'Solo' Ride on the Faridabad Road

 If Reliance really want to make money out of the new Gurgaon-Faridabad Road they should figure out a way of charging recreational cyclists for using the road. I went for a solo ride and on the 20 km stretch met with at least 20 other riders, chatted with five of them and saw many others I didn't recognize. Some of the faces I did know - Ranjit, Naru, Luis, Nitish + 3 others, Ashok Mehta + his 2 kids, Steve + 3, Satish, and about 4 other lone riders. It's nice to see road biking coming of age in Gurgaon and there's probably no better place to do this in the entire NCR than the new GFRd.


Only down side is that you get this crazy tail wind (which you can never feel) as you head towards Faridabad, so you think you're in great shape and will cruise back over the hills. But when you turn, it hits you and you realize the trip back will be harder than expected. Ranjit, who does this route about 50 times a week, says it's seasonal for summer.


Ride details

Cholestrol Ride Curtailed?

We’d planned to go all the way to Khan Market, load up on Chola Bhature and then ride back. Worried by the heat and sweat already being generated at 5:30am, we decided we’d do a chakkar of JNU and chai and pakoras at Qutub Minar. The olfactory nerves were on overdrive, on the sniff out for parathas or chola bhature, but none were to be found anywhere near Vasant Kunj.

We decided to ensure that the choslestrol expectations were met, so after the chai and pakoras, we stopped for a malai-lassi at Andheria Mor, before huffing and puffing our way back home.

















To make amends Jasbir, Abhishek and I decided to take the long way home via the the Gurgaon-Faridabad road where we met up with Ranjit who was doing his second loop to Faridabad. He’s one tough rider.


Happy to get back home before 8:30am and before getting the sun got really mean.





Photo credits – Sanjit Bal

The Airstrip and Saab ke Nagari

This ride has always been one of those that has an interesting ending. This third attempt was no different. The plan was quite simple for a 65km ride. We would ride up to Pathways School, and find the trail that eventually emerges at one end of a 5km straight and wide road on the top of an abandoned ridge. We had christened this road the Airstrip for this is what it looks like when you see it on Google Earth. On either side of the road are plots for farm houses that will probably get built when the Supreme Court’s not looking. The road rolls along the ridge giving you great views of the surrounding countryside and eventually descends into a village called Saab Ki Nagri near Sohna.


The first of four punctures was Luis's with a tubeless tire spraying sealant all over the place. When we got the tire off, it looked like a hedgehog had been having a fit in the tire.



We operated on the tire and took out about 30 thorns before fitting a tube and prayed that Luis didn't get any more thorns on the trail. He was riding a 29er and the other 7 were riding 26 inch wheels, so no more spare tubes.




All said and done, it was a very beautiful place to stop to fix punctures, and Baba Blackberry (a.k.a. Rajesh Kalra) and his disciples conferred about how places like this deserved to become pilgrim sites for weary city dwellers and how we may go about setting up an ‘ashram’ in the wilderness.





Having mentally plotted the area for the ashram and adjacent rest house, we hit the trail. Against all expectations, no punctures, and all smooth sailing over the rocky terrain that eventually led us to the Airstrip.





On road we picked up speed and reached the village at the bottom of the plateau where we stopped to fix puncture #2 on Nachiketa’s bike. It was getting hot now so decided to move ahead and stopped in the shade in front of a farm house, again a nice spot for a little tube change, and some of the nicest tasting water straight from the tube well of the house.


Finally we reached a tea shop where we consumed large quantities of sugar and just as we were about to set off, discovered another two punctures. Clearly we were going to be late getting back and the reading on Luis’s bike comp was already showing 35 degrees! Punctures fixed and two more rounds of chai and thanda later we were on our way and making good speed with a tail wind on Sohna road.


Alas the dehydration caught up with 3 of us and we stopped and struggled to keep those twitching muscles from completely clamming up. To make things worse, my rear derailleur wire snapped, and at that point I decided to get into the shade, get something cold to drink and call the cavalry.





25 minutes later Rajesh’s wife Seema came to our rescue and we were on our way home, chilling with the a/c on full blast, sipping iced tea and thinking – no more long rides till the monsoon hit.

Connecting the Mangar Trail with the Lost Lake

It was advertised as the “no one said it would be easy’ ride and more about exploration than about covering distance. So people who had to get back home or get to work turned back at various points and eventually 10 riders 'went for it' and managed to plot the trail that connects Mangar to Lost Lake.

The route is some of the best off-road cycling territory we've seen. It takes the pace and crunchy surface of the Mangar trail. Mixes it with the rocky and technical sections of the Lost Lake trail and presents you with a private lake right in the middle of the ride to take a break and fix your bikes.

We took the usual route via Behrampur village and climbed up through Bandhwari on to the Mangar trail where we immediately hit the first set of punctures to Ram’s cycle,

And Manpreet’s new cycle started announcing it’s general presence through a noise it discovered it could make from the front disk brakes.

After about 3km on the trail we peeled of to the right towards the Hanuman mandir. There we were greeted by the same friendly Baba from the Mangar mandir. He's now taken up residence at the Hanuman mandir and is in the process of building a new mandir, guest house, man-made lake and all.

From here we back-tracked a little and got onto the trail that would bring us to the Lost Lake. The trail was much more easier than when we had tried it the first and only time about 2 years ago.

 

It may have been that the CRPF use the area for training so it's been cleared of scrub and thorns, or it may just have been that we had a Garmin to guide us. Which ever it was we crossed that area in less than 30 minutes and came out at the Lost Lake. As always the Lake welcomed us with punctures galore and that gave us an excuse to take a break there (and Ram,who had the first puncture, thought about throwing himself into the lake).

On the way back we saw that the CRPF battalion had set up camp on the plateau and were there in full force, hence very few photos since they looked like they may confiscate cameras from intruders in the middle of top secret military reconnaissance exercises.

Overall a very successful ride.

New trail discovered- check

Puncture fest - check
Got dirty - check
Went where no man has gone before - check
Wildlife spotted (wild camels!!!) – check

And in the end it wasn't that hard.

Ride to Mangar Valley and the Enlightenment of Baba Blackberry

Track statistics and details are at http://www.trimbleoutdoors.com/ViewTrip.aspx?tripId=366955

Pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/pedalyatri/21Mar09MangerValley#

Down GFR, to Dera and Madanjji's place for tea and back

Trip statistics and trail are at http://www.trimbleoutdoors.com/ViewTrip.aspx?tripId=362316

(all pictures by Rupesh Tripathi)

The Lake at Winsome Breweries

The Bihari guard at the Manesar McDonalds looked apologetic and told me that they would not open till 7am. It was 6:20am and I was the first one to pull in to our designated meeting point. I explained to him that I was just going to park my car here for a while we rode our bikes and that we would definitely partake of the the excellent McDonalds menu on our return, but only if he would keep an eye on our cars. He couldn't figure out why the heck I was going to leave my car on NH-8 practically in middle of the night, why on earth I was instead going to take a cycle somewhere, and what was I up to waiting for another two cars, but having been tipped a couple of rupees he wasn't going to object, or report us for suspicious activities. 

The other two cars arrived shortly after and four bikes were pulled out from the various SUVs, front wheels assembled, geared up and prepared for the ride. Manish pulled out a shiny new metallic orange/brown Trek 4300. At the rate everyone is flocking to this great bike, I wonder if it isn't destined to overtake Atlas as the most sold bike in India? Rajesh had brought along his colleague, Elsa, who, after having survived Delhi for three months, had decided to throw caution to the wind and squeeze in one bike ride on her last day in India before going back to the US. 

The destination was an interesting looking water body I had spotted on Google Earth near Tauru (about 32 km from Manesar). The route would pass by a couple of golf courses, cut through Tauru town, and then head into Mewat disrict (right next to the Nation's Capital and the Millennium City but still one of India's most under-developed districts).  

Cycling on what looked like a quiet country road at 6:30am I was surprised by the number of fancy cars that overtook us in the dark, but soon learnt from Rajesh that the Classic Golf Course was hosting a major golf tournament sponsored by the Economic Times. Having survived the rush of corporate honchos in their Mercs, Beamers, and Porsches as well the poorer cousins in their Skodas and Hondas, the next stretch comprised the occasional truck. 

"Why do trucks have those air horns?" someone asked. A reasonable question considering that you can hear them grunting and rattling from miles away and the only purpose their horns serve is to mortify the cyclist and pedestrian into completely abandoning the road. 

The last stretch of the road till Tauru was patchy and bumpy so as we passed through the town we were hoping the road out of town would be better. 

It wasn't till we approached the lake (about 7km from Taura) that we got a smooth patch of road and everyone agreed that it felt like we were sailing on ice.

The Lake was magnificent! 

A gem hidden away right next to a planned industrial area.

It was a bit worrying to think that this lake could become very polluted with all these industries around it. But the sight of the Winsome Brewery plant, abandoned, shuttered and probably bankcrupt was reassuring.

This did however also mean that although the threat of the lake becoming polluted seemed remote, so did our chances of finding a place to get some chai and samosas. After much questioning we located the only chai shop within a 10km radius a little further up the road. As we arrived there was just one customer at the chai shop. By the time we had ordered our tea and samosas the entire village had surrounded us. News had spread quickly that there was a bunch of strangely attired city folks on cycles. Very Quickly the entire village came out to see. "Look there's a foreigner". "A woman". " On a bike!!". The Elsa fan club congregated in full force wide eyed and mouths agape.

 The young men struck poses and strained to be noticed.

The old men looked dumbstruck.

And the kids were more interested in the cycles. We had to eventually shoo them away mortified that as they peered closer and closer they would leave samples of nose guck on the saddles or handle bars!

The return journey was by the same route. As always, it was more tiring to get back, but felt much shorter. And when we did finally get back we put back some of the calories we had lost on the ride. Just so that we kept our word to the Chowkidaar