Was craving for little speed today, so took a small detour to office. Did 100kmph.
feeling better after blood with some adrenaline rushing …
All posts by Ruturaj Vartak
Kerala Bike Trip: Day 2, 3: Ooty
Dec 9, 2012
The 5 am alarm bell reminds me of a devil pushing you down in burning oil pan in hell – scenes from Tom & Jerry. I get up only to realize I’m around 800km away from the comfort of home with 2 other dumb-fucks like me sleeping besides me. Its Ooty today, another 400km before we finally take a break from riding and start enjoying our vacation.
I push others and try to clear bowels. Ya – emphasis is on try. This early morning routine will follow us for next 10 days. JK gets up and needs a सुट्टा and chai before his dump. He goes downstairs while me and Manas try to gather our senses. We check out around 7am and head straight to the टपरी where we have chai and biscuits and continue with our biking talks, bikes, kilometers, roads, slopes and ghats.
Almost past 7.30, we mount back on bikes and head towards Sira, the junction where we’re supposed to get off the comforts and speeds of NH and onto the state highways of Karnataka. Just after Chitradurga, roads start to change with the scenery. The roads have constant diversions after 3 km or so for a new flyover over small junctions or villages, while the nature changes its trees. I start to see more Coconut trees and its farms. A sight that will be common throughout the trip. From concrete farms of Mumbai, to shrubby sugarcanes of the black soiled central and south Maharashtra to the red clayed Karnataka transforming into a greener coconut and palm tree laden earth. This was gonna be better by the end of the day !
The board of “Historical town of Sira welcomes you” was just around the turn, and we stopped near a truck-dhabba for breakfast. One might wonder how different is a truck-dhabba. So there are 3 types of dhabbas that I’ve know of
- Truck-dhabba – the most authentic of all dhabbas (it may be called something else if its not in central or north india). Its only purpose to serve food. It may not be most hygienic and but could be tasty. The ambiance is not certainly a point to be discussed. Its pricing and other attributes mean only truck drivers and local laborers could patronize it. Oh and I forgot there is nothing like a clean toilet / washroom in such places. The cleanest place to pee would actually be outside the toilet.
- Car-Dhabba – for the elite tourists touring in cars. Food is typical of what you find in cities, cleaner. There is a neat shaded parking for cars unlike the dusty open areas found in truck-dhabbas. The prices reflecting the extra effort gone into maintenance of toilets, tables, flooring, etc.
- City-Dhabba – only thing dhabba-ish in this place is the name of the restaurant/hotel. Such establishments are only found in cities. The ambiance is made to look like a punjabi road side restaurant with fake or cut-through vehicles mounted on the walls. The food is a typical with its prices touching the ceiling where the bold colors and vehicle cut-outs are mounted.
Kerala Bike Trip: Day 1: Karnataka
Dec 8, 2012
trrringg trringg … (no response)
Its past 5.30am and we’re waiting at the Panvel junction watching guys in dark extorting from truck drivers. JK isn’t here and not even responding. He calls back saying he is locked in traffic. He finally makes at the rendezvous point with 2 of his bags stacked over each other on the pillion seat. Manas’s first statement after a gaali for being late is
भेनचोद ये क्या लगाया है ?
JK agrees, he said he thought it was hoisted and was almost like a full-back-rest, but now its kinda dangling and unstable. Its already past 6, JK is more than 30 mins late, and we can’t even start without fixing JK’s bags. Manas with his endless resources of bungee cables, ideas of hoisting bags on a bike gets through with the problem and JK’s bags are now bomb-proof. Still as a dead person. We finally leave by 6.30am, already an hour late, which we’d rue later.
Mumbai Kerala Bike Trip: Planning
Route
24 Nov, 2012
The following is the original draft made by me and JK (in the office 😉 )
- Mumbai – Hubli, night halt (day1) 576km (8hrs+) [travelling]
- Hubli – Ooty, night halt (587km, day2) (10hrs+) [Mysore is 100km less, about 8hrs] [travelling]
- Ooty (day3) [rest]
- Ooty – Munnar, night halt (day4, 242km, 5hrs+) [rest + travelling]
- Munnar, and around (day 5) [rest]
- Kochi, port (day6, 130km, 2.5hrs) [rest + travelling]
- Allepely, night halt (day6, 60km, 1hr+) [rest]
- Shornour(jk’s home village) (day7, 166km, 3hrs) [rest]
- Shornour, and around (day8, ) [rest]
- Bhatkal, Karnataka, night halt (day9, via Mangalore, Udipi, 474km, 9hrs) [travelling]
- Jog Falls, Gokarna, Karwar, night halt (day10, 84km+150km 4hrs+) [rest + travelling]
- South Goa, palolem, agonda, etc, night stay (day11) [roaming + rest]
- Panhala, night halt (day12, 300km, 5.5hrs+) [travelling]
- Panhala, tour and around (day13, 50kms) [rest]
- Mumbai, (day13/14, 397km, 6hrs+) [travelling]
If we see our daily activity as Riding only and Travelling (T), Rest (R), Travelling&Rest (B)
TTRBRBRRRTBRTRT
About 5 heavy travelling days, 7 rest and roaming days and 3 roaming + travelling days. So pretty evened out, more of rest + roaming as we would want.
Budgeting
Petrol – 3600km, ₹ 6000 in petrol (assuming 45 kmpl.)
Lodging – 13 days night halt ( appox ₹ 4000 per person, assuming per night appoxx ₹ 1000/3 )
Food – ₹ 1300 (appox 50 per meal x 2 x 13)
Misc – ₹ 1000 (souvenirs, laundry, etc, IF ANY 😉 )
Bike Maintenance – ₹ 2000 (hopefully none, but – engine oil, punctures, but adding an upper side)
TOTAL – appox. ₹ 15,000 (₹ 14300)
Map
Well the length of the route in the perspective with India’s size looks LONG !
Update
1 Dec, 2012
It seems, Manas wont’ make it. Damn! That leaves just me and JK. Which means the trip might become little expensive for lodging.
The date is now fixed, 10 Dec, 2012. We’ll be visiting the famous Dudhsagar waterfalls as well. I’ll be getting my engine oil changed today, 9 days ahead of trip start.
Medicines / Toiletries
Its best if none of them are ever used, but if wishes were horses…
- High BP pills (ya thats for me, Hypertension patient)
- Crocin (Analgesic)
- Lomofen (Diarrhoea, stomach infections), Domstal, Dompan, Pudin Hara (Stomach aches, problems)
- Soframycin, some bandages
- Combiflam (pain killer, anti-inflammatory)
- Odomos
- Bathing soap
- Washing soap (ya, have to do our own laundry!)
- Toothpaste, toothbrush
- Shaving kit
Utilities
- Bike PUC
- Bike Insurance
- Phone Charger
- Bungee Chords
- Map, Itinerary printouts
- Paper, Pen (For all misc blog writups, spending log, etc, notes)
Update
3 Dec, 2012
Manas is finally making it. 🙂 But we’ll have to cut off Gokarna, South Goa, etc. Thats not bad, we could make that as a separate trip with Dudhsagar falls, etc.
Update
6 Dec, 2012
Just a day to go by and we’ll be on our motorbikes, Honda Unicorn (me), R-15 2.0 (Manas) and FZ-S (JK). All adding up to 450cc lesser than my and JK’s recently researched dream machine – Ninja 650 R 😀
Late night, putting my last moment requirements around the saddle bag. My Saddle Bag #1 is almost full with clothes and toiletries. I got that this saddle bag from Manas’ friend.
माँ – Poem: mother
I found this lovely poem on mother (hindi).
माँ
शब्द नहीं हैं कुछ मेरे पास,
बनाते हैं जो तुम्हे कुछ ख़ास|
इस धरा में कुछ भी नही है इतना पावन,
जितना मधुर मन तुम्हारे पास है मनभावन|
जिन परिस्थितियों का सामना कल तुम्हे करते देखा,
आज उसकी कसौटी पर खुद को खड़े देखा|
कर्तव्य विमुख होने को जी हमेशा चाहता है,
उस कर्तव्य पर कल और आज तुम्हे डटे ही देखा है|
आज होठों पर हसी कम , आखों मे अंगार ज़्यादा है,
हर विषम परिस्थिति में तुम्हे हसता हुआ ही पाया है|
दिन रात हमे पालने में तुमने एक किया है,
आज हमने उन्ही दिनों को अलग और रातों को अलग किया है|
गंभीरता तुझमे पहाड़ों से कुछ ज़्यादा है,
गहराई तुझमे समुंद्र से कुछ ज़्यादा है,
ऊँचाई तुझमे अंबार से कुछ ज़्यादा है,
धैर्यता तुझमे पृथ्वी से कुछ ज़्यादा है|
सबको खुश रख कर तुमने आँसू पीये हैं,
हमे खुश रखने मे तुमने सब कुर्बान किया है|
आज तुम्हारी एक अच्छाई मुझमे समा जाती,
मैं भी शायद आज कुछ धन्य हो जाती|
धैर्यता का पाठ अभी तुमसे सीखना है,
शालीनता से रहना अभी तुमसे सीखना है|
उस प्रभु को करती हूँ मैं शत – शत प्रणाम,
तुम्हारी बेटी बनाकर मुझे भी कुछ कर दिया महान|
कभी यह सोचती हूँ कि माँ बड़ी है या भगवान,
जवाब देने मे सकुचाती हूँ कहीं बुरा ना मान जायें ये भगवान|
इस धरती मे माँ से श्रेष्ट कुछ भी नही है,
शयाद धरती को माँ इसलिए कहते हैं,
क्योंकि उससे सर्वश्रेष्ट कुछ भी नही है|
Why do I swim ?
- Feels like flying in thick medium
- Love to see other creatures like me flying around me
- Helps me forget all negative thoughts / rather I don’t get time to think about it
- Feels like a dream
- Like watching oldies share jokes with each other and enjoy life to the fullest
- Tire my body, and feel like rebooted before the start of the day (Windows users will know better 😉 )
- Nothing like a cool dip in water in a tropical climate of Mumbai
- Breath control helps body to calm down (more like Pranayam)
- Post swim, makes you hungry like anything
- Keeps your body in good shape
and above all, ’cause I love to swim 😀
Murud, Diveagar, Shrivardhan beaches on 2 wheels
27, 28, October 2012.
A bike ride to Murud with JK and Surya visiting some of the most beautiful and picturesque coastlines in India. Starting with Alibag, Kashid, Murud, V Beach (Murud), Diveagar, Aravi and its hilly road overseeing the beach
and finally Shrivardhan.
Route
- Mumbai to Alibag (via Pen, Vadkhal)
- Alibag to Kashid
- Kashid to Murud.
- Murud to Dighi (via a ferry: Rajapuri Jetty to Dighi Jetty)
- Dighi to Diveagar
- Diveagar to Shrivardhan
- Shrivardhan to Mangaon (NH 17 junction via the long Mhasala ghat)
- Mangaon to Mumbai
Ubuntu 12.10 Verdict
A Saturday, new Ubuntu in the Downloads folder. What is it that you expect a linux user to do?
I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on Lenovo X201. I had 10.10 installed previously. I decided not to upgrade, but to clean install. It didn’t give me upgrade options anyways.
Post installation, here are some of the things I faced / enjoyed
Bootup time almost 25 seconds, it was around 15-20s for 10.10. A BIG downside for this release!
The Dash feels much quicker. However the gnome-shell still feels snappy as opposed to dash
I fuckin love the WebApps concept in Unity – That has actually made me stick to Unity.
Search in Unity still makes you click – as opposed to gnome-shell – Search the right string and hit Enter. That doesn’t work in Unity
I hated the original Alt+Tab utility in Unity, so installed Compiz Configuration Settings Manager (originally ccsm – so don’t search for that in apt). I replaced it with Static Window Switcher. It worked but then strangely started showing bugs of ghost windows moving in and out of the gray bar – little distracting, but didn’t break anything. (I was too careless to resolve conflicts 😛 – Was that the reason ?)
I adore the complete integration of Social World into the top-right corner of Ubuntu. You name it, Gmail (the Web App of that one is “क्या बात !क्या बात !” It shows the unread mails in Inbox, TagX, TagY, all in that top-right corner dropdown). O… continuing with integration – Facebook, Twitter, Chat, etc. However I’m an old time user of Pidgin, and have tonnes of logs in Pidgin which I don’t want to lose. I have no idea how to make Pidgin as the default integrated chat client into GNOME3 and Unity alike. – Help would do. Thunderbird too integrated nicely since the last release.
Ubuntu – Amazon Nexus – Naaah ! Disabled the “Online Search Results” from the “Privacy” application
I’m not a big fan of the Dark Ambiance theme, but with the other themes support in terms of UI elements, logos, etc.. I’ve got to stick with Ambiance atleast for now. I would’ve preferred the old GTK2 based Clearlooks theme.
Score: 7/10 – All the marks getting lost for the tacky compiz and inability to change defaults easily without installing other apps.
Python 3.3 ipaddress module Awesomeness!
Python 3.3 was released yesterday, Sept. 29, 2012. It has a wonderfully geeky module for IP address.
Take a look at some of its usages..
Casting / Conversions
>>> str(ipaddress.IPv4Address('192.168.0.1'))
'192.168.0.1'
>>> int(ipaddress.IPv4Address('192.168.0.1'))
3232235521
>>> str(ipaddress.IPv6Address('::1'))
'::1'
>>> int(ipaddress.IPv6Address('::1'))
1
Arithmetic Operations
>>> IPv4Address('127.0.0.2') + 3
IPv4Address('127.0.0.5')
>>> IPv4Address('127.0.0.2') - 3
IPv4Address('126.255.255.255')
>>> IPv4Address('255.255.255.255') + 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
ipaddress.AddressValueError: 4294967296 (>= 2**32) is not permitted as an IPv4 address
Wish I could code in Python 🙁