Sunday, January 13, 2008

Jan 8-12: The story till 12th! (part 8 of 8)

Swagath returns home after midnight, and I am fast asleep by that
time. I get to speak to him the next morning(12th). We hit of very
well straight away, continuing from 7th :-) You see, this guy was a
very close friend of mine. His was the first portrait I ever drew,
with a ball-point pen, sitting in class 7. We'd sit together in the
same class, play, wander around, exchange matchbox covers, play
pranks. All the bygone days came flooding back. Swagath remembered
much more than me, often lighting up corridors of my dimly lit
childhood. We had a long animated conversation. We discussed
everything from our own doings all these years, to former classmates
and teachers. It was 9:30 by the time I figured I had to continue with
my journey, so had to stop. Swagath showed me the way out of Bhopal on
his motorbike. Breezy ride, but it took 45 minutes. It was 11 by the
time I had said goodbye.

Next milestone on the way: Indore, 185kms or so away. And I had
started riding at 11 AM! I really wanted to reach Indore tonite, so I
rode fast, averaging more than 20km/hr till 6 PM. By then, I had
reduced the distance to 80km. A flat tyre forced me to stop at a town.
I had noticed a few days ago that my back tyre had worn off quite a
bit. The front tyre was relatively in much better shape. This is only
natural, and one trick is to swap the two tyres. This reduces the risk
of puncture and distributes the wear and tear equally on both tyres.
One of the tubes gets punctured after fixing, which I find strange.
This leads to more time waste. One hour and fourty minutes gone to
repair this! That leads to me restricting my ride to Dewas, 35km away
from Indore. I ride painfully slow till Dewas, finally making it at
midnight! Lodges in Dewas are open full day, and I quickly settle in a
room for 50 rupees. Very clean room. Best value for money.

Ending the day at Dewas has dealt a blow to my plans of visiting
Mandu. I have to drop Mandu since it involves a deviation of 40km or
so from the road to Ahmedabad.

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1 comment:

faiqg said...

Damn! Now I am cursing myself for not giving you contact numbers of my home in Dewas. Sorry for this.