Live to ride, ride to live!

Two young city bikers cover the 5,900 km Golden Quadrilateral in 146 hours and come back with a bag load of incredible experiences.

Two Bangaloreans, Renu Kumar and Amrith Nayak, have just completed a 5,900 kilometer ride on their bikes across the Golden Quadrilateral. They braved the foggy north Indian winter, Telangana violence, bad roads in Orissa and even escaped an encounter in UP to complete the journey in 146 hours. But the help they received from locals all along their long ride is something they will cherish.

Kumar and Nayak are not professional bikers. While Kumar is a marketing executive, Nayak is a techie working with HP. Their passion for biking brought them together on this attempt to cover the Golden Quadrilateral. Supported by Yamaha and Bangalore Wheels, the duo started their journey from Dr Rajkumar Road in Rajajinagar on January 2.

PPREHENSIVE PARENTS
But support from their families was not forthcoming. Kumar’s father Nagaraj came to know of the ‘All-India Trip’ only after he saw a report in a newspaper on the day of the journey. Kumar had lied that he was going to Pune. Nagaraj arrived at the flag-off in a huff, but his son’s friends convinced him that the journey was safe and that he need not worry. Nayak on the other hand informed his family members only after he came back from the journey.

Kumar and Nayak under took the journey on two YZF R15 bikes. These are 150 cc bikes. The record for covering the Golden Quadrilateral in the shortest possible time is held by Dr Arnob Gupta, also from Bangalore, who completed the journey in 118 hours on a modified 225 cc bike. Kumar and Nayak had hoped to complete the journey in under 100 hours.

FOG HIT
Riding 18 hours a day, sleeping at petrol bunks and eating at roadside dhabas, the duo completed the first leg of their journey — crossing Maharashtra and Gujarat — in good time. But once they reached Rajasthan, they had to brave the cold wave in north India.

With visibility curtailed to just a few metres, they made little progress. They lost their way after Udaipur, but the GPS system on their bikes came in handy. Map My India services, who were monitoring their journey, got them back on track.

THE ENCOUNTER
After losing hours navigating traffic in Delhi, the duo travelled through Uttar Pradesh covering Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad and Varnasi. People were very helpful all along. But just as they were crossing over to Bihar, armed police surrounded the two.

“The police screened us and then took us to a dhaba and handed over our bike keys to the dhaba owners. The dhaba people were told to give us food and to let us go only in the morning. We realised why only on the following day. An encounter had taken place nearby and we could see blood on the road,” recalls Kumar. Kumar and Nayak were advised not to travel through Bihar, but they continued anyway.

TELANGANA TROUBLE
After passing West Bengal and Orissa, the two entered Andhra Pradesh which was tense due to the Telangana issue. They encountered freqent protests on the roads. “In Vishakapatnam, we ran right into a protest rally. Speaking in Kannada, English and Hindi, we attempted to explain our mission. Surprisingly, they made way for us and wished us luck,” says Kumar.

Seeing accident victims on the road, however, dampned their spirits on the way to Chennai.

The two returned to Bangalore on January 8. Interestingly, Amrith Nayak had clocked 5,910 kms while Renu Kumar did 5992 kms. This was because Kumar had attempted to ride on an expressway in Ahmedabad and was turned back half-way through his ride. Throughout their journey, volunteers from BikeNomads, a group of bike enthusiasts, helped Kumar and Nayak with local inputs.

HIGHWAY, NOT FUNWAY
“Our aim was to show that traveling on Indian roads and especially the Golden Quadrilateral is safe. We found some stretches of the road in bad condition, especially in Orissa. More than the authorities, it is the common people who need to realise that the highway is not for fun. In many places, people were careless while crossing the road,” says Kumar. He is now busy writing a book on the traffic condition in Bangalore.

PROOF READING
With small fuel tanks, the two bikers had to refuel at least four times a day during their travel. Refuelling had to be done using either a debit or credit card. This was the only proof of their journey. At many petrol pumps, there was no facility to use cards and they had to go in search of one with the facility. They slept at the bunks and food was usually a hurried meal at a highway dhaba.

GREEN MAN
Even though Renu Kumar is a bike enthusiast, he considers conservation a must. He is part of the ‘Go Cycling, Go Green’ group whose members travel on bicycles. “In my earlier job, I used to go to office on a bicycle. But because of my current marketing job, I use a bike. But I make it a point to cycle at least 5 kilometres everyday wearing a ‘Go Cycling’ T-shirt,” he says.

Source: Bangalore Mirror