What's that song?

Why is it so hard to get over the Tour of Nilgiris? All of us who participated have other lives, work, events to go to or avoid, people to call or duck, places to be, things to do, but most of us are right now in some sort of post-TFN dream.

During our impressionable years, we’ve all been on school and college excursions, girl guide/boy scout/NCC camps, class trips. Since then, we’ve gone on voluntary versions of those with friends, family, colleagues. So that kind of group dynamic is not new to any of us, and yet there is something new and different about TFN. Attempting to work out what is like trying to list the entire discography of an artist from a half-tune that keeps playing in your head. And just as annoying.

I do know that I came back rejuvenated, almost jubilant. Parts of my mind that I thought were permanently atrophied from disuse turned out to have just been a little rusty – they got some exercise and are working fine again. I also, inexplicably, came back vindicated and hopeful. I thought it was the usual euphoria of achievement that comes after any prolonged activity but it has lasted long beyond the time that should have faded. And not just for me, judging by what others are saying.

What was so deeply influencing about those seven days? The scenery, the camaraderie, the feat? That could have been so for the cyclists – except it’s not really the cycling they seem to be talking about now – but it doesn’t explain the attachment the non-cyclists feel. What happened there to make it so special? Perhaps it should just be enough that whatever it was, happened.

A few days ago, the Facebook status of a fellow TFN alumnus read: “can’t get over TFN and it’s almost irritating me now”. That seems about right.

TFN nights: Chinna, chinna asai

It's true the Tour of Nilgiris is all about cycling, but the story's incomplete without the after-hours. On a good riding day, the evening was always effervescent.

The first one in Mysore was understandably low key, just a rest stop. By the second day, in Mercara, everyone was ready for more. That afternoon and early evening were filled with easy conversation, mostly post-mortems and story-swapping of the day's experiences. Later, it was cold enough to have a bonfire, which always helps. Though it was early to bed (we were in the middle of a sporting event, after all), and it was only a small group that remained after dinner, there was time enough for a little music and a ghost story or two. Avinash produced a flute, Vasu, Satish and our good doctor revealed singing talent in addition to the many other sterling qualities we'd already seen, and a brief power cut brought out the most brilliant stars I've seen since my camping times in Oman.

The next day was difficult, Sultan Bathery was unprepossessing and the night equally solitary and troubled. But the morning dawned bright and promising, the ride to Ooty more than made up for the previous day's shortcomings. That night was the fourth one; by then everyone had more or les found their level, made at least acquaintances so the group round the campfire was a gathering of comrades. There was much music, the volume was high and when the fire died down, the cold drove everyone in, so they crowded into the "girls' room" to continue into the small hours. I was tired and sleepy (and can sleep through an earthquake if need be) but Avinash is a rollicking storyteller with a beguiling ability to laugh at himself, so not listening was not an option.

The fifth night saw it turn into a group of friends, the entertainment enlivened further by dragging people forward to sing songs in their native languages (Kerala was conspicuously absent for once, since the two representatives that might have contributed were not present and the two that were present were not quite qualified to do so). An unexpected bonus was the Swiss farming song from George and it set me thinking that my discomfort on his behalf when we were singing Hindi songs was uncalled for – he probably didn't feel left out at all because there were so many degrees of fluency present in the room that translation was constantly being demanded by someone or the other. It was one of those times that made you sentimental about the diversity of the country and what it could be like in an ideal world.

There were two flutes that night, Murali having produced one that morning and entrusted it to my reluctant care (foster-parenting the delicate musical instrument of a serious musician is a lot of responsibility). Diksha turned out to be one hell of a singer as well, so the overall quality of the group singing was higher than is usual in the circumstances and it mercifully never had to come down to Antakshari. A formidable amount of talent was displayed that evening, but for me the most memorable part was Sourabh's own composition. Both words and music were his own, a sweet, lilting song about not being able to bring himself to tell someone he likes her, a sentiment with which every listening mind could quietly empathise.

(Epiphany: I need a thing, an act that I can trot out and hide behind. Not being able to do anything and being too awkward to attempt something impromptu makes one far more conspicuous than if one did anything stupid.)

The last evening in Mysore was prolonged a little, everyone aware of its finality. A little bit of amateur fortune-telling, a lot of laughter, a pleasing sense of schoolgirl truancy in breaking the Youth Hostel curfew, some sharing of pleasures, a few uncertain steps towards new friendships, perhaps.

The warm TFN nights fortified the relationships shaped by cycling or working together in the day, like clay in a kiln.

Chinna Chinna Asai, Roja, 1992

Day seven: Diamonds and rust

The goodbye hung over the day. It was important for the record to make that final run to Bangalore, but nobody had to like it and many didn't try very hard to. It didn't help that the Mysore-Bangalore route anyway feels more like a commute than anything else.

Many people took it easy, some choosing to stop often at wayside tea stalls for chai and a chat, hailing others as they passed. Others amused themselves for a while at the lunch stop with watermelons and Nelly's wheelies. As Virender said, "This is the difference between a tour and a race. After a race, you have no friends, you won't find anyone taking phone numbers and email addresses." (Not everyone agrees with this, though. Dickie for example, has been in races where "riders have made friends with closest rivals" and he's seen far more emotional goodbyes there.)

Our entry into Bangalore was great. We were met by a police escort at Bangalore University, where everyone stopped to get into their TFN jerseys. Many of those who did only a part of TFN joined in here for the final stretch. Though the going was slow through the city and the traffic did occasionally creep up on us, the police motorcycle did help to keep the whole group together. I was riding on a motorcycle myself today, as Modi's wingman (I really wanted to do this on the ride up to Ooty but was too late to catch either of them), so I was able to see the critical mass for the first time on the Tour.

I don't know whether the riders could have felt it, but from my vantage point on the back of the shepherd motorcycle, it was an impressive sight, with bicycles stretching all the way down the road, filling the horizon. My feelings were reflected in the faces of those who turned to watch and the occasional tourist who whipped out a camera in a hurry. This was the second awesome sight of the day. The first was when we were following what I personally think of as the pro group. They rode in formation from Channapatna to Bangalore and it was like watching racing footage on TV. Very exciting.

By the end of the victory lap around Vidhan Soudha, they had done well over 919 km. We arrived at the finish line in front of the Central Library in Cubbon Park to a chorus of cameras.

The sun is setting now as I stand on the sidewalk and watch the riders congratulate each other, cheer for their support team, make thank-you speeches and plans for rides next weekend. And so the first Tour of Nilgiris is complete, as always a little too soon, just as we're making friends and it's getting good. Well, maybe next year.

Diamonds and Rust, Joan Baez, 1975

Day six: All the roadrunning

Ooty's spirit-shrivelling cold and winter mist ensured that we only left after 9:30 in the morning. There was much testing and tinkering of gears and brakes before that. The professional racers and the veterans – Raj, Dickie, Venky, Samim, Nelly – were in even greater demand than usual. The briefings were stern and unequivocal: If you feel the slightest uncertainty, do not do the steep descent. Keep your hands on the brakes, your eyes upon the road. Keep left, very, very left. Basically, Billy, don't be a hero, just get down there the traditional way, in one piece.

Within fifteen minutes of setting out, it was amply clear why. The cycles slurped up the 36 steep and tightly winding hairpin bends like spaghetti, though it was more the road taking them than the other way round. I found out later that it was murder on the wrists and shoulders, but watching from the luxury of a jeep, the sight was thing of immense beauty. As was the scenery they whirred through. It was a magnificent route, mountains and forests stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. We were lucky in that the traffic was unusually light for the time of the year and day. There was much to take in, here a valley falling away, there a rock shaped like a face, every so often an unexpected waterfall, promising signs saying things like "Bison View Point"… therefore there was a lot of pausing for photographs or just to stand and stare.


At the bottom, we entered a long stretch of forest, first the Madhumalai Tiger Sanctuary, then Masinagudi – scene of the next Project Tiger and the village staging the inevitable bundh in protest – and past the border into Karnataka, where it became Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuary. Later on the route, we heard that several cyclists had actually spotted interesting things like wild boars and wild elephants. My animal count was: 10 Nilgiri Langurs, 2000 normal monkeys, some marsh birds, interesting but unidentifiable (by me) tracks on a game trail and four domestic elephants being herded into a lake.

This last caused much shrill excitement in most of the passing vehicles. People tumbled out of these onto the bank, chiefly engaged in affirming very loudly that what they were looking at was in fact a group of elephants that included two babies. One of the minibuses did not even bother to switch off the very loud music. They really shouldn't be allowed on this road.

A few minutes after we'd driven on, one of the elephants decided that it had had enough and headed straight for the road to say so. People scattered, revealing Dipankar riding past with Samim, and the annoyed elephant got so close, the trunk brushed him. Luckily, they are racers in training and so were there and gone before the elephant could get down to anything.

But the rapid descent into the heat of the plains made everyone feel much like meat transferred straight from the freezer into the oven, especially in the excruciatingly ordinary (inevitable comparison) stretch from Gundlupet to Mysore. More than one sturdy rider wilted and retired from the lists for a while, choosing to cycle again a little farther along the route.

I was riding with Flaunge again, in a jeep hired in Ooty. We had a wonderful driver who not only knew and used all the traffic rules but also turned out to be a sort of wandering minstrel on the subject of local lore.

Returning to Mysore was like returning to a hometown. We were there just six days earlier, but it feels like a lifetime. We're all in bed now. A certain pall hangs over this evening, the last of the Tour, this descent one that none of us has the gear ratio to take on comfortably.

All the Roadrunning, Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, 2006

And on the fifth day, they rested

This is our day in Ooty. No formal plans have been imposed on us, we are free to do what we want. Some of us have formed small groups, some have set out in pairs, many are doing their own thing. No prizes for guessing which category I fall into. The rest day has been perfectly timed. By yesterday evening, everyone had been pushed just up to their limit and even ten minutes more would have been too much. But people who choose to cycle 919 km are not what you’d call normal, so one group has decided to take a break by running up Doddabetta. When I left the hostel, another one was talking about relaxing with a little light cycling to Pykara Lake (about 30 km). Several people had already taken energetic walks by seven in the morning (including – hold your breath – me).

Ooty is sub-zero cold, there was frost in the night. The hostel is an indifferently maintained Colonial bungalow, a grand old house full of draughts and ghosts (and cyclists, now). It is highly picturesque but not comfortable in extreme weather when the fireplaces can only be ornamental. But I like it, in spite of its inconveniences – it feels like visiting your grandparents or something equally nostalgic, a sentiment that seems all-pervasive here.

It’s there in the giant Christmas trees growing everywhere, the pines, the hill roads, the lake, the names of the places, the architecture, the roads, the weather, some of them not even consciously remembered. In my walk from Fern Hill to Charing Cross, I stopped at a café and it felt as if my book was waiting for me to return here to finish.

Yesterday, Thejesh and I went looking for tea soon after we got here and ended up climbing through a fence into an overgrown graveyard on Fern Hill because I like old churches and reading gravestones (each is a story, most of them not sad, just natural parts of the passing world). Among the ones that were not faded, were many from the time of World War I. An unexpected find was the grave of Vivekananda's stenographer, complete with an epitaph written by the great man himself.

I was persuaded to go out for yet another walk later and saw the stunning Fernhill Palace. It used to be the Mysore Maharaja’s summer retreat and may or may not be a hotel now (even the security guards seemed undecided on this point). While we wandered around the palace, we heard the Ooty train go past and the whistle sounded like a steam engine! As soon as I finish posting this, I will be rushing down to the station to take a photo of the four o’ clock train.

This morning I happened upon two other old churches, among much else, one with a million steps to collapse on, the other with a startlingly bare altar. I think they’re renovating, but for a moment when I turned my camera towards it and saw just bare wall, it seemed like the apocalypse.

Tomorrow we’re on the road again. I hope to do some of it on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway. It’s 100 years old this year, shortly to be 101. But away from the hype of the newspapers, it doesn’t even feel like the ending of the year, just as one day following another as it should.

I’ve been walking all day, with a bottle of water, an apple I found in my bag and random fruit I bought on the way. It’s been a long time since I went on a holiday on my own, so I’ve had a wonderful day.

Day four: Climb every mountain

Coffee estates gave way to tea, green hills to blue mountains and the toughest stretch of the Tour was also the most beautiful. Once in the Nilgiris, the cyclists rode past eucalyptus plantations, a wildlife reserve, stretches of picturesque water, forests of tall conifers, verges littered with pine cones. It was like entering another country. The hair-pin bends were murderous, as were most of the drivers on the road, but the road itself was excellent.

It's hard for me today to talk about the cycling and say anything I haven't said before. An impressive number made it all the way up by themselves to 7000 feet above sea level. Watching them climb today I felt personal pride in each of them that they got this far. A few of them collected some bad experiences, with people on the way booing and jeering – it’s baffling that school of thought that greets everything new or different with scorn and ridicule.

But apart from the sheer feat of cycling up, there was also the pleasure of the ride. Very few riders did not stop to smell the roses today, with even Raj defying his heart-rate monitor and jeopardising his average statistics, to take a photograph or two. Ravi, Kaushik, Francis and Avinash, to name just a few, actually took little detours into tea estates. Others took a break for a sunlit tea at a roadside shop. Matthew stopped to eat some freshly harvested carrots, maybe others did too after we passed. Nelly spent several unsuccessful minutes trying to find a way to get up to a wooden platform at the edge of the wildlife reserve. Even those of us in the cars took off down impulsive paths today. Hrish, Chetan and I went on a mini hike up to a rocky view point overlooking Madhumalai forest (we saw elephant dung on the way, but the animals themselves remained elusive).

I was with the Flaunge videographers today, seeing the Tour through their eyes. It was much the same as the other days except that we did not hand out cooling drinks to the riders. The most significant difference was that we were in a jeep hired in Sultan Bathery for the day (I suspect I was invited along to be translator). A Kerala-registered jeep taxi on a highway defies the very laws of physics and we travelled at warp speed whenever we didn’t have to slow down to film a passing cyclist. At this point in my post, everyone who knows me is expecting to hear that I was violently car sick. Well I wasn't, ever, but the effort has left me feeling as if l cycled all the way to Ooty, except without the endorphins to reward me. I've arrived here with a whole journal of new methods for dealing with car sickness but forcing the mind to prevail over body around a million intense hairpin bends has taken it out of me.

Tomorrow will be a great day looking around Ooty. Murali just asked me whether I want to check out the botanical gardens with him on a borrowed bicycle. I would have gone with pleasure, if the terror of ruining someone else's precious machine weren’t a much stronger force than all others. I have plans of my own anyway – there’s a new place to see, or at least a place to see with new eyes, and as always, I have family here, though this time they are ghosts. So I will be out bright and early to see them all.

But that’s in the future. Right now, exhaustion threatens to overwhelm, and it feels as if I've been on the road ever since I was born. The camaraderie around the bonfire tonight was wasted on me, even the extremely funny story of one cyclist falling on another due to forgetting he was wearing cleats. I retired to bed early, but from what I could hear before I fell asleep, it sounded like lot of the riders had many talents apart from being able to cycle up a mountain and most everyone had fun, probably happy in the knowledge that they have a day’s break before doing it again. I know that the thought that I don't have to get in another moving vehicle for a whole day makes me euphoric.

Climb Every Mountain, The Sound of Music, 1965

Day four: Blogger blues

I've never written like this before – with minimum time for processing, editing or proofing. Each post I write is shadowed by the knowledge that my best expression of it will come two weeks later, after it's had time to distil. My impressions each evening are too many and too raw to do justice to right away. So each day's post is a deadening feeling of not having written as well as I would have wanted to.

I'm also not quite clear on how to work this strange not-quite-marketing, not-quite-journalism, not-quite-me thing. On the one hand, my background means that. in spite of myself. I work for the benefit of the firm, rather than comment casually on it, as I would have otherwise. I make up nothing, leave out no salient facts, but I automatically arrange them for maximum enhancement of brand image, exercising marketing discretion without conscious thought. On the other hand, I get very annoyed with anyone who tells me what I should write, and the ones who are displeased or puzzled after I post. I want to say: this is my blog, my voice saying what I want it to say, I'm not bound by any rules.

But I find that I have to say that to myself too, more often than should be necessary. It doesn't matter though, since I'm more than capable of ignoring the voices in my head as well as the ones outside! Or, of course, I may be just depressed right now because my fellow blogger cycled today and made it all the way to Ooty.

Day Three: Green hills and Gatorade

When we left our homestay outside Madikeri, the sun was hardly strong enough to combat the cold and the valleys were foaming with mist, looking for all the world like God's pensieve – it was the time of morning that encouraged fanciful thoughts (another such time is when the night is no-city-within-a-hundred-miles dark and you are sitting at the edge of the light from the bonfire, especially if you have family members who are addicted to NGC programmes about marauding man-eaters).

Down to Gunikopal must have been a joy for the riders, dodgy roads notwithstanding. The scenery was stunning throughout, the route winding through coffee estates or forest, mostly, but the road was very bad in many places, so many riders spent a lot of time riding in the back of the Tempo. Overall it was a strange riding day.

Wynad has its own share of coffee estates and some of the roads looked so much like the ones we just covered in Coorg, that it felt like we were standing still. But the crossing into Kerala is not an imperceptible one, it's a whacking great checkpoint that we nearly drove through due to not paying any attention to the policemen. It was that sort of day.

We were not rewarded by the sight of elephants or bison or deer on the forest road. We heard a lot of birds and giant bamboos that knock in the wind, sounding eerily like a spa soundtrack. I regaled my companions with my theory that the Magic Beanstalk was based on this bamboo, since I've literally seen how fast they grow. There're several outside my window at home and they grow perceptibly, significantly taller each day. I'm not sure they believed me.

Anyway my Malayalam came in handy at the checkpoint and quite often in our subsequent quest for Sultan Bathery. This is familiar country in more ways than one. It's many years since I've driven to Kerala, but I know this route well. I know the colours – white jasmine, pink hibiscus and orange exora. I know the smells – crushed leaves and coconut. I know the dangers – I could write a long and colourful dissertation on Kerala's highways, but that's already been written several times, and continues to improved upon every time an out-of-state license plate escapes a deadly bus or truck by half a millimetre.

We stopped for a bite at Kattikulam, about 50 km from the destination, where our arrival, sojourn and departure were watched with avid interest by almost every local available. We either happened to hit upon the only dubious Kerala Paratha maker in Kerala or my memory of this meal on the road has been rendered rosy by nostalgia. I strongly feel it's the former.

Avinash was the Puncture Guy today (at least, among the ones on our watch). He seemed mighty cheerful about it, waving us onward the second time we saw him. There was a surprise break for watermelons courtesy of Dr. Arora and Mrs Katiyar who seemed to have an entire orchard of them in the car!

PS: Apologies for not replying to comments - it’s all I can do to hold a signal long enough to post. I have managed to read one or two. Anand, you can get a few details on Prashanth’s blog (URL alongside) and there should be something on the TFN website by now. You can also follow all our Twitter posts simply by searching under "tfn08".

Day Three: Until next year, Ullas!

I sadly record the withdrawal of Ullas from the Tour. He had a bad fall today. Nobody is quite clear about how it happened, not even the eye-witnesses. One moment he was upright, the next he was not. We came round the corner minutes later to find him being given First Aid in a luggage truck that happened to be handy, in shock, face bruised, wrist possibly broken and a tooth lost. The doctor and the ambulance were on their way. We left soon after they arrived and met him again this evening, looking much better but with his diagnosis of broken wrist confirmed. He is a game and enduring rider, keeping up with the built-for-speed road bikes on his not-quite-so mountain bike. I will miss the cheerful smile as we crawl past him every 20km or so, his answer to our "All well?" almost always an enthusiastic thumbs-up. He feels it very keenly that "this is the end of the Tour for me".

PS: The picture alongside is Ullas resting against a support vehicle outside the restaurant, just about 20 minutes before his fall.

Day two: Accidental angels

On either side are high eucalyptus, thick-trunked forest plants, unknown (to me) trees with heavy foliage and thickets of something tall and thorny. Blue lantana covers the ground. The air is the refrigerated smell of leaves breathing. The forests gratified us with a sign saying "beware of wild elephants", though the animals themselves did not grace us with a visit. (I did hear a very Malayali panchavadyam from a passing Aiyappa temple, which usually augurs well for the sight of at least a domestic elephant but nothing. In the little towns and on the hillsides, houses have gardens and the gardens have plants that overflow onto the road, into the forests almost (some of them were almost exclusively giant poinsettia, one of them included a calf browsing among the potted plants.)

The roads sweep over and around gently rolling hills. It was a beautiful day to be out cycling in Coorg, no matter what your riding nirvana.

For some, it's about the road, what kind it is, what challenges it offers, how far it goes. For others, it's about the scenery the road passes through. To a few, it's about themselves and their bicycles, about pushing and pushing hard. From the mood after the ride, it seemed as if they all got what they wanted today.

We set out from Mysore at seven. Since Prerna, Ram's wife, was following the Tour in her car by herself, Tejesh, Prashanth and I (the three communicators) joined her. But suddenly we were loaded up with Aquafina, Gatorade, glucose and cake-like things, just in case we were called upon to assist and succour. That turned out to be often. We went ahead and stopped at a "good spot" to photograph the riders, and this made us the support car by default for the faster riders in front. It felt good to have an active role in the Tour, to be in the right place, at the right time when someone needed something.

As the second day of the Tour ends, everyone is getting into their stride. Many of us are learning as we go along, this being the first of its kind being attempted here. The enormity of the enterprise is only beginning to show now, and therefore, the courage and breadth of the minds that conceived, and are executing, it.

Day Two: Slideshow

Iggy had no punctures today (he had three yesterday).
Seema was back in the saddle with the best of them in spite of what should have been a traumatising accident just 37 km outside of Bangalore.
Dr. Renu Arora has patched up a surprising number of people already, as well as riding 200km herself.
Little Ria Arora's quiet time with her Gameboy while waiting for her mother to arrive was hijacked by an enthusiastic discussion on the testing of games. The lucky kid gets to ride in the ambulance.
Gatorade is the most requested drink from the support cars.
Samim was the first to finish (by several hours), again.
Raj Nair and Dipankar came a close second, again (Raj feels that he should probably go slower because everyone else seems to turn up with an interesting story while all he does is finish early).
Joshine was the first woman to finish, again. We passed her on the final climb into Mercara, our car straining a little with the load, and she was not even out of breath when she said "See you on top".
Neither was Ravi, who we'd passed half a km earlier, riding as easily as if it was a flat track.
We were nearly killed by two buses (not at the same time) on the sharp, blind corners that are a specialty of this part of the hills.
Pradeep in the role of chief organiser is working on being in seven places at once – with some success.
The Homestay that we're spending the night at on the Calpa Vruksha estate is a peaceful clearing with a stream running through it, surrounded by forest (the silence is annointed by the complete absence of ringtones – there is no signal whatsoever).
Nilgiris' food for today was idli-vada for breakfast and biryani for lunch. Both were excellent – it's some of the best frozen food I've eaten and I am the undisputed connoisseur of those.
Cycling is a great sport – it allows you to eat indiscriminate quantities of the good stuff, and several times a day if you wish.

Day One: Bangalore - Mysore

It's been the strangest day, as most days are that start at 3:30 am. Looking back, a lot of the morning is a bit out of focus and badly framed. I seem to remember my Dad telling me that the person flagging off the Tour is the Additional Director General of Police. "Additional" doesn't sound right and I'm too peaceful here under the big trees of the Windflower Resort to ask keen-eyed questions. His speech was short and pithy. I'm glad my parents came to see the flagging off of TFN even though they only returned from their Christmas party after one. I missed the magnificent sight of fifty-five cyclists sailing out of the gate together because I was worried about the confusion about my own transport, but I remember that many of Bangalore's cyclists enthusiastically escorted the official TFN riders for a while. But even that early, traffic separated and strung out the riders into a long, sparsely beaded chain. But we regrouped at Bangalore University and set out again in two batches; the Road Bikes were separated from the MTBs. This, I conclude, is because the Road Bikes are astoundingly fast.

I ended up in Vivek's personal support car, essentially shadowing him, and at one point he was doing 55km/h on a fairly flat road. I'm glad I was there. I saw the first leg of the Tour from the intense perspective of what it was like for one person. In the process I also gathered what it means to be a support vehicle for endurance riding. Water, juice, water, water, glucose, water, water, salted water, water, water, bananas, more diluted juice, water, water, energy bar, water. And one formal snack stop (where I think I was one of the first at the trough). The final climb, up Chamundi Hill (I want to say 1000 meters, but I could be wrong), was clearly as much a matter of mental endurance as physical.

The hardest part of my day was being cooped up in a car when others were out there riding in the open air. Following the nimble Road Bikes has the same hypnotic quality as watching dragonflies. Even during the struggle over the hill. On the occasional stops to render assistance and succour, the air was so refreshing outside, even in the surprisingly hot winter sun.

Fast facts: Mysore is elegant, serene and green. Mandya is still full of sugarcane fields. Chamundi Hill is full of pilgrims in dangerously driven taxis. According to Vaz's high-tech meter, he burnt 7641 calories today. The highways are as infested with lunatics as ever in motorised vehicles – one of them mangled Seema's Specialized; the only reason she's alive and riding tomorrow is her helmet.

I wish, I wish, I wish I was riding.

The tour, now open

As an ex-inmate of an ad agency I've always seen press conferences from a strange angle - an uncomfortable one, the sort that gives you a pain in the neck and offers a rather jaundiced view of the proceedings. This is the first time I've been on the side that was making the news, experiencing the pride and glory.

Watching the TFN conference, I had the feeling I remember from my time spent backstage – watching the house fill up on opening night, there was always a specific moment for me that was the point of no return, when I knew the show must go on now, regardless. At that point, the crazy adrenaline spurts calmed to one focused flow and training took over. I wonder if the organisers and the cyclists of TFN felt that way today.

For me there were a lot of new images, words, concepts. The enthusiam in Iggy and Vasu when they insisted on introducing me to a Colnago before I'd been there two minutes. Vaz who drove down from Chennai but will ride back in the new year on his new Trek. Arun saying that we've all driven through the Nilgiris but on this trip we get to touch it, smell it, savour it. The fact that 3500 litres of Aquafina will go with us. The real emotion in Ravi's voice when he said that part of the ride would be a category-three climb, a type that features in the great Tour (at Cote de Chatillon-sur-Cluses, to be exact). The very cool Manipal ambulance stealing the show. The flavour of Nilgiris' flaky pastry that is really the taste of waiting with friends for a movie at Rex on Brigade road. Through it all, the silent, purposeful cameras of Hrish and Moti.

Pradeep handing around Christmas cake. Diksha, taking the time to ride at least a part of the tour in spite of having exams. The general sense of camaraderie and effervescence. Learning that Venky, who I will inadequately describe as a professional cyclist, has lent no less than five high-end bicycles to the tour. The reporter from the Times asking how many present cycle to work every day and almost all hands in the air. The surreal backdrop of the Cake Show, which should really be called the Sugar Show; the more fantastic creations are made of little else.

Mostly, it's an uneditable slideshow in my head, but what stands out sharp and shining in the afternoon sun are the machines. Today there were two Meridas, two Specialized, two Colnagos and one Trek. Bicycles of all descriptions, that bear as much relation to the ones we rode to school on as my little hatchback does to a McClaren Road Car. They are all fascinating, they are fluid, they are beautiful. But with a silent apology to the trusty BSA SLR that I lived on for 10 years, I gave my heart to the Colnago. It is, unsurprisingly, Italian.

Are we there yet?

Between the decision to do something and the doing of it is a wasteland of time and space. But, as my cool countdown clock says, there're still five days before the Tour kicks off. I'm too restless to form words so I will leave this post to Freddie...

Bicycle Race, Queen, Album: Jazz, 1978
Apparently (found out just now) they launched the song with a bicycle race between 65 naked girls. No, it's not that sort of video.

You ride, I write

10 days from the start of TFN, a large number of people, largely unknown to each other, are working towards the same goal. As Radio Indigo sets up its mobile communications and Flaunge, their cameras, an ambulance crew at Manipal's department of sports medicine prepares for a seven-day vigil on the move. On one side of town, Wildcraft assembles a phenomenal amount of gear. On the other, the Diet Pepsi brand team puts together their own. Nilgiris nutritionists put finishing touches to the menus designed for endurance cycling, while Nilgiris bakers bring to fruition the piece de resistance of the 34th Annual Cake Show - and 10 days from now, a tour that hopes to become one of Bangalore's annual legends will set out from an event that is already one.

In the centre of this web, where everything begins and ends, 40 cyclists are training hard. Across the city, the country, bicycles are being tweaked, limits tested, briefings begun, equipment and fitness checked and re-checked. There are literally mountains ahead.

I write. It's what I'm here for, to tell the story that those who are too close to it cannot see. For someone who's spent all her adult life in the communications industry, this is a new and fascinating branch. And since my recent years have been given to the bureaucratic side, it's exciting to be in the "field" again. So while I test my datacard, re-examine my camera-to-laptop connectivity, readjust my battery settings, what I do most of all is train. Study the subject, feel it. Gain different perspectives on it. Find out what others have said about it (after all, you don't want to repeat what's already been said). I listen to conversations on Bikezone, at parties and around watercoolers, and suddenly, I'm interested in Rajesh's gear upgrade and curious about why one would choose not to ride one's Colnago. These are not things I would have cared about before, or indeed known. But I'm working, and I've always needed to know more than I need to know!

We're a large group, but perhaps we're not all here by accident. All of us seem to share one quality - a driving need to do what we do, well.

Incidentally, in the course of my research, I was interested as always by the almost infinite number of ways in which one subject could be treated. These are just three examples among the many I came across.

THE ART OF CYCLING


PASSION


CYCLISTS' SPECIAL PARTS 1 & 2

Going under canvas

The Universe recently realised that I'd been blogging since 2004 and decided that it was time to make it worth my while.

So today my blog post won me the coolest thing I've ever seen. Actually, it won me one of those yesterday, when another blogger and I were picked to go on the seven-day Tour of Nilgiris. To do the blissful job of writing frequently and copiously what we want about it, as we like, on our own blogs.

But today, two of those cyclists of Santa Clause took us to Wildcraft, deep in the wilds of Jayanagar (though not on bicycles) to pick up the tangible prize – a three-person, three-season tent!

Rajesh Of The Store actually opened it up and pitched it to show us how (a good thing too; I read the manual later, and no spawn of man is likely to gain shelter that way). As with all people whose work and play have come together, he was so involved that even I learnt how to pitch the tent. He also volunteered instructions and tips on wind, cold and heat, and interesting titbits calculated to keep me awake in it, such as "keep away from fire, it can burn down in 24 seconds". I secretly noted that it's probably worth braving another trip to Jayanagar so I can ask him all my dumb questions about trekking in snow, without fear of ostracism.

Once he'd got it up and ready, the four of us just looked at it in silence for a minute or so – each of us feeling that same urge to a) leap inside to see what it's like and b) pack it up, strap it on and go climb a mountain, ford a river, cross a jungle and sleep under the stars in a deep, quiet meadow.

I can't explain the feeling when you see it all standing up, especially when you've done it yourself (it is such a work of art that I was able to pitch it all by myself the second I got home).

My Dad is delighted with it and wants to pitch it properly outside to test it. As you can see in the photograph, he feels none of the inhibitions we had in the store, and has lost no time crawling into the tent, while keeping up a running narration on the difficulties of the canvas tents he used to pitch. Well I have some experience of those myself, all heavy wooden poles and skin-lacerating ropes and giant pegs that fought back violently.

I love my tent.

I can hear the bells

When Polly Evans said “It’s not about the tapas”, I took it to mean that it was about cycling through the Pyrenees. I felt again, vividly, the burning in the calves on the climb, the fearful joy of the descent, the open air, the unshadowed sun.

Then, an old cycling companion met the bug again and turned into the grown-up version, startling rattlesnakes regularly in California complete with helmet and puncture kit. His enthusiasms tend to drag me along for the ride, so I was fascinated to find that cycling had gotten a lot more… well, complicated, for lack of a better word.

Then came the day when I wheeled another friend’s bicycle out of the garage (rescued it, really, from a dried-bougainvillea grave; the owner hadn’t touched it for a year). The familiar tick-whir, tick-whir touched off a thrumming that came clear and sweet across the fifteen years it had been since I last rode.

“Ride out to find out what it is to be free. New times, new feelings, discovery”. It’s the oldest jingle I remember, for a motorcycle whose name I’ve forgotten – Discovery, perhaps – and it was a war cry, an ache, the anthem to which I learned how to ride. It’s true that my bike facilitated a certain amount of truancy and lawlessness that would have been impossible otherwise, but it was always about the open road, the unique pleasure of cycling.

And that, in the final analysis, is what the Tour of Nilgiris is really about. It’s a seven-day bicycle ride across the misty green Blue Mountains, starting out on Christmas Day and ending 919 km later where the New Year begins. The personal quest of a small group has grown into a 40-member tour, with a list of sponsors (including, quite appropriately, Nilgiris Supermarket) and a medical team that almost rival the Cricket World Cup, but the fundamental heart remains in the right place.

Also, it’s not enough anymore to say: “I want to ride up yonder mountain… coming?”. There needs to be a reason, a rationale, a message. It’s a practical necessity. If Edmund Hillary had been talking to corporate sponsors he could hardly have left it at “Because it’s there”. Why, that’s not even enough for one slide! So TFN is alright because a) the heart, as I said, is fine and b) their “go green” message is sincere, and who better to preach than those who practice it?

The idea is not startlingly new, just a good one, slightly forgotten.

In the beginning, there was no TV. Before God said “Let there be multiplexes”, there were wooded trails, muddy ponds and bicycles. Whitefield was less than a suburb and India was not even an emerging market (I hear we’ve fully emerged now; if we were a baby turtle, we’d have just begun the perilous journey to the sea), so we spent our time outdoors. Apart from cycling for the sake of it, we also cycled to school, to the shops, to the club, to each other’s houses… so why not to work?

TFN’s view on the subject is “If a bunch of ordinary cyclists of differing age groups can do 919 km over rugged terrain, surely anyone can cycle 10 km to office and back each day?”

Not everyone will do the entire 919 km. Riders can join in and drop out at any stage of the tour. Unsurprisingly, they got a huge response and had to make a “next time” list. There’re probably enough participants for two "next times". Everybody wants to do a tour of the Nilgiris, and since cycling takes you so close to your surroundings, the romance of the ride fits perfectly with the charm of the old colonial hill stations, the sheer beauty of those hills.

I remember several childhood holidays there, blowing my breath out into clouds and thinking to myself that the quality of the cold was different. Just strolling along the edge of the golf course in Wellington was exhilarating, imagine cycling through the hills.

I can feel the pressure of the handle bars beneath my hands and the texture of the road rushing beneath the tyres, as the bike coasts round curves in a land where you seem to breathe in the endorphins directly from the air.

The thing about cycling is – once you know, you never forget. That's a quality the Nilgiris share.