Trippin8217; on Tar

Vaz likes talking in kilometres. As head honcho of Reliance8217;s fixed line operations, he8217;s supervising 7,000 men laying 27,000 km of fibre optic in Mumbai 8220;If somebody8217;s digging roads outside your home, you know who to blame8221;, he sleeps during the 40 km daily drive to work, they did 4,500 km in sub-zero temperatures, well above the highest motorable pass in the world at Khardung La, besides 3,000 km on terrain that 8220;has to go a long way before it8217;s called a road8221;.

Vaz likes to be droll, but not so his fellow-biker and founder of 60kph, Gaurav Jani 26. 8220;Before the back-breaking 23 days, there8217;s three months of waiting in queues at various offices for permissions, permits, letters to army posts, buying enough medication for the trip, calculating fuel costs, negotiating with Enfield for free servicing of the bikes along the way, with Kodak for free film8230;8221; he rattles off.

Jani is a 8220;serious8221; biker in more than one way. He was assisting a Bollywood director until a few years ago, but chucked it to be a full-time intrepid explorer-on-the-bike. Just last year, he travelled through all of the North-East, alone. He can8217;t say exactly why he did it, like most others whose idea of a break from monotony is a gruelling three or four weeks of riding or driving all day, sleeping in freezing tents and crapping in the open.

Ask Pune8217;s Kshirsagar family. Milind and Sujata Kshirsagar, along with 11-year-old son Sumit8212;plus baggage, supplies and tents8212;have explored the country8217;s roads for six years now, on a scrawny Bajaj Chetak. They own two, a 1994 model and a 2001 version. And they8217;ve clocked 30,000 km on expeditions to Ellora, southern Maharashtra, Kashmir, the Deccan and even one from Pune to Kanyakumari.

There8217;s never been any sponsorship money. 8220;Every expedition sets us back by Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000,8221; says Milind, who is director of sports and physical education at Pune8217;s Loyola High School. Sujata teaches at another school. 8220;The household runs on my wife8217;s income. My earnings are spent on our outings,8221; says Milind. No savings, he adds cheerfully.

So, what do they gain? 8220;Look at Sumit, he8217;s been around the country, seen different regions, met different people,8221; says Milind. At school, Sumit is a regular student, plays football and tries to seem interested in maths class. His friends8217; vacations are usually a short rail journey away. But clearly, it8217;s not the same thing.

In Sillor, Maharashtra, a seven-year-old Sumit watched as his father8217;s leg was nearly crushed in an accident. A year later, after a major surgery and months of walking on crutches, Milind decided that accident anniversaries deserve to be commemorated. Merrily, they kicked off on a 1,000-km expedition into southern Maharashtra. Accident tales are de rigeur among expeditioners. In 2002, en route to Khardung La, 23-year-old Hiren Chande watched as his best friend fell from his 350 cc Bullet and cracked his skull. Luckily, they were then in Leh, from where a tiny aircraft could airlift the tense, shaken bikers to Chandigarh. Morale dipping, Chande contemplated giving up, but eventually completed the expedition.

Ask him why and he remembers the 40-page invitation to the expedition. 8216;8216;If you can do this, you can do anything.8217;8217; That8217;s what it had said. Just out of college then, the farthest Chande had taken his Yezdi was till Goa. Riding from Chandigarh to 18,380-ft high Khardung La was something else.

8216;8216;I had to fight my mother,8221; laughs Chande, who sells marine lubricants to offshore oil rigs. 8216;8216;A year and half later, I can still feel the difference it made to my life. An expedition does wonders for your self-confidence.8217;8217; Then, there are the lessons that sticky situations bring, like accidents that bring you so close to calling it quits. 8220;But I learnt not to give up, and I owe it to Prithvi Nijhowne.8221;

At 60, Nijhowne is the 8220;group elder8217;8217; and president of Team Ocha-Ve, a group of motorcycle enthusiasts and nature lovers. Once every year, Ocha-Ve organises motorcycling expeditions into the Himalayas for as little as Rs 15,000 for a 23-day trip. That includes tented accommodation, fuel, medical and mechanical back-up and meals 8216;8216;cooked fresh by six cooks travelling in two trucks laden with supplies8221;.

For nine years, he was a seafarer, handled specially designed sea rescue craft, runabouts, large high-powered pleasure cruisers and even ships. He also sailed small dinghies, Olympic class yachts and large trans-ocean racing yachts, participated in trans-ocean races, taught sailing, rock climbing, ocean kayaking and diving8212;all this professionally.

Since there8217;s no sea or boats in Chandigarh, adventure motorcycling seemed a rather agreeable thing to do for the retired Nijhowne. He rides a 500 cc 1997 Royal Enfield Citibike, which he8217;s named 8216;No Wuckin Furries8217;. 8216;8216;You can reach for your mother8217;s hand when moments get hairy, or you simply get on with it,8217;8217; says Nijhowne, about what fording ice-cold glacier-melt streams, high altitudes and getting stranded on oxygen-starved passes can do for youngsters. 8216;Get on with it8217; is something of a motto for him: 8216;Ocha-Ve8217; means 8216;pull your finger out and get on with it8217; in Bantu, a Congo dialect.

He says the personal thrill is still a factor8212;even at 60, a bike still gets the adrenaline pumping8212;but what drives him equally is the character he sees he is the catalyst in building. 8216;8216;Today8217;s youth have crazy working hours, wear the same Nikes, eat the same food8230;They need to spot and nurture their individuality, and realise their potential way beyond the opportunities their everyday lives provide,8217;8217; he says.

But tapping opportunity beyond the mundane is not something only the young can do. 8220;I8217;m already 50. Might as well do what I love to do while I can still do it,8217;8217; says Anila Khrime, civil servant, hotelier and orchardist. Give her a mountain and she8217;ll drive right up in her Mahindra Scorpio.

In the latest Maruti Suzuki Raid de Himalaya8217;s non-competitive category, Day 4 saw them camp on the freezing, -20deg; Celsius, windswept expanses of the Morey Plains in Ladakh. 8220;I hopped into my Scorpio, switched on the heater and drove around the moonlit plains and listened to Ladakhi music. It was awesome,8221; she trills. It8217;s a place as hostile as it is spectacular. With sub-zero temperatures of -25deg; Celsius, passes with a mean elevation of 15,000 feet, hair raising drops if you go off the edge, you8217;ll need a parachute!, an oxygen starved atmosphere and stone-strewn tracks for roads, it8217;s not exactly a walk in the park. But for some, the mountains of Ladakh is where their high comes from.

And Khrime likes to drive from Manali to Leh and back just for a lark, at least four times a year. To cap it, she takes 14 hours on the way up and 12-and-a-half while coming down!

Is it any different for a woman on an expedition? 8220;Right near the China border, after four days of riding on bad terrain, my bike just came apart,8221; says Nicky 30 of the 60kph club. The chassis snapped and we had to find ropes, tie the mangled thing up from handlebar to engine and lower it some 50 km to an Army ammunition depot.8221; They were hardly welcome at the top security depot, but after some convincing 8220;that it was a lady8217;s bike8221; Army personnel actually welded the bike back together, with extra iron as tonic for the 1971 model.

But she insists it8217;s not any different for a woman biker. 8220;My bike is my baby, just as it is for the others. What8217;s important is your physical and mental fitness, the latter more than the first,8221; she says.

Right after returning, Nicky got back to work, designing clothes for brides. 8220;What dichotomy?8221; she laughs. 8220;And why should all facets of me match? Besides, what8217;s so masculine abut riding a bike or going on an expedition?8217;8217; Nothing.

With inputs from Amit Choudhry in Chandigarh and Rahul Fernandes in Pune