Indian Road Trip

If nothing else, this exercise has taught me not to leave my computer open with a button that says 'Publish' hovering tantalisingly on the screen under an empty post. What self-respecting and curious six year-old is going to pass up the opportunity to click on it? The empty email you may have just received should go some way towards answering that question. It was strange that the final leg - Gokarna to Goa - was almost an afterthought, when once (only two months ago) it was an epic journey all its own. I climbed on the bike just as the first rays of sun hit Om Beach, only getting off to put on my rain poncho just after crossing the border into Goa. Rain poncho? I was also incredulous. It's not supposed to rain until April. But I was actually happy to do the last twenty kilometres under a gentle drizzle, if for no other reason than to rinse the last layer of grime off of me and the bike. It also gave me an excuse to drive slowly on the few spokes remaining in my rear wheel. From a trip that was supposed to carve a new perspective, I'm a little pressed to put my finger on the earth-shattering revelations. The usual paradoxes arise whenever we compare one thing in our life with another: I have/haven't learned a lot since we first made the trip in 1994, India is vastly different/very much the same, a thousand kilometres on Indian roads is substantial / I would happily do the whole thing over again. Tomorrow. Perhaps the search for wisdom is a journey without an obvious ending. Either that, or true wisdom only descends when your mind opens wide enough to contain both ends of the paradox. I guess I'm still a few rounds of mental yoga away from being that flexible. I'm incredibly grateful to Tash, who suffered genuine tribulations…

Wednesday, December 8th BikeShuffle: The Clash - Train in Vain Shivamoga - 06:22 I was deliberating whether to turn the television on when it became apparent that the cock outside wasn’t about to stop crowing. I’m glad I did.   For the past ten minutes I’ve been riveted by some sort of mass yoga show that seems more like a cross between a Hitler youth rally and a gathering of the Branch Davidians. The guy leading it is a young bearded yogi in a tiny red dhoti, doing the moves so quickly it actually looks like he’s on fast forward. Then the camera cuts to a hall of at least a thousand poor, confused people, all dressed in white, hopelessly flapping about trying to follow him. The slow pan reveals that not a single person has a clue about what to do, or how to do it, and most people end up stopping to make adjustments to their clothing or look just around embarrassed. Some people save their energy for when the camera falls on them, and then start up with some half hearted routine based on how much of them is in shot. As most of the ‘class’ are elderly, and a little on the corpulent side, they’ve got about as much chance of doing some of these moves as I have of being clean after today's drive. Our energetic yogi has just done a roundhouse kick move that I’ve never seen attempted except in martial arts movies and break dancing videos. His class of a thousand grannies has started applauding! The next generation of aerobics has arrived, everyone. Its Yoga Fu. A quick survey of remaining channels reveals: four featuring various cricket matches, three Hindi dance routines, and three religious channels with shots of various idols having liquids poured over them. Lastly, there seems to be some sort of religious sermon in hindi from a greasy-haired Brahmin who is…

Tuesday, December 7th BikeShuffle: The Dandy Warhols – Boys Better [audio:http://shambolic.com/blog/files/2010/12/06-Boys-Better.mp3|titles=06 Boys Better] 6:13Just waiting for it to get light, before trying to take as big a bite as possible out of this one. The most salient question seems to be: how long to stay on the NH13? I think I’ve resolved to hit the back roads where I can, and I guess I will have two cracks at it, heading for Kotturu either from the nameless crossroads about 10k south of Hospet, or a further fifteen or south at Kudigli. Then it becomes similar to day 1: driving by brail. I expect the laptop to be out and marked with greasy thumbprints by the end of the day. Still, the back roads have to be superior to the Tata dueling and massive potholes you seem to find on the National Highways (outside of my beloved 17, of course). I think Shimoga is a best case outcome. Not really sure how far that is. 200 and some. Getting eaten by mosquitoes and have decided not to have a shower. Too fucking cold. Happy Birthday to Stewart Macmillan and the King twins, by the way. Strange the ones you remember when you're a million miles from Facebook. And then there was Pearl Harbour. We’ll see if I manage to get on line at all in the next few days to bestow those felicitations. Ahoy! Hagaribommanahalli 09:24 This really is nowhere. Except that tons of people live here. Perhaps it’s the cold weather and cloudy skies, and the copious amount of dust in the air, but it feels so forlorn. I was saved from the hell in road form that is the NH13 by, first a nice policeman near Munirabad who told me I was going the wrong way, and then, after forty-five minutes of bone jarring, bikebreaking potholes, I was able to make a most welcome right on to National Hightway…

Monday, December 6thToday's Soundtrack: Herbert - So Now [audio:http://shambolic.com/blog/files/2010/12/02-So-Now.mp3|titles=02 So Now] MorningA better sleep than the last, now that I have learned the trick of tucking in my only bed sheet at the bottom to protect my feet from the mosquito’s searching proboscis. And my dreams, though they linger before my eyes when I close them, refuse to congeal into anything which I can relate. What of today then? I have a shopping list of errands which will no doubt arrange themselves nicely: welding, washing, shopping, internetting (my spell check rightly pulls me up on that last). And of course, I should do some work this morning, that I might feel that all is not a leisurely dalliance. The amount of birdsong in this places verges on outrageous. There are so many, it feels as though every point in the stereo image is occupied by a little tweeter. To breakfast then.… AfternoonA strange day spent on bike repair, washing and riding around in the countryside outside Kamalapur. I’ve realized that this is quickly reverting to the perpetual maintenance mode that we had with the bike last time round, and in fact, I think that would be a worthy title to any account of Enfield-based travel around India: Perpetual Maintenance. That is inevitably how you spend a good portion of your time. Of today’s two repairs, welding the seat frame and fixing the foot pegs more firmly, only the former held up for more than ten minuts. The latter situation is as bad as it was, and the side stand has decided to add another fifteen degrees of lean when parked, meaning a collapse is soon likely. Additionally, I’ve only just noticed two broken spokes on the non-drive side of the rear wheel, so today has actually ended off worse than it began from a maintenance perspective. The afternoon also took on a slightly melancholy air. Driving around outside of Kamalapura,…