A month to go:

It all started when we got to know through one of those crazy forwards at work about how one could get a long break by coupling a few festival holidays and some paid leaves.  We thought we can make use of one of them, from the 19th of September to the 4th of October.  Initially, we dint really know what we would do with so many days off from the office.  After visiting all kinds of places on the internet, we thought we’d ride from Delhi to Bangalore, via Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharastra. We decided that we would send the bike on the train to Delhi, we would fly to Delhi and then ride down from the desert to the coast and back home.  It sounded great and we almost immediately tried to book tickets with Jet Airways to Delhi, which did not happen.

Two days later the tickets were booked, thanks to Vishu, but we still had no clue about the route we would take.

Two weeks to go:

Too much work at the office and equivalent developments on the personal front left us with no time to even discuss the ride.  Moreover, the week of September 14-18, both Abhi and I were busy with client visits at work and any discussions during that week looked impossible.  So all we had was just one week! So I went ahead a charted out a route, which took me around a couple of days of reading up and asking around: Delhi – Jaipur – Jodhpur – Udaipur – Vadodara – Daman – Panchgani – Goa – Dandeli – Gokarna – Kundapur – Bangalore.

While discussing the route we would take at JC during the weekly RTMC meet, one thing everyone said to us was that we were mad to miss Jaisalmer. While looking at the places to visit in Rajasthan, I figured that Jaisalmer was way up north (Abhi: and way west) and thought we might have to come back a long way down to get to the coast.  But then, the guys tempted us enough, and we included that in our itinerary. We decided not to book our stay anywhere except Jaisalmer and Udaipur since we were staying there for one day each.  This would give us the flexibility of changing the route or calling it a day wherever we felt like.

Bad reviews about Daman made me change my mind about it Dadra & Nagar Haveli. Also, the route after Goa had to be changed since Abhi wasn’t too keen on any more beaches after Goa. So the final route looked like this: Delhi – Bikaner – Jaisalmer – Jodhpur – Udaipur – Vadodara – Dadra – Panchgani – Goa – Kundapur – Chikamagalur – Bangalore.  It would mean riding about 300-350 km on an average per day with around 500 km of riding on the first day.

Two days to go:

Abhi got the bike loaded onto the train (through Green Transport, thanks to Prashi) on the 17th of September. It would take the bike around two and a half days to reach Delhi; it would get there the same day as us.

We weren’t packed yet! We were supposed to fly out of Bangalore at 7.30 AM and hence leave from home at least by 5 AM. That would mean that we would have no time to pack on the previous night! Panic! Picked up a duffel back on the way back from the office.  This along with a bigger duffel bag Sam lent us, we started to pack.  Riding Gear, Clothes, Medicines, Cameras, Chargers, Laptop..Phew! It was 2 AM when we slept that night!

One day to go:

I was super-excited about the ride! As I headed home after finishing work that was scheduled for the next 15 days, it was pouring in Bangalore.We just prayed that the weather in Delhi shouldn’t be as bad as we slept dreaming about the ride 🙂