9th Nov : Rameshwaram to Trichy!

The view from outside our room

Got to play with this little doggy!

A pig meet!
No, not all roads today were so nice

Thats our lunch!

Many entrances to villages r like this

The carvings around the fort..

Outside the Fort...

9th Nov : Rameshwaram to Trichy!

Today is the 37th day on the leg 2 of the GIR. For the past 36 nights, we have been totally unaware of what would come our way the next morning, the roads, the people, the culture, the weather and the scenery. We have also had no clue about what kind of hotels we would crash into, what kind of meals we would have and what kind of hospitality we would be getting from each city! The daily routine however has more or less been the same for us, get up by seven, ready by eight, leave by nine – ok, make that ten. Ride till the sun sets, hunt a decent hotel, crash in, start the laptops, upload photographs, write blogs, connect with the world and decide for the next day. Our meals have been irregular, sleep cycle has gone for a toss, health is taking the back seat but we keep riding on with one aim in mind – continue to see India on two-wheels, capture what we see and share it with you all.
Rameshwaram – almost every one knows about it and but it’s surprising to see next to no tourist in this little city. Even when we rode to Dhanuskodi yesterday, we didn’t come across a single tourist! Good or bad, you decide. Our hotel, Hotel Tamil Nadu, was situated next to the sea and from outside our rooms, we did get a fantastic view of the sea, boats and ships. For 665 bucks a room a night, it was good value for money and to top it up, the food was tasty and cheap too. Talk about food, I have been leaving out the specialties of the local cities and sticking to normal food I am used to, however from tonight on, I will make sure I taste, what the place we stay at, has to offer to us. We were running an hour behind schedule when we left our hotel at 11am and our first concern was the Fireblade. It was now running on normal 87 octane fuel, that too from a small pump and I am sure it was loosing quite a lot of power and we were risking the injectors too. I searched the tank cans in the back up vehicle and found that one had a couple of litres left. In went the fuel and we later tanked her up with Premium fuel too. My leaky Blaze in the meantime returned around 34kmpl which included 85km/h cruising with a couple of 110km/h blasts. As soon as we left Rameshwaram and rode past the 3km long bridge connecting it to the rest of the country, the cloud cover came up and it felt as if God created a perfect weather for the GIR team to continue its ride up north to cover the rest of India. The roads in these parts have been fantastic and there are numerous palm trees on both sides of the trees and with next to no traffic (no tourist vehicles coming in) it’s a joy to ride at a constant 80km/h, listening to songs and recalling all that has happened and will happen in the coming days. Soothing it sounds and soothing it was for us. Next, it started drizzling and the whole atmosphere seemed just too good to be put down in words. It was one enjoyable 55km ride to Ramanthan, from where we took a right for Tiruchirapali and then all hell broke loose. The roads, no, the path was wide enough for just one big vehicle, and there were more pot-holes in a single kilometer than we encountered from Delhi to Mumbai combined together! Riding on such roads for around ten kilometers, it was a revelation once the good roads started and it again started drizzling! A mixed bag of roads for us?
And we saw more goats today than we have in our total life. Trust me on this; they were everywhere, on the sides, in the fields, in the middle of the road, just damm everywhere! And they didn’t budge no matter how much we honked the horn and even the state road buses had to get off the road to go past them. Phew… The bikes, including the Fireblade were again tanked up in some little town and we were fortunate to have Speed fuel for the Fireblade. The Blaze returned 35kmpl + as I was cruising sedately at around 80km/h mark with fewer 100km/h runs. This was also our rest place, where we had tea, cakes and patties for lunch on a road side shop. Talk about adventure…
After this, I started early and left while everyone was still eating. This gave me some time to be myself, rip as well as relax. Stop for pictures as well as explore more, which I did, when I went around a little fort to take pictures. This fort was inside a little village that we passed. As you see in the pictures, there was no one around except for a lone old man, who seemed to be acting quite differently and no matter how hard I tried, every picture I took of him came out to be blurred. Yeah, my grand mom used to tell me stories about ghosts in small villages… I also came across numerous entrances to roads leading to small town. These entrances were like huge open gates with heavy stone carvings, mostly of the local gods – no wonder in these areas, people are really very religious. The roads, while passing through small towns, were sometimes one way one and very narrow, with old heritage type buildings on both the sides, which were half broken and empty.
Anyways, after I was done with the small fort, I carried on and as I went back to the highway, I saw the back-up vehicle pass by and accelerated ahead to catch up with the rest of the gang. The Blaze had been leaking a lot of oil and every time I accelerated past 85km/h, there was some strange sound from the engine, plus it would bog down for a second or two. Ignoring it, I raced to 110km/h and stayed there till I went pass Ashish too and searched around for Sunny, who was nowhere to be seen, so I rode alone and waited once I was in Tiruchirapalli, which became our night stop, even though we reached at 5pm, as we had heard the places ahead enroute to Chennai weren’t good to be in at night. Sunil and I went hotel hunting and managed to find the same Hotel Tamil Nadu, where we had stayed in Rameshwaram, for even better rates. A deluxe A/C for 715 sounded too good and so here we are in Trichy, blogging and updating the world with our whereabouts. The city seems to be quite famous in tourist circuit as the earlier three hotels we went to, were all booked!
Ashish is busy on the cell playing the snake game, Sunny and Sunil are hooked to the laptops and so am I. Listening to the original ‘Every breath you take’ on the VHR channel (or whatever it is…) makes me wonder what’s in store for us in the coming days. We have already been bewitched by India’s diverse beauty (in every sense), have taken more than 20,000 pictures, attempting our uttermost to capture what we see and feel in cameras and we have ridden more than 11,000kilometers of the best and worst. Our country has becharmed us already, and yes, we are ready for more. There are still a lot of days to go, still miles to ride, problems to face and people to meet. Up next, its Chennai and then Hyderabad. North-east, we will be there soon!