4th October : Leg 2 Day 1, Delhi-Agra

Riding to Agra on the 'airy' NH2. Me riding the Jupiter

Me besides the Jupiter at the Sikander Fort

It was well past 3 in the morning of 4th October, the day we were scheduled to start with the Leg 2 of The Great Indian Road Trip. Gasoline (Ashish) and me had just reached my place from Sunny’s with the pick-up truck all loaded up with our stuff (minus mine). Three hours later, Gasoline and me were on our way to the meeting point- we weren’t able to catch even two winks! What a way to start the leg 2!
To summarize a bit, the Leg 1 saw us riding up north from Delhi through Haryana and Punjab, reaching Jammu and Kashmir and hitting the highest roads and passes of Leh and Ladakh, carrying onto Spiti valley, down to Shimla district, from where we penetrated into Uttaranchal covering Mussoorie before ending it all in Delhi. This is the Leg 2, on which we do intend to cover rest of India, hopefully!
I am glad we were running quite according to our plan, unlike in leg 1, when the team reached its first destination, Chandigarh, hours behind schedule. Myself on the 150cc 15Bhp Kinetic Jupiter, Gasoline and Sunil on the two 165cc 12Bhp Kinetic Blazes, Sunny on the 250cc 28Bhp Kinetic Comet and our back up vehicle, a 3000cc Tata 207DI, finally crawled out of Delhi’s pathetic slow moving traffic to hit the NH-2, which seemed to open up somewhere after Ballabgarh. The sun showed no mercy and our exposed arms were being given a good ‘bar be que’ effect, the water level going down drastically in the body which saw us stopping no less than four times for water and refreshments. We all got a good ‘tan-job’ and our skins sure would be screaming for mercy in the coming few days.
The NH-2, which connects Delhi to Kolkata, got us to Agra and is a four lane toll highway. A part of the Golden Quadrilateral, it had its own share of nitwitted traffic, which kept us on our toes. The machines in the meantime performed quite well with the Jupiter beyond question being the best of the lot for touring like this and returning a fuel economy figure of 35kmpl at a cruising speed of 90-95 km/h really left us imprinted. The heat was taking a toll on us and made us escape Vrindavan and Mathura as we wanted to reach Agra asap and freshen up before heading out for photography stints. Abhishek Gupta from Agra, a member of our club seemed to a god sent angel, who first of all got us chilled refreshments while we were waiting for him and then got us into the city into a good hotel and later helped us chalk out the plan for the following day. Not only this, he even got arrangements done for the local media to cover our ride. As soon as lunch was done, I could not resist but slumber off, what with me being awake for more than 30 hours. Sunny and Sunil had an intervening time at the Sikander Fort where they spent some time for the photo shoots along with Abhishek and his friend Arun.
As I write this blog right now at 2200 hours, sitting in this room of Hotel Sapna, the locally made A/C struggles hard to keep us all cool, the constant honking of Agra’s congested lanes keeps reminding me that tomorrow could be a day full of irritating rides across the city as we go around seeing theTaj Mahal, Agra Fort, Sikander Fort among others. We are working on IBM ThinkPads, with reliance net cards doing the honors of keeping us attached to the outside world, our Ipods working overtime to keep us in the mood, cans of Red Bull quenching our thirsts and six mobile phones ringing non-stop. There is so much to do, from uploading photographs to updating no less than four blogs, moderating topics on the site, keeping updated with the outside world, being in touch with loved ones, chalking out plans for days ahead and what not. And we still have over 14,000kms to go! India, we are on our way…