Gadha Mania was initiated by Anukaran Singh, of Wanderlust  - The Bullet Club of Nagpur. It was started with the aim to spreading brotherhood amongst all the clubs much like the Rider Mania organized each year by the clubs (not the one by RE). Third year into the Gadhamania; this ride was special in many ways. It taught me about the bond that every bullet rider has with the other and more so about how that piece of metal can be a binding factor for people you’ve just met.

I met Ranjit, Jai and Chandan at JVLR at around 7 pm on Friday to head to Vashi Toll Naka. As good luck would have it, we met Abhijit just when we were getting on to the eastern expressway who suggested we go via Mankhurd. Had we gone via my route (the only one I know), we would have been riding more in the city, and less on the highway! So many thanks and cheers to Abhijit!

Paaji, joined us en route lead from the front clearing the road for us to pass through! We regrouped at Vashi toll naka to wait for Mohanty, but left because he was not reachable. We reached Shri Dutta snacks at around 10pm; and waited for others to join! The joy of watching each rider come in his own style – priceless.

We ordered some road side Chinese meanwhile; and like each time the hogs we are we ordered in bulk and the guy had a tough time filling out the order for 6 people. There were quite a few cartloads of noodles and rice as far as I remember. I vaguely do remember staying away from non-veg that night; in the hope of not losing the sacred cork in the ass.

Everyone made a grand entry by the road side stall one by one. By 1045PM we were all saddled up and ready to hit the highway! We decided to cruise at around 60km/hr since it was pretty dark inspite of almost a full moon.

Unfortunately for us, we had left on a Friday night, and not everyone was rested. I for one was pretty relaxed because I could stay up all night, and I could never really sleep well before a ride anyway!

This was the route plan by the way. We stuck to it for most part, except when we went deep behind bushes to take a leak.

Panvel- Khopoli, Talegaon, Chakan, Shikrapur, Nagar, Aurangabad, Jalna by pass, Lonar.

We finally hit Ranjangaon at around 0330 AM at a tea stall. The thing about this tea stall guy was he leisurely mixes tea and coffee both with milk. It’s hard to describe it really, but with half a bucket of sugar it surely was a concoction Getafix would have been proud off! For the record, for 23 riders we ensured he had a good business in the middle of the night. 400 bucks for tea/coffee or whatever it was; darn good business I say!

Ji Shaabji! Sipping tea/coffee (whatever it was)

That night, if over half the riders falling asleep we decided to camp at Hotel Sandeep Lodge just on the outskirts of Ranjangaon for the night. This wasn’t the best thing to do mainly because we lost a good six hours. But under those circumstances it was the wisest thing to do; since we did not want anyone riding up our asses from behind. That’s not a good feeling.

Breakfast in the morning

Every ride, I do manage to forget something or the other. This particular one, I had ensured I had taken everything and I mean anything that could come to rescue. I was even carrying a pillow just in case! But as luck would have it, I had forgotten my toothbrush and I had to rely on good ol finger giving myself a blow in the morning.

Like all ride plans we planned to leave Ranjangaon early at around 830am but there are no prizes for guessing when we actually left! Jai was riding behind me now, for the comfort of the back rest. But Jai did not have any knockers on him, so it was pretty much two guys on a bike and that kind of sucked because I was to have had a ride date this time who decided it was safer indoors.

We finally took a pit stop at Amritsari Punjabi Dhaba at around 2PM for lunch. We decided we would call the waiter Shankar; while his attempts to convince us that he wasn’t really Shankar drowned in all the ‘Shankar’ chants it might interest you that he also took leave the next day. Our order was something like this

• Close to a 100 chapatis
• 10 egg bhurjis
• 10 dals
• 20 vegetable curries

On the Khatiya!

Close to around 20 litres of lassi and chaas made way from one end of the dhabha to the other. Shankar made marathon runs to and fro from the table to the kitchen. By the end of the it, I think he had had enough. Well he shouldn’t be complaining too much, we even helped him carry less, by eating food on the way from the kitchen.

So while, the roof rattled, the khatiyas broke, stomach’s grumbled and we polished off most of the kitchen. That day, the sunny Saturday afternoon I am sure the chickens and goats in that area would have thanked their stars that Amritsari Punjabi Dhabha was 100% vegetarian.

After refusing to move post lunch, it took a few sticks and bamboos to get us off the khatiyas which Paaji gladly used on all of us. We rode towards Lonar, although reluctantly because quite frankly, we wanted to let the food digest itself slowly.

At a Gas station en route

The ride was uneventful for most stretch, mainly because we had our eyes half closed and we just following the thump of the bike ahead of us. It pretty much like the way you follow the leader in any of the management games. I decided to hang back right up to the tail, mainly because I was so hazy I figured it would take many more thumps to keep me alert on the road I would have to follow. Jai also made some conversation to keep me awake; well I did try to laugh on some of the jokes. That helped but the jokes needed some help.

Now heading into Lonar, we got into the customary battle position. I was riding with Ranjit on my right, but some of the new riders did take a while to figure we were supposed to be in a battle position. So we had to cover for them. The first time I had to get into a battle position there were many fingers up in the air. Someone pointed out one finger, which meant single file. One pointed out two, and some just got too excited and showed all five fingers. That got little messed up, and went back to making a single file.

We were the first ones to show up there. The Thumper jingle with the horns woke up pretty much the last sleeping geezer in town. I am sure many would have cursed us that night, because next morning two bikes broke down.

Lonar!

We directly headed to the Crater Lake from where we could have a view of the lake. After cajoling everyone for close to one hour we did manage to take a group photo but without a few riders. They decided to skip the photo, and take pictures of the birds, animals and the rocks around. I never could really understand people with cameras; especially when they know that they never get photographed.

A group photo, we never got all together

Bikes by the Crater

It was another noisy entry and the guess the lodge owners were darn kicked to see us anyway. Not too sure what I would have done if I were them. We checked into the room, and boy was I glad to see running water and a fan! Had been saving the whole load of crap from morning and it would have splattered any moment. Running water for cleaning the scene of crime, and a fan of well – air circulation! I guess I was not the only one with the loosening cork up my ass, because Ranjit and Jai had their fair share of a sound and smell show later and I was glad we had – fan and water.

By this time, we heard some firecrackers and the thumper jingle. The crackers were pretty loud, and we reckoned, maybe SP and Rohan had finally found their way and not headed the other direction like they did when they almost touched Shirdi the previous night.

It was the Wanderers who decided to even play the same jingle as we did. The firecracker sound comes by playing with ignition button and kicking at the same time apparently. So the Wanderers did make a grand entry that day, and minus the jingle they copied we forgave them for the love of brotherhood. That night other clubs also joined us.  So while Kaka (from Inddiethumpers), Inder (from Wanderlust), Lalit (from Wanderers), Sheetal (from Highway Nawabs) and the lone warrior from Roadmelters (Jamshedpur) Bharat aka Teddy. So while the celebrations began, Dheeraj, Ranjit, Jai and I decided to take a rain check and first have some food. Drinking on an empty stomach ain’t the right thing to as Chandan later proved it to everyone.

That night when Dheeraj and I stumbled upon a shop selling boiled eggs (yeah, it was a shop) we polished off some 40 eggs between the four of us; I had a strange thought I would die that night because of high cholesterol . We also managed to find a stall selling pav bhaji, so I guess 2 plates of that greasy crap for each one of would sound just about normal.

We were supposed to have been back to the party in 15 minutes but thanks to our binge in that non-descript town we made an even more non-descript entry with the booze for everyone. We polished off the booze and went straight for the food! The cook perhaps lost count of how many kgs of red chilli powder he put in it; which is why we also ran out of water after dinner. Some were even seen putting the ice in their mouth post dinner; I didn’t want to tell them where the ice came from.

The customary ‘ragging’ for new comers included Joshil a rider who joined us for the first time. So after some hammering which went on for close to an hour, most decided to finally have some dinner. Eventually everyone was too tired or drunk to pay notice; and while Joshil was dancing in front of what he thought were people; we made an exit to our motel rooms. I reckon he was probably dancing for Ganesh (the waiter we decided to name at the MTDC resort). I think the dog also started dancing after Joshil cajoled it enough.

We left the next day at 9am what should’ve been 8am. SP, Rohan and Mohanty had had a long night and decided to stay back. I think they were dancing with the dogs too the previous night. Apurva’s bike that was picked up a week back decided to really show its true colours now. While we were cruising at 80km/hr, Apurva’s was choking at 50km/hr tops. So Ranjit, and I were riding with him for over two hours at 50 till we reached Amritsari Punjabi Dhabha. Shankar had decided to take a leave that day, after the previous day’s hectic relay run between our tables and the kitchen.

Ananta, Ranjit, Apurva and I were trailing the pack of thumpers at a very high speed of 45km/hr now. We finally gave up on Apurva’s bike somewhere near Ahmednagar. Vishakh’s bike had conked somewhere near Lonar and was being towed in a tempo. So while Apurva waited for the elusive tempo to come, we headed to Mumbai. Three of us, and we had over 370 kms to cover we decided to rip it!

Right before we hit Malshej Ghats

It was all fine but for two incidents. Well they were an eye opener and somewhere down line also made us grateful to have been alive.

Incident one: The crazy dog

Ran after Ananta (juggernaut) but came under my front wheel before I kicked it away doing a summersault at 60km/hr, and then caressed Ranjit bike. While it was howling away to see if its limbs were still in place we decided not to stop and move ahead. I am just glad, it didn’t die. Guess that mutt won’t be  chasing any vehicles on the road now.

Incident two: The needle

At around 8PM while we were passing the perilous Malshej, I got a flat exactly when I was overtaking a long line of cars. Thankfully, I was able to halt without having a car hump me from behind. I had nothing to for a while, because the guys had somehow not able to hear the honking so I had wait with my indicator lights on. I tried stopping a few vehicles to flag off the other two riders but none stopped. So while I had just about taken out my sleeping bag to sleep on the side of the road Ananta came back. They had perhaps noticed one headlight missing in their rear view mirrors.

The kid with the wheel, I forget his though

Ranjit had a can of emergency puncture repair can, and we thanked our stars that day that Hellboy was with us. Maybe he should be called HeavenBoy, just for that one moment. It would sound too gay otherwise.

The little kid who fixed the tube was not more than 10, and he took approximately 30 minutes to fix it with the usual tools and a torch light. In that forgotten village that was three huts big – one tea stall, one puncture shop and a house; electricity was controlled by some guy who had to be requested for each 10 minutes of power.

Having had the last meal for the day, we finally hit the road at 9pm to reach Kalyan by 1230. 150 kms covered in 3 hours in ghats was not a bad deal actually.

Guri and gang had already reached home, and were probably fast asleep under their covers but riding close 1200 kms in two days made me realize one thing, there is only one road to take and there is no destination at the end of the day. We all ride, because we love to and no matter many cans of oil it leaks, how many screws go missing or how many times the carburettor conks we will still go back to our one true love – the bullet. It’s the journey that matters, and not the destination.

So until next ride, stay clear of dogs and carry an emergency puncture repair can!

Screw you guys, we're riding home!

Dogs harmed during the ride, with a lot of pride. Photos by Ranjit and Ananta