The Motorcycle diary

Hopefully this will be the last of my posts on the topic of travelling.
Usually human life is spent in the quest for perfection in whatever one does. The same therefore should apply to travelling. You should try various combinations of timing, means of transport, day of journey etc to find the perfect match. I sort of achieved perfection in my last Nashik-Pune journey, reaching Pune in 4.5 hrs, having a nice sleep & therefore arriving fresh for college. But the next journey was far from perfect.
What do you call a couple of guys on a bike at 5:00 AM leaving for Nashik from Pune? Crazy? Maybe we(me & my brother, Rushikesh) were. But we thought that it would be better than travelling in the hot afternoon sun and hence we set out from Pune at 5:00 AM on Saturday morning. What followed were possibly 2 of the coldest hours I've ever experienced in my life.
It all began pretty well. I wasn't feeling so cold to begin with & we overtook a bus which was also heading towards Nashik. I thought that it was after all a good decision to go on a bike. However , soon everything got freezing cold. I could barely move my fingers, so cold they had become, even though they were tucked inside my jacket. And I wasn't wearing a helmet so I felt the blast of ice-cold air directly on my face. Man, it was bad. And then exactly on cue, the same bus which we had passed, overtook us & while it was going past, I saw a man in the bus, fast asleep, leaning on the window. I'd have given anything in the world to swap places with him at that time.
It was so bloody cold that we finally had a halt at about 6:00 AM. We got off our bike & tried to loosen our muscles. But the cold was too much to bear even when we had stopped so we decided to carry on riding in the darkness of the early morning. We were hoping, nah praying, for an early sunrise. But it never came. And to think of all the early sunrises that occur when I'm in my bed & which force me to wake up.
Soon it lightened & then finally at about 7:15 AM, the sun came up. We decided to literally bask in the sunshine & hence had another halt. I started swinging my arms so as to assist blood circulation. Also my legs needed some stretching, so I started to walk towards a nearby hillock. And while walking I was still swinging my arms high. So that has to be the craziest march I've ever done in my life. If anybody had seen me then, they surely would've thought I had gone nuts. Actually, now even I feel so. But at that time, it seemed the most logical thing to do. So I went on marching to the top of the hillock. It was easy, climbing always is. But when I tried to get down, it was horrible. I still hadn't regained total control of my numb legs & hence slipped more than once while coming down the hillock. Fortunately I didn't fall on my head, otherwise I surely would've replaced Jack in the nursery rhyme. Imagine kids singing 'Aniket & Jill went up the hill ...'
We resumed our journey but soon stopped for breakfast. My legs had already betrayed me so now it was my hands' turn. They were so numb that it took me a great effort just to break the bread into small pieces. That must've been the longest breakfast I've ever had. I just couldn't move my fingers at all. But somehow I managed to finish my breakfast & resumed my journey home.
Now the journey got much better. The sun was up & it was no longer cold. And finally I got a chance to listen to some music. So there I was, listening to Pink Floyd while riding pillion on a bike, without a care in the world. I decided that after all it wasn't such a bad way to travel when suddenly something pinched me in my behind. Some thorny grass had stuck to my pants when I had fallen near the hillock & was giving me a hard time now. It was then that I truly understood the meaning of something being a pain in the ass.
But, like all good things, even all bad things come to an end. After 5.5 hrs of riding through the cold & then the hot morning, we finally reached Nashik. Frankly I've never felt happier on reaching home & I literally jumped off the bike when we reached there. I felt on top of the world, just to have reached home safely. But I shouldn't rejoice much - I'm supposed to return the same way on Monday morning.