Thursday, November 23, 2006

16th Nov : Hyderabad - Rajahmundry

16th Nov: Hyderabad to Rajahmundry

This was our 4th day here in the twin cities of Hyderabad-Secundrabad and still we had decided to cover up on lost time and hence Rajahmundry was decided as the night stop, at a distance of around 500kilometers.

Ashish’s mother, who consults students facing problems in certain fields of life at St Andrews school, had invited us to be at the school assembly today and interact with the students there. How could we miss this wonderful opportunity but then I do remember my schools days, when we used to have outsiders coming in, and giving boring speeches and all, and how we used to make fun of them!

This morning, we got p and were ready in a record time of one and a half hours and even our luggage was all packed and ready. We had to be on time at the school and so we were and as soon we entered, things started looking good for us. We rode into the main ground and in seconds we were surrounded by hundreds of children of all ages, asking tens of questions and surprisingly they knew what we were upto and even wished us for the ride ahead! We then proceeded to the assembly ground and parked our bikes next to the stage. It was something to see thousands of school children in front of your eyes, half of which were probably looking at us. After the prayer and a couple of speeches, it was time for our introduction and interaction, which did go very well.

We couldn’t leave Hyderabad before an interview with the TV 9 guys, which happened at Ashish’s place itself and by the time we hit the highway, it was quite late. Nevertheless, we tired making up by riding non stop but my Blaze continued to give problems, this time the rear tyre hugger almost came off! We hit Vijaywada as the sun was going down and Sunny had already found a superb hotel for food. The hotel seemed nothing short of a 3 star one but the food was quite cheap and delicious too. After Vijaywada, it was all 4-lane to Rajahmundry but problems didn’t stop for me when the Blaze almost died after I kept it at 100km/h for like couple of minutes. The problem was that the crankcase crack, which was holding up with the M-seal gave way and the crack grew into a small hole, from where burning oil came off, sending off waves of smoke and make the machine die down. We had no option but to put it up in the back up vehicle in dark, in the middle of nowhere and from then on I was in the back-up vehicle, feeling a little low, wondering what would happen to it in the coming days as I didn’t want to miss riding on this fabulous highway. Frank was waiting for us along with his friends at Rajahmundry and showed us around to the hotel they had already booked. Whats more, he made sure food too was arranged as it was already close to midnight and the hotel wasn’t serving any food at this time. It feels great to have such people around in even small cities, whom we have never met but know them as they are members and bikers.

Hoping something gets done to the Blaze tomorrow, I hate being in the backup vehicle seeing the wonderful highway pass by…

No comments:

Post a Comment