Bharuch-Surat (Gujarat) :- The Valentine's Day Ride.. A Flashback in Past - Part Two.

Life was pretty good, I owned my most priceless possession i.e my baby FZ & I was enjoying her a lot. However, I had to travel to Gujarat for official work yet again. It was again a month long assignment & I had to leave my baby back home in mumbai. My colleague-cum-friend Tirath accompanied me for the assignment there. I was just getting stable with the new place in Ankleshwar, Gujarat & missed my bike every day. Kindly enough, we were blessed with a TVS bike by a friendly employee Mr Ramanuj Pandey from the client's company. It was nowhere as good as my FZ but we were still thankful for whatsoever we got. The bike was meant to be with us for our time pass wandering around in nearby areas after we got back to our guest house from factory in evening. Ordinarily we would always return a bit tired from factory but we rode the bike at least for a short trip daily at nights.

It was the day before valentines in the year 2010. My close friend Najju from mumbai was in Gujarat too & also stationed in a nearby area just 20 kms away from where we were located. We decided to catch up & celebrate the valentine’s day (which was a Sunday so holiday for all of us) together at najju's guest house in bharuch since there were lots of indoor games like carrom board, pool etc at his place for us to spend the day around. However, Tirath denied visiting najju's guest house due to certain reasons so i asked najju to come over to our guest house instead. He agreed. I & Tirath, along with Shubham went to pick up najju on our bike & one another scooty. We all returned back to our guest house by 10.00 pm & did some timepass.

Some pics clicked my Shubham.. (Excuse us for no helmets)

I & Najju decide to go out for a short ride just before 12.00 am approximately & tirath went to bed. We were on unknown roads & i was riding the bike. I only had a fair idea about the lonely roads we were riding on but still who cared. We were just enjoying the cold weather out there. It was too damn chilly. Never experienced such cold weather but we were enjoying it. Pretty soon at around 12.30 am I felt we may have come excessively far ahead & I had no clue where we were & the streets were dim & isolated devoid of any light & just a few vehicles passing by occasionally. I feared we may be short on fuel, so i decided to turn back & head to our guest house. Najju requested for riding the bike this time & I obliged his wish. When we stopped to switch our places, we saw a Camel out of nowhere in the middle of the night & i tried my cellphone camera to get close & manage a pic.

Najju rode well for few kms until the un-thinkable happened. Bike began to jerk off & najju pulled over. I tried to start but it didn't budge even after recurring kicks from me. My legs were fatigued soon & I missed my FZ which comes to life with just a smooth touch of my thumb. Finally after some additional desperate kicks, the engine roared to life at last & I quickly asked najju to take the pillion seat. We were on our way back to the guest house. It was just past 12.50 am & I was trying to scratch my memory & find out the correct turn from the state highway to reach our guest house but no luck. There was not a living soul for miles around there. I wasn't sure what directions to be asked for as I didn't even knew the locality where my guest house was situated so even if we eventually would find out anyone to help us with directions; they wouldn’t be of any help to us. So continued riding at moderate speeds while continually cursing myself for being such an idiot & set out for a midnight adventure with absolutely no preparations whatsoever.

At the other end, I had no idea what was going through Najju’s mind in those moments. We did speak every now & then on some or the other topic & I figured out soon that Najju was the best pillion in such a hostile situation, totally calm & composed & he didn't seem to be bothered at all by the situation. After a couple of U-turns here & there I finally found the left turn which I was looking for & took it. I soon got a smile on my face after seeing the familiar roads once again. Once I was absolutely sure about the correct road, I opened up the throttle once again & we were cruising at speeds over 70-80 kmph in no time enjoying the freakiest wind chill we had ever faced in our lives. With all that ripping, we reached my guest house in no time. It was approx. 1.15 am & neither myself nor Najju was in any mood to sleep after our tiny little adventure trip & we wished we could endeavor further but the lack of petrol was the only thing preventing us from riding any further at that lonely hour & petrol pumps were too far to comfort us so late at night. So we decided to get some rest & set out early in the day for a short trip. Went back to our respective rooms & I slept pretty soon after setting up an alarm for 6.00 a.m

For a change, got up precisely on time with first stroke of alarm & found my friend Tirath already up & studying for his exams. I really admired his perseverance. Went to Najju's room & it took a few hard knocks on his door to finally get him up. Joshiji (Cook-cum-caretaker) of our guest house made some nice coffee for us & I enquired with him for nearby possible tourist spots around & to my surprise there were almost none excluding a few spiritual destinations in proximity. Anyways we were dying to hit the roads again so we decided to set out for Najju's guest house at bharuch instead of wasting any more time. His guest house was approx. 25 kms from our place. We were on road by 6.45 am & I was going easy on throttle due to early morning cold environment. Fuelled up at a petrol pump & continued riding towards the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway also known as National Highway 8 (NH8). Najju was wearing my favorite cap, which had an embroidered signature of 'John Abraham' on it which was gifted to me by Yamaha showroom when I bought my baby FZ. As I sped up, the cap blew over Najju's head & Najju informed me within seconds of that event. I decelerated as I wanted to go back & look for it. Took a U-turn & we searched for it well all over the road for about 200 meters or so but just couldn't seem to find it. Najju shared his condolences for my cap & I was mighty disappointed for losing it but had no choice so moved ahead. Reached NH8 junction in some time by 7.00 am & we both fell in the dilemma after seeing a direction board there.

Small Flashback to the last night - Najju had told me earlier in the night that he was supposed to go to mumbai to spend Valentines day with someone special but he didn't go to mumbai since she was in Surat for the time being. All night I had tried hard to convince him to visit Surat instead of mumbai but didn't seem to convince him well enough as he was in dual minds.

Anyways, back to the point on NH8

We saw the following readings on direction board.

Left Arrow     <- Surat = 61 kms

Right Arrow   -> Bharuch = 20 kms

I took a brief halt at the side of the road while engine still running & asked Najju for the last time,

Surat or Bharuch?

it was now or never, left turn or right.

In a spur of moment he said 'chal chalte hai Surat' & I was delighted as I just expected the same reply. Like a green signal on a racetrack, I popped off the clutch with more accelarator then required & the bike scared the hell out of me with a short power wheelie for just a few feet before the front wheel touching down the tarmac again. It seemed to just charge us up more & I was ripping the bike at her maximum speed of around 90 kmph in no time on virtually traffic less smooth NH8. I had owned my FZ for over a couple of months now & had been on quiet a lot of roads in & around Mumbai but none can come close to NH8. It was pure ecstasy to rip as much as your machine permits you. Tarmac was super smooth & amazing vistas all along.

I rode for some 20 odd kms while Najju constantly asking to let him ride now as he didn’t want to miss out on all the fun. I was very skeptical as I had been behind him as a pillion on a geared vehicle only on a few occasions in mumbai where he seemed to have a bit of trouble with changing gears on my FZ. Najju was expert Activa rider but he had virtually very less experience on geared bikes & experimenting on NH8 with high speed motor vehicles overtaking our puny little bike was not at all a good idea. Anyways I was in no position to judge his abilities to ride the bike as I myself was relatively a new rider of geared bikes with experience of just a few months. So I gave up on his requests & pulled over at the side of the highway. Clicked some nice pics on a brief halt before handing over the bike to Najju.

Lovely sunrise

Our ride for the day. TVS Star.. Far better performing then its looks.

Just 320 kms away from home.. Damn!!

Najju took over the bike & as against I expected, he rode well enough & the ride was smooth & jerk free. It was my turn to be a pillion so I made full use of my cellphone camera & shot some nice videos. Some of the pics pulled out from videos i shot. Please excuse the poor quality pics.

Its a still image from video shot by me & the colours change in video due to sun light exposure changes due to those tress I guess.

 We made it to the  Surat border by 8.15 am safely & subsequently it was real test for Najju to ride in crowded streets of Surat with full traffic from each direction. I insisted on riding through the city at least but as all our common friends know by now, Najju would never give up easily an opportunity to ride a bike especially in challenging situations. Traffic was dense & people were driving/riding out there with relatively less road sense. To my surprise again, Najju managed riding in city with far less problems then I expected.

Anyways we finally made it to Najju's relatives place in surat city by 9.00 am where we decided to freshen up a bit before starting our return journey. We hadn’t showered before leaving my guest house & got far more full of road dirt after the ride so we were quiet happy that we didn’t waste any time or  water early this morning. His relatives were uninformed so they were mighty surprised by our arrival. We got fresh & enjoyed the amazing homemade breakfast served to us. It had been a couple of weeks since I didn’t have any non-veg food since we were in Gujarat, the land of vegetarians. The fresh egg omlette in breakfast was the icing on cake after such a wonderful ride to Surat. We were insisted to stay back there at least throughout the day but we politely denied the offer as both of us wanted to be on that smooth NH8 ASAP. Najju tried contacting the one who he was actually supposed to meet in surat but no luck. A bit disheartened he may be after such a long commute, but he still had a smile on his face probably because we were gonna be on the roads again. It was approximately 10.15 am when we finally decided to leave after thanking the hosts for their wonderful hospitality & amazing breakfast.

It was my turn to ride the bike through crowded city of surat now & Najju handed over the keys to me. We were back on road & negotiating that early morning traffic was pain in A**. It was not so difficult since I'v been riding since past few months in peak traffic hours on Mumbai streets but I really wondered how Najju managed through the traffic earlier because riding in surat wasn't exactly a piece of cake either. Felt like appreciating him for adapting so quickly according to the traffic situation earlier but I did not dare do so because I feared he would force me back to the pillion seat after hearing the appraisal.  Najju clicked a pic somewhere just before entering the NH8. Its not a real JET obviously :)

I was too happy to rip in the streets of Surat & reached NH8 by some time. The journey back home was uneventful & plain. I was ripping the bike at her maximum potential overtaking those lazy trucks & few other motorists but then again i was restricted at mere 90 kmph whereas the smooth NH8 allowed many of the cars to maintain over 100 kmph with relative ease & hence I was being overtaken every now & then by few cars. I missed my FZ more & more on every such occasion. The ride was going fine, we were still enjoying the cold environment at approx. 11.00 am when unexpectedly the bike started jerking at speeds above 70-80 kmph & then it struck suddenly to both of us, we were low on fuel. I hadn't fueled up much earlier in morning since we were going to ride less then 50 kms to Najju’s guest house only, but so far we had already been riding over 100 kms & we had ripped the bike most of the time so we were out of fuel. So I slowed down to ride in economy mode & save up some fuel. The bike was still jerking like a wild horse every now & then. Luckily we made it to a petrol pump someway when the fuel was almost all out. The only problem was that the petrol pump was on the opposite side of highway & there was no U-turn for miles in scene. The divider was around a foot high but lifting off the bike & transporting it to the other side was not an easy option with cars & trucks plying down at high speeds from both the sides of the roads. So I decided to walk to the petrol pump & see if they could provide us any bottle to carry petrol. I explained our situation to the attendant there & he looked for an empty 1 ltr bottle which was torn half from above so fuelled it up worth its maximum capacity & I happily hopped over to our side of the road & fuelled up our bike.

Some pics.

With some petrol in our bike, I ripped her sensibly but I wasn’t too worried since Bharuch was less than 30km away. I wanted to fuel up again as soon as we see any fuel pump in sight but none to our surprise. Just before 7-8 kms before bharuch, the bike gave up again & we were not so lucky this time though. There was no petrol pump anywhere in sight for miles so we had to pull over. On enquiring with few villagers passing by, we were told we can get petrol at some 1-2 kms away in a small village shop instead of a petrol pump. Najju took over the task while I stayed back with the bike. It was already past 12.00 pm & sun was showing its effects. After around half an hour, Najju showed up with a bottle full of petrol in his hands. It was indeed a relief. I thanked him & happily handed over the keys to him as a kind gesture for his help. Najju was well aware of the roads for final few kms so we reached his guest house by lunch time. We met Tirath for the lunch as pre-decided. After lunch, we ended up playing Table tennis, Carrom etc till evening.

Najju & Tirath..

All in all had a fantastic valentines day long ride of approx 200 kms totally. Enjoyed the day throughout but missed my bike at the end of the day.