Sauvik Biswas

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Day 6: Ooty to Palakkad A deadly descend # After three days at Hotel Accord, I was already sick of the food. It’s not that it was bad. On the contrary, they had served excellent meals. The problem is that I had to cycle after having all that food. I kept a Digene (Aluminium and Magnesium Hydroxide tablet) in my mouth and sucked it for he first ten minutes of my ride. I did not make yesterday’s mistake of bearing the cold with just my cycling jersey. The temperature was 7 degrees when we left. I wore my jacket and scarf. Still, the chill, and the constant drop-handle position made my fingers numb frequently. I got down from my bike at least thrice to warm them up and restore circulation. Day 3: Kalpetta to Ooty A late start # Kalpetta was fully covered with dense fog. Nothing was visible outside the hotel. After a brief session of cleaning my drivetrain, I sat down and waited for the flag-off. We started at 8:00 am. The riders waited for a long time for the flag-off! We passed the beautiful tea plantations multiple times at multiple places. Day 4: Rest day at Ooty The official photoshoot and the red jerseys # There was an official photoshoot in the morning. We also got to know the Kings and Queens of Kalahatty. The Queen of Kalahatty, Lena, is an impressive rider. She rides a Surly steel racer and rides hills like its a piece of cake. The King of Kalahatty, KKR, was in tears while receiving the red jersey. Lena receiving her Red Queen of Kalahatty jersey. Day 2: Mysore to Kalpetta Flag-off and the importance of being safe # We started at around 7 today. Before that we had to deposit our luggage by 5:30 pm. We had about 1 hr 30 mins to take care of our bikes. I had already degreased and lubed by drivetrain yesterday. I pumped my tyres up and I was good to go. Bikes parked at the basement. During flag-off Satish reiterated about the importance of safety. Yesterday, Mayuri, one of the riders, had a crash and had to be taken to the hospital. Although the injury wasn’t that bad but she had some muscle inflammation. After diagnosis, she was ordered complete bed rest for the rest of the week. She would be flying off to Delhi. Day 1: Bangalore to Mysore Re-check and Flag Off # I had to leave at 4:00 am in the morning in order to make it to Taj Yeshwantpur in time to drop off my luggage. Luckily Mogit was with me and taking care of some of the logistics became easier with the extra pair of hands. The race organisers fitted our bikes with the bib number. The luggage van that left at 5:30. I received my stuff at Mysore once I had checked into the hotel. Also visible are cyclists doing last minute check-ups and race organisers fastening bibs to the cycle. My bib number is 80. Day 0: A preparation and a briefing An unusual source of motivation # Let me put the most obvious thing out first - I don’t think that I have trained enough for this tour. The reason why I had decided to participate in this tour can be attributed to the blogs of Mr. Venkateswara Rao Navasi (also known as Lord Venky or BikeyVenky). He has participated in all TfNs since 2011. You have to look no further but visit www.govenkygo.com and read through the December entries of the respective years to get a feel of what to expect. A small reunion of sorts Yesterday, the members of Dark Project met at Korak’s house. It had more to do with having some fun time with friends (and gulp some food). Inadvertently, we ended up revisiting old songs inside Korak’s jam room. But before that, I must clear some air. So, here is… The reason why Dark Project disbanded # This is us during the shoot of the only music video we made. (Here is a reluctantly placed link.) An annual outing (and some thoughts on taking photos) Every year, around this time, our department plans an outing to some place in the outskirts of Bangalore. This year, people voted for a resort called Urban Valley (check here). Google Maps labels this place as Bluemoon Retreat. I can only guess that they had undergone a rebranding exercise. You might be interested to read the 2 or 3 star reviews. Our collective experience was pretty close to that. For the sake of privacy, I will not put up the photographs from the activities and general socialising. Instead, I will just walk you through my experiences. A coming of age story in Solanin I kept bumping into Solanin in many automated suggestion lists—they seemed to predict what I might like, based on my tastes. A few months ago, I decided to trust these suggestion algorithms and pick the book up. In my opinion, it is a coming of age story of the protagonist, Meiko Inoue. Somebody who has read the manga might hurl at me and say, ‘She is already a grown up. How can you say it is a coming of age story?’ To that I’d ask them to hear me out. Good guys always backup their data One of the caveats of running a website on a self-configured system is that the webmaster is in charge of all fail-safe, precautionary measures - not only for the data, but also for the server configuration - in case something strange happens. This is in stark contrast to the shared virtual hosting ethos where the webmaster is only required to take such precautionary measure for only the data and nothing else.