31 December 2012, Day 10, Bagdogra Airport, West Bengal, India.

                Maithili asked me to go to airport counter and ask about the boarding status and also whether they could keep the bike keys and papers. I went running as fast as I could to the airport counter and asked the officer about the flight status. On that he said, “Sir you are supposed to be boarding the plane by now and you are late. Please be quick”. My panic attack got severe at this time. I requested him whether he could take my bike keys and papers and later Gatty’s manager could collect them from him. He strongly refused my request. This time I had no time to waste in pleading and so I ran back at parking area where Maithili had unloaded all our luggage from bike. This time I tried calling Gatty’s manager again and yes he picked up the call. He too was stuck in a traffic jam while coming down from Darjeeling and so he would have reached airport by 4 PM or so. Damn !!!  Why did I book the flight for the same day and that too of 3 PM ???

                I still remember Maithili poking me every now and then to find a travel destination in the mountains. This poking actually started somewhere in June 2012 and I asked her to decide on the destination herself. As always she instantly opened “100 Holidays in the Hills and 100 Bonus Hideaways” book in front of me and next thing she did was finding the North-East section of it. This book was given to me by my dearest friend Ashish Mishra, saying “we’ll do bike trips to some of these destinations”. Off-course this was long before my marriage and I still don’t remember me and Ashish going on a trip to any of these destinations. But, thanks to him and his book, as it has served a great deal in my married life. Finding a travel destination has never become so easy. So we fixed up our minds for North-East, but could not make up our mind on a specific location. Every single bit of North-East India is so beautiful, that it would merely be an injustice if we call a specific region more beautiful. So we discussed with my Uncle and two Aunts (Ulhas Rane, Prerana Rane, Lalita Deshpande) who are our Travel gurus and finalized on South Sikkim. Our destination list consisted of Darjeeling (West Bengal), Pelling and Gangtok (Sikkim), Lava (West Bengal). This way our journey would begin from West Bengal, then enter Sikkim and conclude by returning to West Bengal.

                This time we had no plans of having motorcycle in the picture and were thinking of local transport as our first option. We decided to do this trip during our last week of December, when I get a good amount of leave from office. As we started finding more and more information about these regions, it became clearer on what we had in our plate. We discovered that most of the roads are through mountains and it gets really cold in December. When I say “most”, it means 96% of the roads are mountain roads and “really cold” means you have to halt every now and then to take sun-bath and to attend a nature’s call. Knowing this Maithili came up with an idea of adding more to this thrill. A Motorcycle! What more do we need than this to make it a complete adventure? There was also another reason to it. Mountainous roads, if traveled in a car makes Maithili nauseous and she trusts my motorcycling skills more than the local drivers there. Truly a moment of pride for me! We shared our plan with our Travel gurus and to our surprise, Uncle and Aunt almost disapproved it instantly. Though Lalita was more receptive to our adventure and was convincing Prerana about it, we understood that the word “Motorcycle” was a real culprit. After lots of brainstorming discussions, we finally managed to convince all of them. It was solely because of their Traveling experiences and affection towards us that they disapproved Motorcycle at first instance. As I am writing this, I do want to emphasize that every adventure has an amount of risk factor attached to it and every Traveler needs to take a sole responsibility of his/her own safety and then decide on the plan. But unless we take risks, we will never know what Mother Nature has served us out there. It is only with the intention of seeking the experience, we like to take certain risks with responsibility and positive mindset.

                And so the plan moved ahead with Motorcycle in it. Maithili found out about “Adventures Unlimited” a Darjeeling based company that provides Royal Enfield Motorcycles on rent. I called up the number and spoke to Gautam Shreshtha who is owner of the company. I informed him about our travel plan and inquired about bike rentals, processing documents, Bike pick-up,  etc and it was confirmed. We decided to hire Enfield Electra Twin-spark for 9 days, starting from Darjeeling. During my online discussions with Gautam, I got to know about an Adventure Camera named “GoPro Hero2 HD”. Out of curiosity I started gathering information on it from internet. After watching incredible adventure videos shot on this camera, I decided to buy it. It is available only in few adventure accessories shops. Luckily I got it from Outdoor Travel Gear-Wadala Mumbai. One month after buying the camera, the shop stopped selling the product due to their own reasons and I was the happiest person on earth that I bought it in time. Maithili booked Flights and all the accommodations in advance with aunt Prerana’s help. We also got further information about climate and road conditions from Mrs. Usha, my Uncle’s friend. She has settled in Sikkim and works with Forest department. It was a very good insight we had from her about the region. With all planning and preparations done, we were now sitting ducks, only to count days till the 22’nd December 2012.

                Finally on 21’st I took a leave and stayed back to do the packing. We purposefully kept our luggage less considering the mountain climbs and off-roading possibilities. It was only a Tank-bag and Saddle bag which are motorcycle attachments. Kept all the important documents, money etc in Tank-bag and waist-pouch, since I was supposed to take Tank-bag as hand baggage in flight and Saddle-bag to be sent with check-in luggage. We had a early morning flight and so we booked a TabCab prepaid taxi service till airport. With all set and done, finally we went to bed with a tingling feeling in our tummy. It was really hard to get a sleep that night due to the excitement, but we tried our best.