintage Jeeps. Grown-up men do act like children. Sitting on top of a jeep and cheering howling as the mechanic peered under the hood and tried to kick-start the engine with the battery jack. Every time the engine gave a roar, you would hear a triumphant cheer a kilometer away.

3. The Last Mile Carrier! Both Mahindra and Tata are definitely creating in-roads into this domain with a decent presence of their 'Last-milers' in Tier-3 towns. Very handy rides though!

           

4. The Tuk-tuki! The crème de la crème of my Digha visit. Had heard so much about this curious little thing on wheels. With passengers sitting on either side of the bar (much like school children headed for their morning classes), and the driver sitting in an equally funny posture trying to toggle a gear shifter which would give the Audi's patented Tronic gear system a run for its money, this crazy 3-wheeler literally steals the show! When the tide is low, you'll often find unsuspecting tourists taking a fun ride up and down the Digha shoreline on the powerful ' Tuk-tuki ' .

5. The make-shift Rickshaw! For 5 bucks a hop, these transporters will get you to the innermost bylanes of both Old and New Digha. Laughter and crazy stories thrown in free! And with all the impetuous showers that keep hitting the eastern coastline, they guarantee you getting to your destination absolutely dry. Pakka promise!

Which ride should I book you on... ? 

Those Kohl-Lined Eyes!

Now, who would've thought that the Navagraha temple complex in Konark would be the scene of such a cheesy post. And for me to be witnessing it at the Sun Temple is cheesier to the next level! (Karna is the mythological son of Surya, the Sun God and I happen to be named after him)
Well, strange things happen all the time, don't they?

Konark is a small town in the Puri district of Odisha, famous for the Sun Temple, carved beautifully out of Black granite. Konark derived from the Sanskrit word 'Kona' meaning angle and Arka' meaning sun was designed as a gigantic chariot of the Sun God ('Surya') on 12 wheels drawn by 7 horses. Built in the reign of Narasimhadeva-1 in the 13th Century, it isn't really a temple in the literal sense of the word, there are no pujas performed there!

While on most journeys in a small rickety bus, jam-packed to its capacity, trotting along the road and taking about an hour and half to cover the 35 km distance from Puri, you are just happy that you reached, fortunately this wasn't the case here.

The NH 203 is pristine in every sense of the word and would easily go into my list of the best highways in India to travel on. I kind of re-lived my DTC bus college days by travelling on the foot-board of the bus. Instead of the hot, polluted air and car-spangled, tar-covered Delhi roads, the National Highway 203 weaves its way along the Bay of Bengal and greets you with tree-lined esplanades, salt-laden winds and the sun's light reflecting off the waters filtering its way through the thick foliage growing in abundance along the coastline. The bus keeps dodding through the Konark-Puri Marine drive when it reaches the Chandrabhaga beach from where it takes a sharp left turn to get to Konark.

You can choose to get-off here at Chandrabhaga. The sea here is untamed at its best, compared to the quiet, docile waters in Puri. And then walk the balance 3 odd kilometres through cashew plantations on one side and a wildlife sanctuary on the other. There is even a sign somewhere which asks you to drive slowly and lookout for crossing animals.

It was the first time I was seeing cashews growing like these. The junta there isn't worried about the cashews getting plucked by touristy folk like us. That's because the cashew fruit has a very intricate method of processing to make it the edible dry-fruit that we guys are so fond of gifting on festivals. And if you try and be all experimental and dig your nails into the squishy fruit, a gooey oil-like liquid oozes out which doesn't wash off with soap and over time ruins your skin. True story! Self-experienced.
The cashew literally has to be smoked out of the fruit and dried.

When you finally get to Konark, you must walk across shacks selling the usual stuff like sea-shells, stones, temple souvenirs and 3-4 different varieties of cashews to get to the world famous monument.
The sun temple is housed in a complex which is adjoining the Navagraha temple. The temple housing the nine planetary deities on a Navagraha slab has a prophylactic effect on the safety of the temple and is housed in many temples in Odisha. Since we were there on a Saturday and it was special puja day, there was a flea market in progress in the complex to cash in on the hordes of people visiting the temple to offer prayers. You could see two worlds out there, a flawless juxtaposition of ice-cream rediwalahs and hawan-samagri toting pandits.

After having exhausted ourselves admiring the temple and me photo-bombing a million snaps being taken by unsuspecting tourists, I remember us sitting under a shady tree and gorging on mangoes and water-melon. And since mum wanted to have some roti-sabzi, we went into one of the Marwari basas just outside the temple complex. These basas are exotic entities I tell you. You are served some very genuine home-cooked food within minutes of you grabbing a seat. Its a 'jaldi khao-jaldi niklo' kinda place. And it doesn't pinch your pocket at all.

As we were getting out of the complex, we found a hand-pump to wash our faces. The constantly humid weather does start getting to all the 'born-and-brought-up-in-a-landlocked-city' guys. I had already washed up and was chatting with an uncle who after seeing me trying really hard to get the cashew fruit oil off my hands, laughed at me and then started telling me tricks to hasten the process. And there she was, a few steps away from him, gulping a golgappa and chatting animatedly with her friend, a dupatta cleverly hiding her face. All I could see were her eyes, those Kohl-lined eyes!

" Those Kohl-Lined eyes... they take your heart away!

Everytime.. everytime you see them. "

The Hitchhiker takes the highway

The medley of smells that waft upto your nose once you leave Delhi. From biscuits being baked to the dung cakes basking on bricked buildings.

The contrast is actually so starking. 

Highways in India do give you some really fond memories. Lush green fields, temporary walls separating some possessive owner’s property, or small mud bunds between 2 fields on which innocence and childhood cycle their way home after a hard day at the school a few kms away. The donot mind that odd beating they get from their 'masterji'. The pain of that hard whack on the hand is nothing compared to the pleasure that seeing their friends in the pathshaala everyday gives them. You always see that extra step in their run to school every morning. Reminds me of the ‘School Chale Hum Campaign’ advertisement that used to be aired on TV years back. Flip channels to DD National and you might just catch it again.

The picture that you can paint is just too huge to fit into a canvas. There needs to be so much detail. Testing the shear skill of anybody who eyes such scenery.

The fields stretch as far as your eyes can see. And even more. At 5 in the evening, the sun shines in all its glory . Just a few hours away from dusk and the sky is still that perfect shade between blue and white. An odd hut, here and there, and suddenly a whole town full of bricked buildings which quickly transition back to the fields and huts. The golden and the green in the fields are so beautifully entwined that you donot want to able to differentiate between them at all. And the shrubs. Those little blobs of dark green, so barefaced in their existence, can unmistakably be spotted in between.

They spoil the image that could have been and yet make it the image that it is.

At 6 in the evening. the sun now at the zenith of its bright rededness is a few metres from the ground. Its face being obscured occasionally by thick black smoke being spewn by chimneys of brick kilns. And children. And there's a ball too. And the usual chase to the row of broken bricks presumably marking the boundary. The evening game of cricket. So quixotic in its appeal.

As the darkness begins to set in, you suddenly become aware of the mammothian monsters that the transmission towers  look like. 

They have their peculiar shapes. These transmission towers. Just like an elder overlooking you. Standing tall with the hands on the waist, waiting to reprimand you for not following your daily milk routine. The usual style we Indians love to stand in. They do seem monstrous especially at dusk. booooo...

  

And as the night sets in, your eyes can only make out that distant bulb lit in a hut somewhere or the medley of 'sandhya aarti' and the pujari ringing bells. And you know..you love it that way sometimes. The quiet, the darkness, the rythymic humming from the temples.

The cool air keeps hitting your face throughout the night while the flies keep abusing you for coming in their path. And the night goes on, and your only companions are the cosmic ones above you. Atleast you can see them clearly here. Thank God for that. Count the stars, make out different shapes and you fall into the soundest of slumbers.

Here in the country side, the morning makes its way very early. Although the sun seems a little sharp to your eyes, you like it.It isn't as sharp as it is in the city. And you do that little thing that you do everymorning..stretching your hands and legs in that wild motion, kicking everybody in your path and making that relaxing noise. You rub your eyes with your hands and the first sight that you get is a father carrying his son on his shoulder for his bath.The little boy protesting this breach of trust with the kickings of his tiny legs and hands.

And a new day starts in the countryside.

Heavenly.