Man and machine

Interesting people come thick and fast when you travel but CP touched me more than most. I met him when I arrived in Hampi. He was sitting alone at the table next to me and the two people I'd arrived on the bus with, Alex from Canada and Michele from Australia.

I think he and Alex started chatting about motorbikes and before we knew it, he was sitting at our table and agreed to come out with us the following day when we hired scooters to see the surrounding areas of Hampi.

CP (short for Chandra Prakash) was 28 and was in the middle of a long bike ride from his home in Rajasthan in the western India to Bangalore, where he was due to meet some other biker friends. He was slight man with neatly cut hair and a clean-shaven face. He had huge, almost feminine eyes with long lashes and a beautiful, perfect white smile. He was quite striking, but it was his personality that drew me to him. He had a quiet, slightly serious demeanour and sometimes said very little in our conversations, preferring to listen to me and the others chatter on. At other times though, he opened up to me and was lively and chatty, joking and even teasing me.

Over the next two days I spent in his company, he slowly, gradually revealed little bits of information about himself here and there. These fragments of his life soon built up into a picture of an intriguing and determined man who really fascinated and won me over.

CP was born and raised in a town called Barmer in Rajasthan. At an early age it became clear that he was destined for great things when he set up a business at the age of just 12, exporting cooking utensils to the Middle East and Africa. I didn't get round to asking him how he came to decide this was the thing he wanted to do at such a young age, but he spoke of it casually and with no hint of boastfulness, as if this were the most natural thing in the world for a 12-yr-old to do! Later he told me that his father never took holidays and always worked on his businesses, so I suppose he had grown up with an exceptionally good example of a strong work ethic, such that it was never too early to start work.

Sadly CP had had to close this business a few years later, to take over his father's work after he suffered a brain hemorrhage. Now, at 28, he'd moved on from this and is now the owner of 18 farms in Rajasthan, along with various other business ventures, the details of which I can't remember.

CP never boasted about his wealth but just mentioned little details casually  - and only when necessary - during our many conversations in and around Hampi. I asked endless nosy questions (my favourite thing to do with new acquaintances), fascinated by this quiet, modest man, and he just answered them honestly. I can honestly say I have never met a man who appeared to have to much in the way of material wealth but who cared so little about it. It was such a refreshing change from people who tell you all about how great they are because they need your reassurance of their worth and value. With CP it was different. He just told me what I'd asked him because I'd asked him.

His quiet, impassive face was rarely without a halo of cigarette smoke curling around it as he talked. The irony was that this self-assured, confident, successful man had been smoking since his college years, yet neither his parents nor his wife know that he smokes!

But CP was far from being all work and no play: when he's not overseeing his many strands of business, he loves to indulge his passion for motorbikes. He owns six of them, including an Enfield and the Honda sports bike he'd chosen for this trip, as well as several cars. He told me that he loves to ride and takes one of his bikes out every day and rides for miles and miles, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. When he's sufficiently far from home, he lights up those secret cigarettes and smokes and drinks the endless cups of coffee he was also rarely without during our time together. But far more importantly he rides for the pure pleasure of it.

'Sometimes people don't understand me,' he said, after the day I rode pillion on his bike through the countryside around Hampi. 'They say, "CP you have so many cars and so much money, why don't you just travel in a car?" They don't understand the pleasure of a bike. I love to ride my bike. When I am on it I am in the nature and I am part of it. I can feel the wind and the sun and I can see everything. When I am in a car I am like in a little box. And I love to go fast,' he said with a shrug and a laugh.

I knew what he meant. Although I don't claim to know anything about motorbikes, since being in India, I have discovered a new love of being on one - mainly thanks to my rides with CP. The freedom you feel and your physical presence in and connection with nature and the weather, adds another dimension to the experience of being outside that you can't get from a car journey. You feel the wind and sun on your face and - if you're not careful - the grit in your eyes and mouth. You see the weather as you feel it and you smell it as it touches you. You ride through the sights and sounds and smells of the outdoors at speed or at leisure and you are always enveloped by the scenery around you and the sky above you that feels so close you are sure you can touch it. Riding liberates you, it frees your mind to think and reflect and it soothes and excites you all at the same time.

But CP's love of riding was so much more than a hobby. In 2006 he was accepted into an elite Indian motorbike club called 60kph. The club only ever has a maximum of 60 members of India's top extreme motorbike travellers. Members travel long-distance journeys by bike all over India in some of its most demanding terrain, from the freezing Himalayas to the scorching deserts, sometimes alone, sometimes in a group.

'How did you become a member?' I asked, fascinated by what the criteria should be. 'You can't just join,' he said. 'There are certain things you have to do first. You have to know someone who is already a member and they have to recommend you to the other members. The members then decide if you are suitable to join.' I asked what 'suitable' meant.

'You have to be serious about riding, know all about bikes and how to ride and repair them. You have to be a good person morally but most of all, you have to have a passion for riding.'

But this was not all. In characteristically understated fashion CP told me that every potential member, once initially approved by the other members, is invited to ride with them on two or three group rides, including one of their annual group rides to mark the anniversary of the club's founding.

One of CPs rides was a 15-day anniversary marathon across the Great Rann of Kutch salt desert of western Gujarat. He and some of the other 60kph members set off across this arid and desolate region carrying everything they needed for the journey, including food, water and fuel for the bikes, as there would be no towns from which to buy supplies. They rode across mile after mile of endless scorching desert, camping, cooking and fixing any problems by themselves, totally self-reliant. Sometimes the bikes would get suddenly trapped in sinking sand pockets that they couldn't see before they rode over them. A man could sink without trace to his death, along with his bike, within minutes. On many occasions they were forced to stop to help each other out.

All went well until they managed to get lost part way through the journey. For three days they rode, lost under the burning sun, looking for a road but finding none. They had no compass and were forced to use the sun to navigate. As the days passed their supplies of food, water and fuel began to run low and fear set in. According to CP, once-confident, grown men began to break down, panic and cry.

'Did you cry?' I asked. 'No,' he replied with a frown as if this were a ridiculous suggestion. 'You just have to accept the situation and find a solution.'

Eventually they came across a road and a remarkable act of trust occurred. Each rider drained a little of the fuel that remained in his tank and put it into the tank of one bike. This rider and his bike was then entrusted to ride alone with all the empty jerrycans 200km to the nearest town to buy and ring back fuel for the others.

After this ordeal of a ride CP was accepted into 60kph. When I met him he was on his way to Bangalore to join the other members for another of their annual anniversary rides. This one was to be a 7-day trip through jungle terrain in central Karnataka state. As before, CP explained, they would be riding, camping out, cooking and fending for themselves in the jungle, miles from nowhere.

But things were not looking good. A typhoon that had hit Chennai on the east coast in the last few days had left Bangalore soaked in torrential rain that was forecast to last for the next four days. As the members were coming from all over India to participate it was too late to cancel the trip. They would have to ride and camp in whatever conditions they found when they got there.

I do not know why, but CP asked me if I'd like to join him on this ride. I also don't know why but, God help me, I accepted!