Ride to RM: Day 11

Day 11. Wednesday. 28th Jan. Panipat

Rann here we come. Or not. I made my morning call to Shub and discovered that she was still feeling under the weather and I would need to make it back to Bangalore latest by Saturday or earlier. This meant we had to now get creative about our return journey if Rann was to still be on the cards. It was looking unlikely at the moment. I broke the news to Sam and we decided to give this some thought and decide on our next course of action by breakfast.

We retraced our route to NH8 via Rohtak. On the way in, and now, this had to be one of the best stretches we rode. 4 laned traffic free, smooth tarmac with long straights and lazy turns. The ride in was marginally better thanks to the fog providing the required atmosphere.

In my over enthusiasm to stick to the right road, I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up inside Rohtak instead of going around it and on wards to NH8. A few checks with locals and I was on the right route, but not before I had lost 15 minutes and given Sam a scare as to where I was. As luck would have it one of us would call and the other would be riding. A bit of hide and seek later, we managed to talk and decided that we would meet at the next breakfast point so that we don't lose time in me catching up to Sam. We were both tuned into the idea of getting as close to Rann as possible by the end of the day.

The solo ride meant that we both had time to think of how we were going to deal with us going to Rann and me having to be home by Saturday. Slowly I weighed all my options and reached a conclusion, which I knew Sam would not like very much. I didn't like it much as well, but I had no choice at this point. In hindsight this solo stretch was something of a harbinger of the next 2 days.

Breakfast was at a dhaba as we reached NH8 and yes, Aloo Paratha's yet again. I broke it slowly to Sam that what made most sense was for him to carry on to Rann and me to head back to Bangalore alone. We would ride together today into Rajasthan as originally planned. Tomorrow we would part ways with him heading West and me heading South. Sam proposed a couple of alternatives but then this was what made most sense. I did not want him to miss out on the Rann after dreaming of it for so long. We decided to make the best of the day ahead and push as far as we could inside Rajasthan so that I would be close to Ahmedabad and he to Mundra.

A heavy breakfast and a slightly heavy heart saw us making quick work of getting to Jaipur. The day had started off cold and was getting sunny, but the air was cold when riding through it and that meant our warm clothing stayed on. I was using my rain gear as an extra layer and that stayed on as well. The rain gods had decided not to make any appearances on our return visit and that meant we were able to keep our foot firmly on the gas(or in our case our wrists firmly twisted to open throttle).

As we got to Jaipur we saw many markers for Agra and that seemed a bit counter intuitive, but a quick look at the map and we saw that there indeed was a highway to Agra. Jaipur also threw at us a half hour worth of traffic before it would let us get on the highway to Ajmer. As soon as we got on the highway we found a restaurant to tank up on some juice and a quick bite.

Pali was our intended stopover for the night and now that we were settled back into road assault mode progress was quick. A fuel stop was the only temporary break in our devotion to the tarmac gods for the rest of the afternoon. With dusk approaching. we were treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets we have seen in the last few days and stopped to click photographs and have a quick chai. I can now clearly see that our future and photography have no cross roads or any remote links to each other. How else do you explain photos of a sunset, without the sun!

Sunset Photography done, we discover we have only about 100km or so before our destination and we think we can make it beyond that now. The air turns much cooler and the Rajasthan roads look much more appealing than they did this afternoon. No truck traffic and arrow straight roads play tricks with our right wrists and we arrive in Pali a tad sooner than we expect. Darkness has set in, but we have some juice left before we want to park for the night and onwards it is.
When we finally start looking for a roof over our heads we discover that we are bang in the middle of a wedding week. All hotels are booked and none of them have even spare beds in the kitchen for us. I did not ask if they had spare beds in the kitchen but assumed from the way they hardly gave us the time of the day when we asked for rooms.

As luck would have it, the manager of one of the hotels turned out to be a biker himself, and made a couple of calls and got us a room at a hotel 20km down the road. A good stroke of luck, because we definitely would not have found the place on our own. However, that is where our luck for the day ended. We discovered Sam's chain was really really loose and would need some attention in the morning. The hotel gave "basic" a whole new meaning. It was the most run down hotel we had stayed in, the whole of the last 2 weeks. Ironically they had a garden party in progress, with what seemed like the town's well off folks! Well beggars can't be choosers and we stayed put.
We also discovered that they also specialize in the world's worst Gobi Manchurian. Hands down! I am still kicking myself for experimenting and going the non Aloo Paratha way.

Tomorrow will be the day we both go solo and I want to get to Mumbai or as close to it as possible. Sam will no doubt get to Mundra by evening, now that we are within 450km of the destination.