Ride to RM: Day 10

Day 10. Tuesday. 27th Jan. Amritsar. 

We were off at 6am from Vivek's place, to ensure we get to Chandigarh by 11am and the girls caught their 1pm flight back to Bangalore. It was a foggy morning again and the driver's skill was apparent. He was very adept at negotiating the dark and the fog. impressive. Breakfast today was in a dhaba and you guessed it. We had Aloo Paratha again. We decided to cheat and sneaked in a couple of Paneer Paratha's.

Post breakfast, the driver had to step on the gas a bit or else we could be late for the flight. A bit of drama later we found ourselves at the airport slightly later than planned, and to our surprise, the flight was pushed out by a couple of hours. We had no notice of it even when we had checked in an hour or so earlier. All that wasted effort in arriving early when we could have waltzed into Chandigarh with a nice long breakfast. Sigh!
Sam and I hung around long enough to make sure that the girls were alright and then headed to be reunited with our bikes again.

The bikes were in need of some TLC to get them ready to take us back home. We spent the next few hours getting the bikes washed, the chains taken care of and basically going through all the other checks we generally do before a ride. counting the tyres and checking the fluids, etc. I also needed to get a new sim card because the older one had decided to give up back in Amritsar. This meant another hour or so of delay to sort out some paperwork with Vodafone. Thanks to all this we eased back to our 2 meal a day routine.

It was a little after 4pm by the time we managed to get on our bikes and head south. A big thank you to Inder who was extremely helpful in letting us stow the bikes and also in getting the bikes back in shape today.

A quick fuel stop and we were on the highway to Panipat, retracing our route from last week when we got into Chandigarh. I was still getting back into ride mode and was taking my time. The fading light and crazy traffic on the GT road meant that our averages dropped. The destination for the day was to be Panipat, and we were planning to return to the same hotel we had stayed at on the way in.

Since landing up at Chandigarh, Sam and I have had a running discussion on the route that we would take back to Bangalore. Sam had a long standing desire to get to the Rann of Kutch and this ride was as good a chance as it would get to make it happen. We knew we could get there by the end of Thursday and then  his cousin in Mundra could help us get sorted out with camping out in the Rann over Friday/Saturday. Bangalore from there could take three days easily and that meant we would be back home only by Tuesday.  This was something we could not afford, given both of our work schedules. A bit of brainstorming and we thought a good alternative would be to leave the bikes at Mundra, take a train/flight back home,come back next month to fetch them and get another ride in. Sounded like a win win solution. Rann would be on the cards and so would another ride!

All plans would have to wait until we got to Panipat after negotiating the GT road for the next couple of hours or so. Today somehow felt like the coldest ride day. I think I may have been a bit lax with tucking in my gear as well. The darkness setting in and the crazy drivers on the GT meant not a great time riding, and the both of us were eager to check in and get a good night's sleep. Given the early start to the day this was not such a bad idea after all. We would have a fresh start tomorrow and make good progress.

We were getting close to Panipat and I lost track of Sam in the highway traffic. The 390 and Sam were weaving their way through the traffic and had left me behind. I would sight him occasionally but lose him again when we hit some traffic. I remember passing a toll booth as we left Panipat a week ago, and that was what I kept looking out for. I had not paid too much attention to the rare distance markers on the highway. At one point I was convinced that the toll booth ahead was the one and started slowing down. But Sam kept at the pace and only then did I realize that I had my hopes pinned on the wrong toll booth.
Visions of a hot meal and warm bed egged me on to the finish line and thankfully we got there soon enough and checked into the same hotel as a week earlier.
The staff recognized us and even managed to give us the same room as earlier!

Over dinner and after, we started putting together our Rann plan. If we left our bikes there, we would have to get a flight out of Rann on Sunday and we started looking for the closest airport and the fares. I called Shub to check on how their flight went and she broke the news that she was feeling a bit under the weather. So, we decided that we would decide on the Rann return plan by the morning depending on how things were back home. Until then we get in some good North Indian fare in our tummies and score a good nights sleep.