The Pondicherry Ride

One fine day, Ganesh and I decided to ride to Pondicherry non-stop and we did it last weekend. We wanted to avoid riding in the night but since it was going to take us around 20 hrs, we had no choice. So we started at around 6 PM on Friday. It was the first time I was riding my cycle loaded. It slowed me down by a good 4-5 kmph I thought.

At my place before the start

We reached Krishnagiri by about 10.30 or so and took the diversion towards Tiruvannamalai. The roads upto Tiruvannamali are pathetic and if we had known this, we would never even have thought of doing this stretch in the dark. It was insanely slow riding (~10-15kmph) and my wrists, back and shoulders bore the brunt of the damage. I imagine that Ganesh, who was riding my MTB, didn't have as much trouble since that road was perfect MTB terrain. At about 1 AM, Ganesh had a puncture. The roads weren't improving one bit and that was driving me crazy. I can't stress enough how frustrating it is to ride a loaded road bike in the dark. I'm never going to ride in the night unless I'm sure the roads are top notch. It was just plain stupid. Anyway, we finished my homemade cheese sandwiches by about 3 AM and we still weren't seeing good roads.

At McD after dinner. Sleep setting in.

At about 4.30 AM or so, Ganesh had a fall and bruised his knee. We had had enough by then. We were thinking of just taking a bus to Pondi and getting it over with. But in the end we decided to take an hour's break and ride once the sun is out. Turns out, it was a good decision. We rested for an hour in a bus shelter in some random village and started off again at 6 AM. In about half an hour, we reached a small town and had a really nice breakfast of Idli, Vada and Pongal. We weren't feeling so down anymore and rode on to Tiruvannamalai. Ganesh had another puncture and since I was ahead of him, I had to cycle back a km or two. It turned out that the evil glass particle which had caused the puncture before was still in there. We got rid of it, fixed the puncture (amid a huge gang of onlookers) and rode on. The roads after Tiruvannamalai got a little better but weren't the smooth type I'd have liked. We had by now run out of cash and were on the lookout for an ATM. So we spent carefully until we reached Gingee and we again had the luxury of spending thoughtlessly. We were only about 50-60 km away now but had reasonably strong headwinds. We were practically crawling when we decided we must stop to eat lunch. We had some Sambar Rice and reached Thindivanam by about 3 PM I think. Here, we got on to the NH66 and whoa, what a relief! What a road! Massively spirit lifting. Here, a kind gentleman on a moped rode up to us and perhaps thought we would drop dead if we didn't get something to eat and so gave us a banana each. A very kind gesture which lifted our spirits a little more. We were about 25km away when I stopped (right on a nail) to reply to Rahul's (who rode to Auroville the previous day) message that I had a puncture. I cursed my luck and fixed the puncture amid another big group of people who sprang up from nowhere. We rode on and reached Auroville by 6 PM, had a much needed bath, ate some food and crashed for the night.

At the Pondi beach

Wish I had remembered to take our picture when we reached. Damn. We checked out the Pondi beach the next day, ate some pizza and returned back by Volvo. Great fun, overall.