Nirvana Roadie in Monterey, California

Hi Guys & Gals:

Greetings from Sunny (supposedly) California. Although I had plenty of sun the weather was cold with strong winds in Monterey. This is small tourist twon about 2 hours south of San Francisco and is famous for the lovely beaches and gorgeous coastlines. It is right next to Carmel and the 17-mile drive, which is probably one the prettiest drives you can enjoy in the world. It is also home to the legendary Pebble Beach Golf Course.

Although I was in Monterey for a very intense Conference, I deceided that like all good roadies, should go for abike ride and also share the scenery with my buddies. So the second day I was there, I woke up very early in the morning and walked to the Fiesherman's Wharf and took some pictures of the sunrise. I sure am glad I did that. Despite the biting cold weather, it was amazing to watch the dark sky turn orange/grey to pink/grey and finally a gorgeous blue.

One the third day there, I finally had some free time on the agenda and designated that for a ride. Located a place for renting a bike and got details on the scenic bike trail - yes there are special bike trails there unlike good old Gurgaon. The trail is beautifully marked and is about 7 miles (11 kms) from the center of town and leads to "Lovers Point" from where on rides along the 17-Mile drive road past gold courses etc. My plan was to try about 15 kms each way - really aggressive for me. The plan was also to carry the camera and take some good pictures along the way.

I happened to mention this to a couple of my friends and I soon had four other people join the group. Looks like some of Hemant and Amrendra's recruitment skills are rubbing off on me also. Joining me were Kristof from Belgium, Sonja from Los Angeles, Judy from Beijing and my colleague Rachna from DLF Phase I. So we all met in the hotel lobby and headed across to "Adventure Tours" to pick up our bikes and ....... the darn shop closed at 4:00pm! That was a bummer. 

Everyone was in the mood - so we decided to just walk the trail and look for another rental shop that was a few miles along the trail. The shot will show how wonderful the trail was. In all we had to walk probably around 4.5 kms before we got to the second bike rental shop. Before I tell you what transpired at the shop, let me share with you some of the wonderful views that we enjoyed along the way. We had plenty of seagulls, seals, seal lions and otters for company.

OK - now rental. We walked into the rental store at 4:28pm and - yes you guessed it - they were closing at 4:30pm. However, due to the soft US economy, everyone is willing to bend over backwards these days. Although they were unwiling to set us up with 5 individual bikes, they rented us a "Surrey" for $30 for one hour. Now - what the heck is a surrey - well it s a yankee rickshaw that is pedaled by all four riders. We fit five folks into it and took oof down the bike path for the remainder of the trail. It was slow going since it was very windy and we had five people - also we kept stopping along the way. One particular seal was extra friendly with us almost wanted to slide all the way up and say hello to us.

We did not make it all the way to the end of the trail since the rickshaw needed to be get back and all of us had meetings to get to. But it was a decent workout and the scenery was spectacular. The camaraderie that we all enjoy came into play and all of, although global colleagues, became better friends due to the ride. I am sure all of you will not object tomy awarding them an honorary Nirvana Roadies award for their assitance in making my ride special.

I am headed back to India now and can't wait to tell you guys more about the ride and also hear your stories.

-- Keith

Nirvana Roadies - 07/03/09 (Harry Singh)

Daily Diary dated the 7th day of March, 2009

The day started like any other , but was different - it was a weekend bash time - the double dose biking

The anticipation of the evening was also in our minds as the party would continue into the night and the theme is making headlines " Chandni Chowk to China ....ooops Nirvana " .....tain tain tain !!! the anticipation was made more pronounced by the art of our Chief Keith (a title he deserves as he is my bro from the bush ....Nigeria). He got a great work of art on Pankaj commisioned - fertile minds always have their way ...wow....everyone is still amazed at the same

well back to the Roadies stuff , Hemant was the leader and defined the path...he had been itching to take the group to a bauli on a faqir samadhi we had discovered some time back...the trek has gone unreported due to file size issues ..thus little evidence posted on the shutterfly site except two peacocks called hemant and pankaj looking at it while all the beauty of peahens went abegging ( and mind you , quite a few of them were there )....and ofcourse the laziness of yours truly who was to file a report and bunked

We set off to an "awesome trail" which has a beautiful landscaped road with palatial gates leading to a 'sawarg' .....no no only mud tracks followed by barren land so its not exactly a jouney to the 'netherworld' but one which leads to a nice peaceful trail (peaceful because it is devoid of the head splitting fragrance of other trails of last few days ....fragrance can be better explained by roadies themselves and the Sawarg gates are the only structure standing on an Emaar project )

As we moved through the nice flat stretch and joined the curving road leading to our temple joint , we decided that the tea break will be on the way down ...so gave the poor chaiwala a miss

Up we went into the higher aravallies and stopped for a farm house inspection - results - a good job done , small size , double terraced features for a tree and the peacocks (the peahens were there ofcousrse but left the poor peacock for a nice perch on an adjoining tin sheet boundaries which came up in the intervening weeks.....some Reccession @@@@ )

We turned to the samadhi and admired the beautiful bauli surronded by trees in the foothills of aravallies .....wow there was my friend, a peacock on his vigil at his perch on the tallest tree where i left him last

This time it was a short break , less emotional and off we went ...wait wait not before Sanjay regaled us with the last conversation while defending the Yatra.com agency which he has got gratis .....you know they have a scheme , where if you dance in the middle seat (free to chose the type ...samba is preferbale but any would do) you get a rebate of Rs 300 showered on you ...oh you dont know ....tut tut ...even the caller didnt know and i rue the fact that if i had known the flight no , we could have a report filed on the live performance and ofcourse amazing discussion on Rs 300 rebate that would have followed ......

Of to the aravallies, The chief Amrendra in the lead and we zoom off......into the mountains .....the track was Rock On !! Yeh Jeene ka ishara , Rock On.......
After all that shaking ...vaking , i took a cue from Sanjay and started walking......ok guys great scene and yes hemant we cant go to that house this time .....next time ...next time ????... yes because we discovered a puncture no 1 (Pankaj down), then Hemant was not sure if it was 'hava' gone or puncture , you know that was the german technolgy causing a mirage .....and then follwed Amrendra (three down)....wow man so we finally encountered a real situation ...the honeymoon was over....the african chief with his pump was fast asleep devoid of the knowledge of our pains ....Roadies there and then passed a board resolution that he has to accompany even if there is one person going ...his fault ....he has a pump & a jazzy kit .....i bet if other than Russ any one would want to re-assemble his bike in god foresaken arravalies....your take .....!! Oh the tally . the walking guys were spared and also the ones with microsoft lineage ....see even god fears them ....u know why - the operating system up there is from microsoft too .....

We started walking back , this was the great side kick but all were unhappy for the Omelete in forest .........yes omelete and that too in a dense patch of forest was awaiting us and now seemed too distant....the spirits were fading ...especially everyone back home knew ...pop goes the breakfast and more than that this is our reward for the spoils of hard labour the Roadies put in...so how can we let it go.....

Of marched the Col Haathi brigade (which i talked about last time) this time on the trail of the Puncture specialist ......when we reached his house , you know he had gone to distribute cards ....so he knew 3 poor roadies are coming , its party time !!

Frustated and determined to find a quick answer we moved our search for another one....but the hopes were dashed as our Dehat has a queer way of working .....one cycle repair guy for twenty villages (Business opportunity anyone !!)

Finally we reached a pucca road and the down bikes/bikers hitched a ride on a trailer , all looking at the jungle patch now visible ..... Omeletes

We reached a shop who attended to our bikes better than what would have been in the village and Pankaj treated us to mixed juice and ofcourse our JIT omeletes
breakfast...thanks

well relaxed we headed home looking forward to a chat , gol guppa , Tikki , Chole bhuture night on the rocks with a seasoned bartender in attendance

we had a great pre holi time .....!!

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After a long time March 04, 2009 (Amremdra Kumar)

After a long time March 04, 2009 (Amremdra Kumar)

I joined the Nirvana Roadies today after a long absence at 07:00 AM, thereby also finishing the polemic on time. Hemant, Keith, Pankaj, Raj, Harry and I were there to pedal to the wonderful trail which Hemant had discovered in my absence. Hemant was to lead and we were all set to go to this wonderful patch of jungle fighting for its existence between concrete land, agricultural fields and slum dwellings.

We took a left turn and moved towards the Golf Course Road end and just after the Heritage school turning took a left turn on a mud trail. Just after around 500 meters of serpentine mud road began our own Slum dog experience. Not that it is such a rare site but generally we tend to avoid it, turn our faces on the other side if we see it from our car window. We never get to experience it because we never smell it. It’s all around us but we never see it. This is the place from where your security guards, maids etc. come from. The demography of what I could guess from what I overheard while cycling was, our good old Bihar (Jharkhand included), Orissa and Nepal. Like all such settlements it had a tea stall, a vegetable stall where thanks to the technology which has thankfully reached the slums too, the vendor was taking the photos of his vegetables and his friend for probably showing to his brethrens and “boast” about his status in the Millennium city of Gurgaon. The hutments are surrounded by the pile of garbage which is partly created by the slum dwellers and partly imported and human shit. Children shit not far from the house while the adults go a little far, that’s the difference. I am in no way laughing at their situation but feel sorry for them, but that’s all I can do. I hope that some 100 years from now, somebody will be so surprised to read this! Amen! Or Jai Ho! Today’s anthropology class ends here.

Just after crossing this terrible patch we could already see a hillock wearing a forest like look. Wow what a site, in middle of everything you find a forest. Hemant said that the other they saw a deer here which we later concluded was a Neelgai Antelope or a Blue bull or a deer end of the day. By the way let me tell you about what a terror this Neelgai is in Haryana, last time when we were at Sanjay’s farm house only a day earlier the farm had experienced the onslaught of Neelgai. They had disturbed the trees and excreted all over. Sanjay said that normally they would just uproot some of the trees, they are also dangerous and cannot be handled without a gun. To shoot them of course is illegal. I think the Neelgai is more frustrated than us so let us leave them alone! (The below photo is not from one of our cameras!)

http://www.haryana-online.com/Fauna/neelgai.htm

Well we decided to go into the forest and trail was fantastic and muddy with its up hills and down hills. It looked a little unkempt and unorganized so somebody said that it was government protected land and we also saw a signboard in Hindi which kind of cemented our belief. The signboard said that it was some kind of a reserve for birds or something similar. To our surprise we found that the forest patch was not all that big as it looked from far. First we went across the patch to find that one of the ways took you to a nearby village and the other way it took us some hutments. So we returned to what one can call the middle of that patch, it was nice and serene there and we left the bikes and decided to take a small walk in the woods. We were surrounded by trees which we later found where of Sagwan and Guava along with the Shahtoot tree. The attendant there seemed to hail from Nepal and informed us that it was a private land owned by an orthopedic surgeon from Delhi. We expressed the desire of coming there again and asked if he would prepare omelets for us. He hesitatingly though, but said Yes. We were relieved and thought that whenever we decide we know where to come. But Hemant struck a deal with him there and then and gave him some money so that we don’t have to bring any eggs with us. So Hoorah! We go there without the eggs and still would get an omelet