Being taken for a ride Part 6

Going on a bike ride teaches you many things about going on a bike ride, understandably, but it also provides the opportunity to learn many other 'life lessons', whether you want them or not. Day 6 was such a day and it taught me the lesson of patience, extreme patience, patience when you feel you will scream with frustration and impotent rage.

Today we planned to go to see another waterfall and a fort, both surrounded by yet more beautiful countryside. Notice the use of the word 'planned'? In India, plans have to be large, stretchy, elastic things that must stretch, fit and mould themselves to the unpredictable, the unexpected and the impossibly unbelieveable, or they will just twang off into oblivion and failure.

Coincidentally, this particular elastic plan was subject to the vagueries of actual rubber. As in tyres. Punctured ones. We set off for the waterfall, a little later than probably planned, I don't know when we planned to leave but I'm pretty sure it was earlier than the late mid-morning hour that we set off.

I was on Vishu's bike today, a lovely, beautifully-designed Enfiled Bulet with a seat not designed for my delicate Princess and the Pea constitution. It was firm and unforgiving. We'll leave it at that.

Not long after we set off, someone who shall remain nameless (because I can't remember who) developed a puncture. We waited while they started to fix it. I was getting used to this kind of thing happening now and it didn't bother me, especially when someone decided that some of us, including Vishu and me, should carry on to the lunch stop, as we had pre-arranged our order with a little village food stall and he wanted to ask them to hold it for a while.

The comforts of the village food stall when we reached it were few. A couple of hard benches, considerably firmer than Vishu's saddle, were at our disposal outside, so I made use of their uncomfortable convenience. It was hot and sunny and by now, the early afternoon sun was slanting right under the canopy that covered the benches, so there was not much shade, unless we wanted to sit in the dust by the side of the road under some trees and be sand-blasted by grit as traffic drove past. We chose the benches.

Waiting for the others was a real test of my patience. My back was very tired from the long hours of riding I wasn't used to - probably more tired than I imagined - and it had started to go into the spasms it gets when the muscles have been overused. All I wanted to do was go home and lie down but I couldn't. I had to wait for the others. We all had to wait for the others. The other guys I was with seemed to be fine, lounging around and chatting. They were used to this. If there were an award for services to waiting by the side of a road, they would proably all share it for lifelong service in this field of unusual endeavours.

They knew, as I didn't, that patience was as much a part of being in 60kph as riding amazing roads. Unlike me, they had probably all had problems with their bikes in the past while out on group rides and had all had the whole group wait for them. They knew the value of waiting and knew the sense of security it must give to the person who would otherwise be on his own with his bike and his problem. One member's problem was every member's problem. They were all in it together.

I am not a particularly patient person, so extended periods of doing nothing while waiting for something to happen do not bring out the best in me. In fact, they bring out the dragon in me. Any small injustice or inconvenience I perceive during such time - queue-jumping, slow officialdom, unnecessary pedantry or form-filling - seems to be magnified ten-fold and I can flare into a growl or full-blown fire-spitting rage in an instant - just ask Aleks. This time I was calm and controlled and seething with impatience on the inside. But they did seem to be taking an extraordinarily long time...

We decided to eat while we waited for them, otherwise there wouldn't be room for us all in the tiny village shack. I sat down with Shantanu and hungrily devoured my meal. And here I learned the value of waitng and patience. As we ate, we began to talk and a very interesting talk it was too. And I wouldn't have had the opportunity to have it, had I not been waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Shantanu was one of the Bang Gang (the members from Bangalore) and worked in the software industry. He was not the geek of stereotype but a fascinating and intelligent man. He had a bright, open and expressive face. He wore little rectangluar glasses which he would keeping pushing up his nose whenever he got excited about something. Somehow we got to talking about schools (I notice I often find myself 'somehow' talking about certain subject, as in India conversations seem to range far and wide rapidly) and he told me that, although he was Hindu, he had gone to a Catholic school. I was surprised.

'But weren't your parents worried that they would try to convert you or something?' I asked
'No, it was the best school around, which is why they sent me.' But his grandmother was the one who was concerned for the religious safety of her grandson. Shantanu told me that she would tell him endless stories of the Hindu gods and goddesses to make sure he kept his faith intact, instead of being influenced by the religious politics of his school.

This struck me as fascinating that India should also have the school lottery, in a country where faith and its demonstration and practice is so much stronger than back home. I would have thought it would be obvious that Hindu parents would send their son to a Hindu school. But then I thought again. Why should Indian parents be any different to English ones? They still want the best education for their children and if this means sending them to a school that teaches a faith that is not the faith of their choosing or birth, then it is reasuring that they can exercise that choice.

Shantanu had also exercised his religious choice but in a different way. Rather than believing in all the myriad Hindu gods and goddesses, their alter-egos, re-incarnations and their stories, which he dismissed as nonsense and fairy tales, he had chosen to pick one goddess in whom he believed. Sadly I can't remember which one it was but Shantanu was very matter-of-fact about it, saying that he believed in her because she made sense and had helped him in life. And you couldn't argue with that.

We were still waiting and eventually, after over an hour of waiting, though it seemed like more, the others arrived. The initial puncture had run into complications. When they were changing the trye they had managed to make a hole in the spare inner tube before even getting it on the bike. This meant they'd had to find a new inner tube at a nearby garage and use that one. No-one seemed in the slightest put-out by this added and avoidable delay. I felt bad. I was there for the ride providing nothing of use nor ornament to anyone else, rather inconvenience and added weight. Yet I was the one moaning - albeit internally - about something which everyone else was much more within their rights to be annoyed about. I felt suitably humbled and vowed that I would not allow future waits to torment me. As much. If possible.

After the others had eaten it was too late to go to the waterfall so we carried on to the fort to get there before sunset. The roads were similar to the off-road track and I had to get off and walk the last few hundred yards of the way. I arrived at the bottom of the hill on which the fort stood just in time to see Jaan, Vikram and Sanjou attempting to ride their bikes up the impossibly steep grassy slope. Vishu was at the bottom, urging them not to do it. This was why they did it. A biker told he cannot or should not do something on his bike will inevtably insist on doing that very thing. They got stuck about halfway-up.

Leaving the bikes there for the time being we trudged the rest of the way up to the top in time to catch the dying light. The view was worth the climb and the stuckness of the bikes. On all sides, rolling hills piled away into the distance, covered with a golden-brown carpetof gently waving grass that, in the distance, looked as soft as moss. Wooded slopes made patches of bobbled green and here and there the arc of dirt tracks cut into the side of the hills. The sky was a hazy white and the sun cast long iron shadows.

Back at the bottom of the hill Vishu and I helped get the bikes back down by watching as the other got them down. While they were still up there, a bike loaded down to scraping point with three local lads came easily up the dirt track. Bikers or not, these guys knew how to ride off-road! They stopped to chat to Vishu, who spoke Kannada and, idly listening in, I heard him saying the word 'movie'. I was not surprised. He must be saying that some movies had been filmed here. I could see why, as it was a truly beautiful location. When the others came down, Jaan looking like the archetypal mean biker in his protective gear and aviator shades, Vishu said something to him in Hindi. He nodded and said a few words to each of the locals and gave them a manly handshake. Odd!

When we got back to the rest of the group, the guys were in hysterics. My understanding of the conversation had been totally wrong. Vishu had told the locals that Jaan was famous actor who played villians in Bollywood movies. They totally believed the story and, awed to be in his presence, had asked Jaan for photos of themselves with him and wanted to know if he had a Facebook page they could join. Jaan had played along perfectly.

We had just time to go to a viewpoint very close to the fort before it got dark. Rolling out below us, as far as the eye could see, there were soft, wooded hills. At the bottom of one, so far away and tiny, was a train track going into a tunnel. What a beautiful ride that would would be - and not on a bike.

For a day that had started off so badly, I now felt amazing. I could never tire of the privilege of seeing such beautiful and remote scenery. Idly I wondered if I would have a phone signal here, as I hadn't been able to call anyone in days. As I took my phone out of my bag to look, it miraculously began to ring in my hand. It was Aleks! By pure coincidence he had decided to ring me at the one moment in the week when I was able to talk to him. Hearing his voice on the top of that hill, so far from anywhere, I felt on top of the world!