ON THE MOVE: Members of he Great Indian Road Trip team, in Bangalore on Friday. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

Bangalore: Most young bikers in the city are satisfied with a "drag" along Mahatma Gandhi Road late at night or through the Mysore Road flyover. Both practices have been stopped by the police.

There are folks like the four ardent bikers who zipped into Bangalore on Friday. They could race as much road conditions allowed and have just completed the first leg of their 22,000-km trip around the country. The "Great Indian Road Trip" is well on its way.

Team leader Sundeep Gajjar, who has taken a four month sabbatical from work for the trip, said covering the first leg of 9,600 km was an experience in itself and a fascinating insight into how hospitable and helpful the biking fraternity around the country can be. Four exciting bikes, the Comet 250, Italiano Jupiter, Kinetic Italiano Blaze and the imported Fireblade CBR 1000-RR are what they have been riding on. Besides Sundeep, Bunny Punya, Sunil Gupta and Ashish Diwakaran, were here to interact with the media.

"People helped us being guides through some difficult stretches and local bikers accompanied us into every town. The welcome we received in places such as Goa and Mangalore is unforgettable," they said. Riding high up in the mountains and through desert wastes were all part of the first leg. Starting from Delhi on Independence Day, they rode to Amritsar and the India-Pakistan border post, then through Jammu, Srinagar, Leh and Ladakh passing terrain that severely tested the endurance of the riders and their bikes. Afterwards it was through the Himalayan foothills and back to Delhi.

The next phase was to take them along Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune and Goa to Mangalore. And thus, to Bangalore before the next leg that should take them through Udhagamandalam and Coimbatore to parts of Tamil Nadu and after a stopover at Kanyakumari, passing most of the East Coast and then back to Delhi.

Now for a quick fact file: the road trip will cover 26 States, will have six bikes for use, three Italian scooters and one "superbike" for most of the travel, have two backup vans and one mobile communication centre. There are scheduled city rallies at Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai, where local biking enthusiasts join the team for brief stints. The official trip website is www.theGreatIndianRoadTrip.com and blogs can be seen and posted on xbhp.rediffland.com. There will be a well-illustrated book to follow at the end of it all.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu