“Have you guys started?” I
asked
“In 20
Minutes” Santosh replied from the other end. It was already 07:20 and the
second time they said 20 more minutes. I was getting restless, however managed
to calm myself down thinking how this all started.
Sometime around June, Santosh
mentioned about a road trip idea. Since I was longing for one, I never had
second thoughts and agreed to it immediately. He mentioned his friend Abhishek
(now a common friend for both of us) was coming for his yearly vacation, and
wanted to do a road trip.
All
that came to our mind was northeast, and quickly we sat out and planned for a 2
weeks trip to Northeastern part of India. It was a full-fledged plan and we
were almost ready to book the flight tickets, however Santosh said he can’t
make it for 2 weeks. So we decided to have a short south India trip for 9 days.
The
proposed plan went something like this, Madurai, Rameshwaram, Kanyakumari,
Thenmala, Ernakulam, Valparai, Coimbatore and return to Bangalore. However we
agreed to change the routes as and when required.
So, it
was around 08:30hrs in the morning we were just 3 hrs behind our schedule.
Santosh called me as soon as he reached near my place. We still had lot of work
to do like, tying Santosh’s bag on his bike, drawing cash from ATM, filling
Petrol, Checking air levels etc.
By the
time everything was over, it was almost 0915hrs, and we hit the National
Highway, towards Salem. As usual NH was smooth and we were is a good speed. Oh,
Yeah! I just forgot to introduce my fellow riders, though you might have
already guessed their names.
1)
Santosh: - on his Royal Enfield Thunderbird
350cc, which was especially bought for the NE trip. I fixed the deal with my
ex-manager. With his ghost mask on, he is the Ghost Rider of the team!!!!
2)
Abhishek:- The cool NRI guy, on his Standard
500cc, Which was rented for 9 days. I already said he is a NRI guy.
3)
Who is the third guy, of-course it’s me “Captain
slow”. That’s the name I got on the very first day of the trip.
Now back to the highway, it was almost half past ten,
and we all were very hungry. We stopped at Krishna Inn ordered our favorites.
We noticed some passers commenting about our bikes and they would have already
got an impression on what we were up to. Some of them even came to us asking,
where we were heading and what we were planning to do at each destination. One
gentleman asked whether we were riding for a cause. Of course I wasn’t riding
for any cause, but Abhishek wanted to donate 10rs for each Kilometer he rides.
We then decided to proceed and have a break at Salem.
However while crossing Salem we saw some dark clouds covering up. We didn’t
want to get struck, so we rode bit faster (I mean they rode bit faster and I
was catching up with them).
We were near Namakkal, when we took our next break. We
were just in the middle of lunch and tea time, and couldn’t find a proper place
to eat. We jumped into an Iyyengar bakery and started munching cake/ Puffs
etc.., we still had 180kms to cover and without wasting much time, we started
again.
Straight, long, free and spacious highways are bit
boring usually for the bikers. You don’t want to ride fast, and don’t want to
keep seeing the same dotted lines. We just crossed Dindugal by-pass where the
unexpected just happened. My bike was the first to run-out of petrol. It went
on reserve and wanted to find a place where I can fill in another full tank.
There was a tiny bunk to my left and it was a great mistake that I didn’t
choose to fill in fuel there.
For almost next 25 kilometers we didn’t find even a
single fuel station and then as expected my bike stopped without any fuel. It
was already 1830hrs and was getting darker.
We luckily had one empty water bottle, good that we
thought of not littering around and wanted to through that out in a dustbin. I
dried that a bit, and collected petrol from Santosh’s bike, because even Abhi’s
bike was also getting dry.
All set, we started again, it was getting darker and
we decided that we aren’t going directly to temple. We had to find a room, get
fresh and think of next plan. By that time, Anto’s(Santosh) manager had called
up more than 3 times to schedule a meeting. So even that was in the to- do list
as soon as we reached the room.
We reached Fathima college, the gateway of Madurai
city, when you enter the north side of the city. We started to search in our
mobiles for hotels nearby Meenakshi Amman temple. After a couple of phone
calls, suggestions from the internet God, Google and also some well-wishers
from other hotels, we ended up at M3 hotel Madurai. It was newly build and that
may be the reason behind offering us decent rooms at cheap rates.
Abhi and I got fresh, while Anto finished his office
conference call. We decided to have a perfect dinner, as we all were hungry and
tired. It was a tie between Amma-Mess and Konar-Mess and finally Amma
(Mother)won it. We were surprised to see that it was a very small mess with all
reasonable rates. While we were fully concentrating on the wall of fame,
articles and photos of celebrities, food was being served side by side. We
heard a man near our table guiding the waiters to suggest this and that to us.
I turned to him and said, “Cool, We already ordered what we wanted” and moved
my sight towards the wall again.
To my surprise he was the same guy with all those
celebrities on those photos, he was the owner of the Restaurant, and still he
was waiting at the tables. He winked at me and moved to the next table. I mean, that’s how you treat your customers.
So after having an awesome dinner including, crab omblette,
Chicken Dosa, Mutton Khola balls, we decided to walk to the hotel. We reached our hotel and hit the beds. After
having a couple of drinks and tiny training session of Rummy to Anto…..we
started snoring soon………
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