"No road is too long, when you have a good Company" by some wise person. Wish this line would have been true, and remembering the last bike trip I would happily argue.
It was started when a bike trip was decided mutually between 2 friends from Delhi to ..... (No Place was decided yet) of 3-4 days. So, on the decided day it turned out that (always glad to have these kind of surprises) 3 more friends are joining the trip and we will be going to Kedarnath, Uttarakhand via Rishikesh, Auli and whichever place feels like strolling.
Our Trip started from Karol Bagh, Delhi from where we took Royal Enfields bikes on rent for 5 days, we did trip in the month of June which is peak period for the bike trips, so if you want to go on bike trip during that period book in advance, and we departed at around 4:30 p.m., not very good time to take your convey out especially from Delhi.
Generally it takes 5-6 hours to reach Rishikesh from Delhi, so ideally we should have reached there by 11 p.m. but the same didn't happen. As we were waiting for another friend for around 4 hours at Meerut bypass, who also wanted to join us after viewing our Instagram Story (IG: h_sehrawat) of initiating our road trip.
As we were already travelling late night and heading via rural areas, where even no single source light could be seen for Kilometers, open roads shaping like tree tunnels and no one to be seen in that darkness of night. Sometimes it even gave us shivering when remembering the horror stories of Roorkee that we heard before leaving the Delhi.
It is 3 in the night and no hotel or any other accommodation is available for few more hours until the sunrise, but we don't have those few more hours as we have to reach at least Auli by the end of the same day but we can't even drive more without having little sleep and rest after continuous long drive in the night. So, after resting for while on the Ganga Ghat, we decide to drive further and see if any accommodation is available and that is when tyer of one of our bike got punctured on the road side. At that time no shop or any other bike service place was open and we could not drive further. But then only after few moments of it an aged person came out of ashram and asked if we wanted any help? After listening to our situation he offered us to rest in his room for a while till he returns after completing his work in the late morning.
Thank to that old man, that gave us time get away from our tiredness caused due to sleepless and continuous drive. Then in the morning after getting our bike repaired we carried on with our road trip.
Till here road were in nice conditions and less potholes but after the Rishikesh it was the time to get beaten up by with more potholes and less road.
Our next step as per non planned plan was to reach nearest possible to Kedarnath town by end of the day and go to temple of Kedarnath and Badrinath next day and return same day to same way.
But least did we know that, what destiny hold for us and whole our unplanned plan got wiped of when we reached to point from where one way goes to Kedarnath and other goes to Badrinath, and if we wanted to go to both Temples we have to drive back for additional 300 kms to reach other. So after an hour of discussion cum fight we decided to go Badrinath temple as there were many more nice spots to explore like Valley of Flowers, Mana- Last Indian village at India-China Border, way to Hemkund Sahib and other facts included.
So, we started to head towards but it was getting dark, population were cramped as we proceeded ahead, hunger, tiredness of drive and way under construction (can't say even they could called road) had already broken us so bad that we could barely sit on the bikes.
I am concluding the blog here, as it is seems to be already long and would continue from here only in the next blog.
