The Three Mistakes of My Sunday Ride

Today was a mistake, but one that I would gladly repeat. After the great ride on Saturday to Pathways School via Bhondsi I decided to build on the riding continue the momentum and head out on Sunday morning to Golden Greens to scope out the paths on the hills behind the golf course. 

The Saturday ride to Pathways via Bhondsi was wonderful (check out Rupesh's blog for a more engaging write-up and some great photos). But overall lots of nice views, pleasantly eventful, and some nice pics. 

We had a local try to palm off some dahi to Jacob as a substitute for his time tested magic potion, 

made friends with Panditji ka kutta,

terrorized the geese by close proximity salivation over the thought of roast duck, 

and were curious to find out how rich kids get up to no good when they are literally in the middle of nowhere.  

The Sunday ride however was very different. I went alone assuming that not many people would be interested in riding on a day when they wanted to rest their backsides and that it would be a short run to Golden Green, a pleasant walk up the hill and back to the club house for breakfast and then run back home in time to catch the Kabaddi wala. Hah - I should be so lucky!

Being alone, I managed to start early and had crossed Badshahpur by 6:15am. I crossed the golf course at about 7:15am and decided that I would first climb the hill then come back for breakfast. 

So I entered the village neighbouring the golf course (I don't remember the name of the village, but let's call it Compasspur for ease of reference) and started asking the locals for directions about how to get on top of the hill. In the process I made pretty good friends with a lot of them since I met them several times over the course of the morning. The first reason for this was that everyone had a different opinion about the path and kept sending me back the way I had just come. The second was to have them sympathize with me a few hours later as I walked around the village trying to find a puncture-wallah, but let me not jump the gun. 

After spending an hour back-tracking several times through the village I found two people who consecutively gave me the same directions about how to get on top of the hill. This was good enough for me. Near the start of the climb I also found a chowkidaar who volunteered to show me the path himself. This looked promising! As we started he did suggest that I leave the bike at his hut, but being the suspicious Gurgawaia (Gurgaon-ite in Bihari) that I am, I told him the bike was light and it would not be a problem walking with it up the path. This was mistake number two. 

As we walked up the trail Jamuna (that was his name) told me that it was a wide and rocky track, but that about a month ago some strange city folks in big cars with very very big tyres had managed to drive up to the top. At first the track looked pretty easy (see pic below of Jamuna next to bike on the track). 

And as I was more and more distracted by the view and our conversation of how he had come all the way from Samastipur to find a job here, I did not notice that we were getting into very rocky and very thorny terrain.  By the time I did it was probably too late as my front tyre was already flat and by back one was getting soft very quickly. With the damage done I decided I may as well enjoy the view of the sun rising over the Aravallis.

Breathtaking would not be an exaggeration to describe the view.

While I was busy clicking pictures Jamuna excused himself as he had to get back to duty. Alone at the top of the hill, with a strong breeze, abandoned buildings  and complete silence was an inspiring and slightly fearsome sensation.

If anyone has seen the movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock” then they may know what I’m getting at.

After about an hour of hanging out on the hill the sun came out in full force and I decided to return to Compasspur to assess the damage to my tyres. There one of the locals invited me to share some tea, which I was more than happy to accept that but I had to draw the line when he invited me to gurgle his hookah, preferring to stick to my own cancer sticks. 

An inspection of the wheels told me that the front was totally gone and that the rear one had a slow leak. I figured it would take me half an hour to change both the tubes till I looked in my backpack and was horrified when I realized I had just carried one tube with me. Mistake number three!

The nearest puncture-walla turned out to be in Hassanpur, about a three km walk. I had managed to change the front tube (at the home of the hookah- gurgler) and asked the tyrewalla to fix the rear one. He took out the tube, inflated it and stuck it in the water to see where the leak was and then smiled and stopped counting punctures once he crossed ten. At this point, with no other options, I accepted his offer to fit the closest size tube he had, which he said would probably get me the 18km back home (see route map and ride details here)

I did eventually get home at about 11am and since Lady Luck had walked out on me all morning, she decided to come back and smile on me finally in the form of the Kabaddi-walla who had almost finished his rounds of the apartment complex after an unusually busy morning. The list of things I sold included about 17 kilos of papers, several beer bottles, an old plastic stool and two not very old but very leaky tyre tubes.