Coastal Karnataka ride – Friends, freedom, fucktardery!

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Coastal Karnataka Ride – Day 2 – Karwar to Udupi (220 kms)

I am not a morning person, which really does not gel with my love for touring. I remember somebody got up at 6 and was waking everybody up, a task that was done by 6.30, except for me, who was still enjoying a dreamy blissful sleep till 7. Then I heard the sound of Max’s bike and I was like “Faaaaaak! Don’t leave me!”. Jumped up, had some tea, and was ready to go in 15 minutes.

The beach, the breakfast, and the butt:

I wish I could ride without a helmet, but I can’t. Even 15 kmph would mean total blindness within half an hour, thanks to the contact lenses that I wear. The weather was perfect to just amble around, and that’s what we all did. First stop was a bridge and a garden, both of which presented some beautiful views for some crazy clicking!

I love candid shots!

I also like butts.

Gorgeous pano!

Weirdest photo of the trip, courtesy Sachin Nair!

I like my helmet, maybe too much.

This road looked beautiful!

Next we headed to Karwar beach and chilled out by the waves. I saw a beach for the first time in my life when I was 22 years old, and it felt so psychedelic! I thought “I’ll never get bored of beaches ever!”. Then I saw the sea almost every weekend, and I got bored. It’s like how exciting that first flight feels, the first time you go to 36000 feet your nose is glued to the window from takeoff till landing, but then a few more times later all you do is shut down the blinds and doze off on the tray.

Old boats are nice.

The troupe!

Somebody used that at some point!

A museum ship or something.

Karwar beach is nice and clean and smooth and empty, but it’s nothing different than any other beach you have/will see in your life. So after asking myself some existentialist questions, getting some sand in my pants, and letting the waves bury my feet, we headed back home to get some food. And what food it was! I had like 3 cups of tea, along with an unnatural number of Idlis. I felt even lazier after that debauch, and tried my best to convince everyone to just sleep all day in Karwar. My sinister plan would’ve succeeded, but for one little hyperactive punk who consistently shows signs of a rocket being glued to his butt.

Sachin Nair.

Finally it was decided that Udupi it is, and I reluctantly started packing my stuff. Adrian told he’ll come with us halfway and then push off to Goa. As a highly insufficient thank you gesture, I gifted our hostess one of the keyrings I’d got from Bhutan. She looked really confused.

Lubed our chains, put on our gear, tied the luggage and off we went! First stop was Gokarna beach, which had probably the most fucked up access roads that I’ve ever seen in my life! That path was just wide enough for 2 bikes or a Nano to pass through, and we were pushing our fat rides through people, cars and more people. Finally hit the beach and SURPRISE! It’s like every other beach in the world, apart from being filled with hairy, naked Indian men wearing skin-colored G-strings.

Near-death experience:

Me and AD went in to make some sense of the effort we had put in to get there. I saw a yellow water scooter sitting by the side and took a photo. Then I said “Let’s ask how much that is for”. I expected it to be more than a thousand bucks, that too with you just sitting on the back, the way it generally is found in Goa. I walked up to the gentleman and asked, he said 300 rupees.

Hold my beer!

I literally ran back to my bike, picked up my helmet, then ran back to the scooter. Why helmet? Because lenses.

Want to ride? Push it in first!

Whheeee!

Whheeee!

Whheeee!

Max and Sachin had also found me going nuts by this time. Gave all my stuff to AD and climbed up on the thing. But wait! You gotta push it first into the sea. Climbed back down, pushed it in and went back up. It was at that time I remembered my lenses, so this is the conversation that followed:

Bhaiya! No throwing into the water OK? 

If no throwing in water then you sit behind, I’m expert nothing happens. You drive and make mistake you fall!

I don’t make mistakes.

At this point it may also be a good idea to mention that I don’t know how to swim.

So, with the possibility of me falling in, going blind, and then drowning, I calmly took my seat as the rider stood behind me. He took me through the initial difficult section of waves and out into the calm seas, where I took the handlebar and twisted the throttle.

Nothing happened.

Then I noticed a small brake like thing just next to the handle, and I pulled on it. Whoa, what fun! These things go fast man, and just skim on the surface. Being too used to cornering on a motorcycle, I was trying to lean my body to steer the machine, which didn’t do shit! Too me a while to understand how to turn that thing, by which time we were heading back to land.

As we came in shallow water, he guy behind me took control. He couldn’t really reach the handlebars properly because of my helmet and asked me to take it off. I was like dude are you fucking insane? You want me to remove my helmet in the middle of the ocean on a moving object? I think this probably angered him a little, because then he made me shit my pants.

You know that thing those assholes on Activas do where they blip from side to side, almost touching the ground with their footpegs? He did that. The water scooter went whheeee on left, then whheeee on right, like a snake high on LSD. I was scared, but then he made it worse.

He went left, then right, and then did a 360.

Max did a real nasty jump on an approaching wave before this!

Max having a good time!

Holy shit! Get me out of here! I was almost at that point of throwing him over and running that scooter straight into the beach, but then he turned and started going towards it himself. Got off, shook hands with the driver, and asked others to do it. Max and Sachin followed, the rest being far too chicken and unmanly.

Dehydration and eggs:

It was now time to head out, following the same crazy roads, and make it to Om beach. Why another beach you ask? Because this beach is supposedly shaped like an Om, which we found it isn’t true. It was so hot, the roads were bad, but we finally made it there. Took some photos, walked around a bit, and I was almost fainting of dehydration. There was a small cafe from where some of us picked up water, Snickers, and Slice. The rest were getting their skin burned by the bikes, including Puneet who had to stay there from to start to protect our luggage.

Max with our unofficial guide!

Om beach, without any Om in it.

I loved this view.

Local Sprite, tasted like bubble gum.

Lunchy munchy!

Went back to our motorcycles with some water and saw that Max and his uncle were heading out. They were probably bored of the wait and had decided to have some fun of their own! The rest of us regrouped after a while and then started the ride towards Udupi. Took us quite a while to find Max, at which point we all settled in for lunch at a place called Fish Restaurant that obviously served non-veg food almost exclusively. Me and Shrey had to make do with some egg rice, while the others munched on assorted kinds of dead animals. Adrian then left the group to start his solo journey to Goa and then back to Mumbai.

The detour:

There was another temple on the way which we could see by making a small detour, which we obviously did. From the point where we had lunch till the point we made it to Udupi, there is no other way to describe the traffic than to call it suicidal. Trucks randomly push you off into gravel, taxis make stupid overtake moves out of the blue, and the road presented you with a wide variety of physics defying potholes. Shrey had a near miss, after which he just went bonkers! Puneet and I tried to follow him, but we couldn’t do it safely.

First group shot.

Second group shot with better height management.

I was told you can take the stairs to the top of that temple. I said no thank you!

Love this shot!

Made it to the temple, took some photos as school children ogled at our machines, and said goodbye to Max’s uncle who had been leading us all through the roads and lanes of Karwar and beyond till now. The last 100 odd kilometers were a mess, with unbelievably rash traffic, bad roads, and setting sun. We stopped at a restaurant to get some snacks, and then me and Sachin stopped to get some cash from the ATM. Max said he’ll ride slow and move ahead.

We didn’t see him for the next hour!

We kept riding and pushing and trying to find Max, but he was nowhere to be seen! We stopped a few times to try to call him and check our GPS location, and then continued forward in hope of finding him. A few kilometers away from the destination, we found one of the weirdest potholes that anyone of us had ever seen.

Potholes generally are circular in shape, no matter what size. This one was rectangular. It stretched from the left side of the road, and ended well past the center. And it was deep. And there were 2 of them, a few feet apart, parallel to each other! I think only Puneet missed it by going off-road, rest all got a good smack on their buns. Everytime I think I’ve seen everything that India can offer, it surprises me again.

Fuck the ice cream!:

Finally saw 650 hazard lights in the distance and it was Max! He took us around to his beautiful home where we parked up, unloaded and got comfy. There was a rather angry dog who didn’t like us encroaching on his territory, but it wasn’t for too long. There’s something magical about just sitting with your friends, looking out into the darkness, thinking about nothing as music plays in the background.

Went out to get some food, found a place close by and got busy. Discussions about motorcycling, which had been going on since the trip started, continued to the dinner table as well. After we were done, Max told us about some famous ice cream place in Udupi and asked if we wanted to go, I said no and all said yes, so like always we went to get some ice cream!

It was cold.

20 kmph was too fast, the wind chill made it feel like we were riding in Antarctica. A few meters into the ice cream excursion, we said fuck it and headed back to home! Beds were made, and we were all pretty tired. Sachin surprisingly went to sleep peacefully, and so did we. I had to get up early and make it to Bangalore tomorrow, the story of which I’ll tell you in the next chapter!

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