Well, that's me wit ma Fat Lady!

Ride to Ladakh Part II

Finding Riders

No. Never. Are you out of your mind? You must be dreaming? All I can say is god help you.

Just a few of the responses that all of us get when we dream to do something different. Something that promises to challenge the monotonous attitude towards life. And we weren’t the exceptions either, when we dreamt of riding to Ladakh, the highest motorable road on earth.

One fine day, nine ordinary guys from Mumbai dreamt of riding to Ladakh. All belonging to the different stratum of life. But the only problem was, none of us knew each other. It was this one dream and one aim that united us. But the question is how we found each other in a city like Mumbai with a population of more than a couple of millions. Here the obvious answer is Orkut, and we sincerely thank them.

So, who are we? Let me start with Rodney and Nitish A.K.A Stripped Flamingos, Gaurav and Hussain A.K.A Stripped Turkeys, Rochit, Brijesh, Amit and Sajid A.K.A stripped Chickens. Now you’ll wonder, what is with the stripped turkeys, chickens and Flamingos? Now, one usual Saturday evening, we were sitting at carter road in Bandra and giving final touches to our plans when Rodney inquired about thermal inner wear that we all planned to wear during the night while sleeping. For no reason I started laughing my heart out. When asked for my insanity, I asked them to imagine how we all will look in those thermal inners. Rodney and Nitish being the skinniest ones appeared to me like stripped Flamingos, me and Hussain being a bit on the healthier side appeared to me like stripped turkeys and the rest of the guys with a normal physique appeared to me like stripped chickens. Oh, don’t ask the brunt I faced for this joke.

When are we starting?

Our dream materialises on June 14^th 2008 and we will wake up from our dream on June 29^th 2008. And in these 15 days we have 12 days of sheer riding pleasure passing through some of most beautiful and breath-taking landscapes and treacherous roads that the world has on offer. Our route map will give you an idea what insanity we are up to.

We all had cherished this dream trip for a long time but were always disappointed due to some or the other reason. But not this time because as wise men said, ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.