509 Not Out

No this isn't mine or someone's personal best in the game with 22 players chasing a red ball with two sticks. And even though the phrase is stolen from that game, it isn't even remotely related.

What this is related to, in fact, reinforces the fact that sometimes the best things happen pretty much unplanned, rather than after planning for hours on end. What I had been planning was a road trip to somewhere, but after about a fortnight of fits and starts of planning, it never materialized. Then one fine day, a friend sends me a message and then off we went to Agra on new year's day. And came back. On a motorbike. In fact, we visited three places in total, covered 509 km (that's the score), snapped a few pics as souvenirs and came back.

So there I was, at 5:30 in the morning, riding to Faridabad through the twisties at 80 kmph. Little did I know that next day, I'd be reading that the temperature was about 2.6 degrees centigrade, and the windchill made it well below freezing. Reached there and waited for another biker to join us, and then set off towards Agra.

Next stop was an toll-booth, where we decided that to begin a new year on a good note, we should go to the Lord Krishna temple in Vrindavan. So, it was a detour off Mathura, and after a short darshan and 15 minutes of shivering, we were back on the road.

The fact that Fatehpur Sikri was also on our agenda, we took a by-road, rode alone on half-maintained roads and speeds unheard of in those areas, and somehow reached our second destination. We spent maybe an hour there, got bugged to hell by self made guides, snapped a few pics in the bright sunshine, and then started off towards our next destination. The Taj.

However, two kilometers out my friend had a little collision with a lorry that braked suddenly. Luckily, he was unhurt, and except for broken headlamp glass and a bent mudguard. Spent about an hour fixing his bike, rode on to Agra, fixed an electrical bug on the third person's bike, and then got on to our third and final destination for the day - The Taj.

There was a loooooooooooong entry line there, and when we finally got to the entry-gate, the buggers there didn't allow me to wear my armored riding jacket while going inside. Luckily, the sun was bright so the t-shirt sufficed. Anyway, we spent sometime there, snapped a few pics again and then started back.

Some 15 kilometers later, we stopped at a dhaba and had a solid late lunch, for I hadn't eaten anything since that bread omlette at 5:00 AM. Then we started back for home, and rode almost non-stop till Faridabad. One thing that I realized was that the headlamp on my bike was shot and had to ride in perfect syncro with my friend to be able to see anything on the road.

On reaching Faridabad, we bid goodbye to the friend who had joined us there in the morning, and then started back towards the twistied to get back home, Gurgaon. We reached back at around 10:30 PM.

Some people later said that I did not achieve anything that day, just touching the footstones of those wonderful tourist destinations and not staying there. But for me, it was not about spending time at the destination. It was about the journey, seated in the saddle of my iron horse. That night, I had the widest grin ever on my face when I went to bed.