Journeys

At the end of the IIT journey, a cycling trip to Kovalam and back

Journeys begin. They end too. We embark on a new journey every time we do something new. That way, we are on numerous journeys at the same time: doing new things, learning new skills, exploring our strengths, overcoming our weaknesses, travelling to new places or visiting the unseen nooks and crannies of the old ones. They end when they have to by the set time constraints or when we deem them to knowing what seemed new and unknown then, is now the familiar and the known. Journeys begin again when a new unknown appears on the horizon and we set out in its quest.

As I travel back to Bangalore on the Shatabdi express, having finished with the journey of pursuing a post graduation in Physics from IIT Madras, I am reminded about the travel to Chennai on the same train, two years back, when that journey had just begun. Two years have flown by and IIT Madras has been an eventful journey having many highs and lows akin to a roller-coaster ride.  These two years I have learnt a great deal, sat through amazing lectures and talks, lived in a beautiful campus, met some beautiful people and made them my friends for life. Home seemed dearer in the beginning but now the thought that I won’t be returning to the messy hostel room, to the bland mess food, to the hectic schedule of classes, assignments and projects, to the company of great friends and interesting people, is somehow unsettling.

My friends and I had known that the end of exams heralded the end of our journey here at IIT Madras and feared this unsettling feeling. In the little time we had left of our stay post exams, we decided to rid our minds of the thought and make the most of it.  One such thing we decided to do was to go on a long distance cycling trip.

Since some time I had noticed how cycling was a growing hobby among many; had come across many a Trek, Schwinn, and Decathlon on the roads and had thought about taking it up some time later as I was quite fond of cycling since childhood. The one thing I really loved doing on the first day of joining IIT amidst the crazy hustle of checking into the hostel and completing the admission process was buying a cycle. It’s another thing that I lost it within a few months due to my negligence and bought another one which didn’t get used much in the second year.

 A recent friend Santosh, who also turned out to be my distant relative (the world is really small)  was into cycling long distances, and when we got talking, he kept me abreast with his cycling excursions outside the city, trips within and about his recent purchase of an Aspect MTB.  Whenever he invited me to join him on some trip I was quite apprehensive as I was quite famous for my low stamina and didn’t feel confident that I could cycle such long distances. Amidst the hectic schedule of the semester, joining him never seemed feasible and I had the thought of doing such a trip pushed into the to-do list for the post-exam time. When the exams ended, me and my friends decided that doing a cycling trip would be the best thing to do. As I had been before, my friends too had apprehensions: not about their ability but about mine: as they well knew my feeble levels of strength. Still I persisted and promised that I wouldn’t faint on the way and finally we threw the cautions to the wind and decided to do this trip, come what may. I knew the perfect person who could give us an introduction to long distance cycling and after speaking to Santosh we decided to cycle to Kovalam beach, 27 kms away from Chennai on a Friday morning.

Santosh suggested that we rent the geared cycles for the trip from the Probikers store on OMR road.  The fact that a day’s rental would cost us 500 bucks had us look at cheaper rental place like JustBuyCycles. However a call to them at around seven in the evening made us realize that they had only one bicycle to rent out and our plan to go cycling the next morning seemed a near impossibility. Our desire to go on the trip we had planned was overwhelming and we decided to let price be damned and rent them from Probikers as planned initially.  An hour and a half later, we had our cool geared road, hybrid bikes and MTB’s and cycled back to the hostels through the traffic-laden OMR road. The number of people coming on the ride rose to fourteen as other friends decided to join us on their own cycles and also on borrowed Decathlon Mybikes. A few others who were really enthusiastic about the plan had to drop out due to other engagements like project viva’s, applications, poor health etc. By the time we got the bikes back, had dinner, packed fruits and glucose for energy sake and retired to bed, it was well past twelve. I hardly slept out of excitement for the upcoming trip. The ride scheduled to begin at four in the morning, due to the various delays(read falling asleep at 3 a.m., time spent in taking bath, packing water etc) began at five. We rode out of the Tharamani gate and onto our long distance cycling trip, a first for many of us.

With Santosh leading the pack on his Aspect MTB and Oswald Lobo guarding the rear on his Schwinn road bike, we cycled away on ECR road. The cycles were a joy to ride and we learnt the nuances of using the gears quite quickly. I tried to stay ahead and be in the middle of the group as I was wary of the fact that if I got slow, I would fall much behind the rear guard of Lobo and would feel lost being far behind the group. But my fears were unfounded and the group kept a good pace and with our cool cycles, speed was aplenty even with our modest pedaling efforts. We stopped after a few kms into the ride to have a selfie taken by Santosh using a selfie stick. By the time we stopped for a water break, it was daylight and well around 40 minutes into the ride. Santosh informed us that we had only covered 9 kms and we still had twice the amount to go which was quite low as we thought that after so much cycling we would have covered more than 9 kms. Putting our over-estimation aside, we began the ride again.

A blurry selfie on OMR road

Water and selfie break 

Kovalam calling !

It was an enjoyable ride along the roads outside the city as we went past places with good countryside views, came across some water canals and went over a bridge above backwaters as we neared Kovalam. As we reached Kovalam, we took the small village roads starting from Taj Vivanta that led to the beach. We reached the beach and finished our 27 kms ride sharp at seven.

Kovalam beach

Getting down from the saddles was a great relief and into the water we went to enjoy the lapping waves and the lovely sea-breeze.  Some of us took to standing on the rocks, others sat on the sand to enjoy the rolling waves washing ashore. One of us, Kaustubh, while standing on a rock with shells growing on it slipped and fell down when a big wave hit him. He got a bad cut on his knee from the fall and thanks to the first aid carried by Santosh and Lobo, the wound was cleaned and wrapped up. All this while two others in the group took to the beach like flies to a sweet and the rest of us were kept entertained by their antics. Let’s call them A and B for the sake of anonymity. A and B both did á la Salmaan Khan and having thrown their shirts aside, jumped and rolled in the waves. While they were busy a large wave started to carry away A’s flung shirt into the sea but A thankfully noticed it in the nick of time and saved his shirt. However B didn’t have such good fortune. While B’s shirt was being carried away, our cries didn’t reach him and while the wave carried it inward, one of the girls, Madhu, tried to rescue it by running behind it in vain. The wave was faster than her and the sea engulfed B’s shirt. B was left shirtless and all of us embarrassed as we didn’t want to ride back with a half-naked boy among our midst. With no spare t-shirts, Madhu had to part with her jacket to help B cover himself and she did so quite reluctantly to our amusement and while B donned the ladies jacket we were laughing our hearts away.  A few minutes later, one of the boys realized that he indeed had a spare t-shirt and B was given the men’s t-shirt while he handed back the used jacket to Madhu who was by now quite repulsed.

The cycles and us

Santosh left us early and headed back to IIT as he had lab work and a strict guide to return to on a weekday. Having enjoyed the beach to our hearts fill we decided to head back so that we reached IIT back before the scorching noon sun roasted us on the road. It was a good thing that since a few days the weather had turned pleasant in Chennai and the sun wasn’t burning down so hard. We dragged down the cycles from the sand and onto the road. The moment we climbed back on the saddles we realized how sore and numb our backsides had become due to the morning ride. With the hurt backsides we started the ride back home but the immediate destination was Sangeetha restaurant a few kms away as our stomachs growled and roared out of hunger.  After a filling breakfast of idlis, dosas, puris and fresh lemon juice to wash it all down we began the lengthy ride back again. The food and the liquids gave us a new-found energy and we cycled and cycled on. It drizzled for a short distance and riding at a good speed, with the wind blowing in our hair, and the drops tip-tapping on us was a pure joy!

On the ride to the beach and now while heading back, I hadn’t felt any weakness and was glad my stamina hadn’t buckled. I was riding well and the speed was indeed thrilling. It was a straight road and hence the group didn’t need much guidance from Lobo. At one point however we had to take a left turn. With good speed at our feet a couple of us were at the front end and another friend Prolay was much ahead of us. Lobo quickly sped up and asked Prolay to slow down as a change in the route was coming up. Lobo rode upto the point where we had to take a left turn and patiently waited and guided till the last one of us took the turn and then followed behind. Another small mishap happened when Lohith, speeding on the cycle while taking his hands off from the handlebars, lost his balance and fell down. He incurred some bad cuts and apart from a few, the rest of us didn’t know about his fall until much later. A few kms later we crossed a big signal and were now well within the traffic laden city roads.

A little distance into the city roads and one of us realized that the person B was not in the pack and that he was missing. We halted immediately and to everybody’s shock nobody remembered seeing him or riding beside him for quite some time. Simran recalled that the last time she had seen him was when he was riding carelessely and would have hit a car had he not swerved in the last minute. This had us scared and wondering if he didn’t take the left turn with us or didn’t cross the signal in the right direction. The sun had come out from the clouds now and in the scorching heat we waited for him anxiously to be traced as Lobo and Prolay went back in search of B. While we waited, and the two others were away in his search, B miraculously appeared riding towards us on the slip road. We heaved sighs of relief while laughing at the turn of events. B had indeed kept us entertained through out the trip. With the search people back, we rode back, while Ankush and Prolay kept a close vigil on B while riding close to him to prevent him from causing any more anxiety to us.  

Riding along the city roads our destination was near when we hit the OMR road. The group parted ways as some us who had rented the cycles had to return them to Probikers and then continue onwards to IIT, while the others took a detour and headed straight back to the hostels. We reached the Probikers store, gulped down some much needed cold water and handed over (albeit reluctantly) our road, hybrid and mountain bikes. It seemed incredulous that we had just cycled about 54 kms in a quarter of a day and having clicked some more pictures at the store for memories sake, we headed back to the hostels.

The cycling journey to Kovalam, courtesy Santosh and Lobo, had ended for the day but our love for such cycling trips had just begun. We were already discussing about doing such a trip again, while on our way back to the hostels.