February 2015: India

I decided to take a shot at attempting a brevet or two while I was in India and registered myself for the Anchetty 200 brevet, organized by Bangalore Randonneurs. I had started pestering Anil Kadsur, even before I left for India, to help me find a road bike for rent. Anil, helpful as always, pointed me to Chethan Ram of Cadence 90, who was able to equip me with a very practical roadbike, the Giant Defy 4 which came with a 32T cog on the rear, putting me instantly at ease about the task of battling the climbs of Anchetty. 'Change early and keep spinning' would be the my mantra, I decided. On the day of the ride, a snafu with my GPS map meant that I had to recreate it from scratch and some difficulty in locating and getting to the start point meant I was 40 minutes late. Dipankar Paul, the brevet organizer told me that this brevet was very time sensitive and I ought to try and ride like the blazes if I wanted to make the cutoffs, and that's precisely what I tried. Somewhere between the kilometers 20 and 25, I hit a speed breaker and one of my two bottles flew out of the cage and I ran it over. While I was fortunate to not lose balance, that was the end of the bottle. I drank up whatever water remained in the broken bottle and continued.

I reached the 35 km checkpoint near Harohalli by 0753 hrs, averaging 30 kmph and proceeded towards the next checkpoint at Thalli which I had to make by 1020 hrs. I was barely 5 km away when I found I had a flat tire. My lack of experience with taking tires off and putting them back on a road bike meant that I took a lot longer than I needed to. Inflating the tire with the 'Pocket Rocket' pump was also not something particularly easy either. When I finally hit the road again, it was already the cut off time and I had another two to three kilometers to go to reach the Thalli point. When my call to the Thalli checkpoint person went unanswered, I called Dipankar who told me that as far as homologation was concerned, this ride was over. To ride on or return to Bangalore was my choice. I elected to ride on and presently came across Rohit Malhotra, who I'd spotted just prior to my puncture-induced stop. Rohit had decided to quit and return, but decided to tag along with me for a while. We rode on to a village where we were able to get some food. Rohit had some 'Chitranna' (lemon rice) while I had sambar rice which tasted great thanks to my hunger. Post lunch, Rohit managed to find a local mini-van owner to drop him and his bike back to Bangalore, so I waved goodbye and pushed on alone.

By the time I'd negotiated the killer climbs and reached Denkanikottai, it was past 1830 and light was fading fast. Now, I don't think the organizers of this brevet had ever tried starting a couple of hours later than the scheduled start time, to see how conditions might deteriorate; if the climb was tough, the terrible state of the roads and the lack of light meant it was really dangerous. I had an excellent 700-400-200 lumens lamp, but since I didn't want to use it at maximum power to extend life, I had to go a lot slower than I could have, simply to ensure that my bike and I made it back in one piece! After that, I hit the Electronic city traffic and while we were instructed to go on the flyover, I make a mistake and found myself beneath it and found myself inching forward a few yards at a time, taking in lungsful of noxious fumes. Nothing frustrated me more than that leg of the ride; it was sheer torture. To add insult upon injury, I lost my way barely a few hundred meters away from my own residence, as the place has changed so much! I reached home just after 10 PM, with very mixed feelings; I was happy that I completed the ride, but also realized that biking in India is a lot less pleasant than it is in other parts of the world.

The Defy 4 that I rented from Cadence 90. An excellent workhorse roadbike. With Anil Kadsur. Pic Courtesy: Deepa Mohan Chethan Ram of Cadence 90. He's also a keen amateur photographer and is discussing his work with Deepa, here.