Popagandhi

So much has been said about the joys of motorcycle adventure. Very few things in life, it seems, come close to the thrilling freedom afforded by travelling on two wheels — preferably through the far flung reaches of the universe, and for as long a journey as it possible. Always “2 years through Mongolia”, “7 Years in Tibet”, “Freewheelin’ from London to Timbuktu and back”.

I’m here to tell you riding pillion is one of the few adventures that can come close to, or even top, the pleasures of motorbiking. (This of course coming from somebody who can’t ride a motorbike and who is too lazy to begin.) Free from the hassle of actually having to balance a vehicle and your passenger, navigate, figure out where you’re going, keeping your eye on the road, the pillion rider’s experience probably comes closest to being ‘one’ with your surroundings. Unshielded by metal or plastic, there is no other mode of transportation which affords the same luxuries of observation.

My journey from Darjeeling, my favourite place in the world, began as my journeys so often do — by speeding downhill.

Sisir the Darjeeling native, of Nepali origin as so many of them are, met us in Kolkata. I say he met us as we had not met him. We had tried to make our way to Sealdah for the night time Darjeeling Mail but it was not our night. No taxi driver would take us for a reasonable price. Exhausted, frustrated, ill, but unwilling to submit to the whims of Kolkata taxi drivers, the kindly old rickshaw-wallah who had seen us haggle and come away empty-handed offered to take us for a better price. A hand-pulled rickshaw. Not in the mood to quarrel any further, we jumped on. Sisir saw us then, in a hand-pulled rickshaw, slowly ambling towards Sealdah. When we alighted 13 hours later to a New Jalpaiguri morning, he was there too, in the jeep up to Darjeeling. The only person who was going home. On two Bajaj motorcycles, Sisir (civil servant) and his brother Nardeep (Indian Army captain), sped us down the bends and turns of the Darjeeling mountain roads I so love, honking while turning around every sharp bend — sharp bends over which I once witnessed an entire tourist bus topple over with everybody onboard. Kalimpong, Kurseong, places I remembered being smitten by the first time I saw them — places with Himalayan names that intrigued me, and faces whose bright red cheeks peeked out of fluffy winter coats. There was a sign put up by the Public Works Department, lines from a Robert Frost poem. Mangled lines, but still charming ones. And I have got miles to go and miles to go… before I sleep. Downhill, we went, me holding on to Nardeep and his broad, built body; the Himalayan wind chill intensifying as we sped.

The destination never was the point. Teesta. A Lisu village. Yangmingshan. Beshant Nagar. It was how we got there. The border of Thailand and Cambodia at Aranyaprathet/Poi Pet, where I rode pillion on a motosai for the first time after LASIK and realized the awesomeness of not having to squint while speeding on a bike.

Teesta was wonderful, but I was in no state to whitewater raft. Dysentery this far up in the mountains only curable with a huge dollop of oral rehydrating salts every hour, a whiff from the tea plantations, and a motorcycle ride through the mountains — real mountains, my Nepali friends, all of them mountain snobs will tell you, not the hills that we mountain-skeptics never learn to name.

Downhill again, Doi Chiangdao, northern Thailand. Two of us sat behind our Lisu hilltribe guide, with a sack of undetermined contents (distinct chicken squawking emanated from it) hanging around the handlebar. And we sped. Mud tracks and dirt road; I held on, not from fear but exhilaration. We got off the bikes, and proceeded to wade across rivers and crawl through caves. Not long after, Christo the Kerala native and Chennai implant took me on a borrowed Bajaj in search of Beshant Nagar, that lovely Chennai beach where I later strolled down with Nalini, the yoga teacher recently returned from New Mexico after a painful divorce. A few nights ago, I rode pillion on Lorraine’s scooter and we sped up Yangmingshan. As we sat eating yan su ji from the famous Ilan-style fried chicken shop, the windy Taipei night got the better of me; copious amounts of cold Taiwan Beer didn’t help. The view of Taipei, spread out flat and low so unlike my own city, was beautiful. So were all these other views I loved; Kanchenjunga from my window, Beshant Nagar on any Chennai evening after a ride through the tree-lined boulevards of Adyar and the Theosophical Society.

It suddenly occurred to me. It doesn’t matter where I’m going, whether I will get to where we intended. All that matters is that I’m here, and I’m holding on. Pretty damn tightly.