When I bought my bike, the Apache RTR 200, I didn’t know that I would be taking it for a long ride on the hilly terrain of Uttarakhand within one month of buying. As they say “when life gives you a lemon, make lemonade” and that’s what I did. One of my good friend who is into biking was getting married in two weeks and he was getting “cold feet” on how would he manage to go places after getting married. We thought why don’t we take a trip to Kausani that will take him out of Blues and will be an appropriate bachelor party for a Bike-o-Holic like him.
The round trip to Kausani from Nainital is around 200 km’s but we extended this ride bit further, we went ahead of Kausani to Baijnath(Bageshwar, Uttarakhand) and while returning we took a different path via Ramgarh as we heard of fascinating mountains of this range laden with greenery and awesome scenery so we decided to extend our ride by 25 km’s. So the whole journey was about 280 KMs. Bit tiring but full of excitement, adventure, and redemption.
I work at IDBI bank as assistant manager and got posting at a hill station of Uttarakhand, Nainital, that you probably have heard of. I believe that journey matters more than destination, so reaching Kausani was not our only aim that we had in our mind, Kausani was the final checkpoint of the places that we were going to visit.
Just refer to the google image of the route that we traveled while going to Kausani.
We were 4 of people with two bikes, The Apache RTR 200 and Pulsar 200AS. We left Nainital at 6 PM on 3rd April 2017 for Almora. we were planning to watch famous sunrise of Kausani where sun-rise above the hills and its rays when reflecting upon Himalayan range creates a mind-boggling scenery that you will not forget, ever. Almora was our night halt and lies nearly between Nainital and Kausani. We reached Almora at 9 of the clock and booked two hotel room at the fourth floor of the hotel so that we can enjoy the wide beautiful scenery of night lights of the Himalayan Hill station Almora. As I said, we enjoyed the view while sitting on the balcony, night lights, fresh cool air striking our faces took us into a utopian state of mind.
Next day was a bit challenging for me, I had a minuscule experience of biking on curvy Himalayan roads. The minuscule experience comprises of nearly half dozen fortnightly travel from Nainital to Haldwani my home town. Haldwani which is barely 35kms from Nainital is a beautiful metro city on the foot hills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas. We decided to wake up at 4 AM in the morning and planned to leave at 4:30 but we woke up at around 4:30 and left the hotel at 5 AM we were a half hour late and we have to travel around 50kms before the sunrise. When we left after having our tea at roadside stall we realized that we were a bit late and the weather was bit cold. While riding our bike through the curvy, narrow roads we were astonished by the beauty that mountain carry.
It was dawn, people were walking on the road for their morning walk, children’s were running with their PT shoes on, that reminds me of the fact why so many young people from Uttarakhand are in Indian defense and I realized on what circumstances they prepare themselves for the toughest defense in the world. Women’s were offering water to god sun, some were coming from Shivalays after offering their prayers to Lord Shiva. The morning time brought a lot of spiritualism in me. Earlier I was wondering how these people live in such terrain where there is non-availability of very basic requirements that are necessary to live a good life. Like roads, water, food and other things. Now I feel envy of them. I was the one who was caught in the vicious cycle of life. Our basic aim to live life is to become happy and contented but I feel even when these people don’t have availability of some basic things but they were more contented than I ever was.
I didn’t expect to encounter this chilling weather in the morning of April. I didn’t bring my gloves with me neither did my friend with another bike. I don’t know about him but I was freezing I couldn’t feel my hands. I was driving at 30kmps and one thing was sure, the sunrise now was out of our list. My other friend Ajay who was traveling with me was from Chhattisgarh and was freezing like hell and what made it worst was he was bald with his naked head left for the freezing air. He felt more chilled when I put my hood on my helmet. After five minutes of doing this, he said please stop in his shivering voice. I called Lokesh who was driving the other bike to stop and make it our first halt.
The time was 6 of the clock in the morning. We were at the right place, the sun was rising and I can’t describe in words how much beauty nature was bearing right at that moment. It was like bride sitting right in front of the groom. That moment was mesmerizing. We put our hands over our bikes engine as the engine was hot after 1 hr of riding. Neeraj Rana, to whom I will call Rana Ji from now on suggested us to make fire on dry leaves of चीड़ which is highly inflammable. So we did what he said below is the image of the small bonfire we had in the morning. Ajay tried warming his head while seeing that, I felt the pain he must have felt when I put my hood on under my helmet.
20 minutes after enjoying the sunrise and bonfire we left for Kausani. The road was good, bit curvy but was recently laid with hot-mix tar. So we reached Kausani within 45 minutes. We went to Anashakti ashram at Kausani, that ashram was laid by Mahatma Gandhi while he was there.
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