The night before any long rides, as usual the mind loops through excitement and the thoughts like the build-up before the first drop on a roller coaster. By 8 PM in the evening all the packaging, last and final checks of the bike, and the checklist verifications are done. Had early dinner and planned for early bedtime as we always used to plan to get enough sleep on the previous night. Many of us posted good night messages over the WhatsApp group and went to sleep. Guess what, there is no sleep in the eye till almost 1 AM and finally forced the body to go to sleep mode to get at least 1-2 Hours of sleep to tackle the next day ahead of us.

Day 1

Woke up at 2:30, freshened up and started from home at 3:30 towards our usual starting point of Aaladipattiyan Coffee Shop at Guduvancherry. In every ride, this is my favorite part 40-45 mins of ride from home to our starting point. Early in the morning, I used to hear nice songs via the intercom, less traffic or no traffic on the road and heart full of excitement towards the day ahead. I always plan to reach the starting point 5-10 mins earlier than the assembly time of 4:30 AM. With no surprise there were 5-10 folks already reached the starting point before me and greeted me with the warm smile on their faces.

We started our ride after the small brief from our ride captain Ram right on time. In this ride, I have personally asked Jiju to place me in group 2, particularly right after our leads (BART and Prem) just to observe how they are leading the group. Thanks to Jiju for accepting my request and placed me in 3^rd position of group 2 right after the leads which gave me a wonderful opportunity to observe and understand certain things throughout the entire ride. After 40-45 mins of ride, early in the morning we reached our first breakpoint of 109 tea magic stop. Thanks to Rahul who meticulously planned all the pit stops which gave us clean strategy to tackle the whole distance with less stress and efforts. All the breaks were preplanned in terms of time, distance and the place which can accommodate all of us. From the tea stop we started our journey towards the breakfast point which we have planned at Ulunderpet. After the breakfast at Ulunderpet we took left turn at Tiruchirappalli and the next pit stop at a tea shop and all the higher CC vehicles fueled up by utilizing the break time. Then it was just a two pit stops in between one at Karaikudi for the lunch (where all the 350 CC vehicles also fueled up) and one at a tree side on the road somewhere between Karaikudi and Mandabam where our resort was located. Since we made some good time on the ride, we took an extended break there for a moment to relax, stretch, and hydrate ourselves. Then we reached the resort the last destination point by 3:30PM. Thanks to Abhi for the wonderful stay with tasty food and nice swimming pool. 

We relaxed a bit after settling down at the resort and went straight towards the pool which we decided already that the first day evening we spend time at the pool with the folks. We had wonderful time for almost 2 3 hours and had snacks (courtesy of the guys who went for the tea and snack and brought some for us as well). Then everyone had been asked to assemble 7:30PM at the pool side for the official part of the evening and dinner. Congratulations to Gana and Sathish who had been outlawed into CR..! Followed by the short ride debrief like what went right, what could be improved, what happened on the day etc. Then we were informed about the Day 2 plan and starting time which was 4:15 AM the next morning.

Day 2

We started 4:15 AM right on time on the second day towards Danushkodi to visit Arichalmunai. Right after the resort we stopped at a railway gate and waited for a train to cross. Once the train crossed, we started our ride towards the Arichalmunai, crossed the majestic Pamban Bridge (No visibility since it was still dark, but we could clearly feel the wind) and reached the check post of Danushkodi. Here, Thanks to Santo who went even a step further ahead and got us permission to enter Danushkodi 45 mins earlier than the usual entry time of 6 AM which gave us beautiful heads-up of 45 mins than the usual tourists to explore the places and took beautiful pictures of us (us and the bikes). 

There we spent some time and took some group photos at Arichalmunai, we visited the old church and the railway station in the ghost town of Danushkodi. Then we started our journey back towards Rameshwaram to have our breakfast and visited the temple. Here thanks to my fellow CRs who did not visit the temple patiently looked after our gears at the breakfast point and waited for us till we complete our darshan at the temple. After the breakfast and temple visit, on the way back we visited Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Sir’s memorial and we again crossed the Pamban Bridge at slow speed by enjoying the view and stopped at a pleasant beach front park since we still had some time left before our lunch. 

Our plan was to have lunch and then head back to resort to halt for the day. This is where the rest of the fun happens since the weather also supported us a bit and everyone started doing test rides of other’s bikes and took photos again and drone shots. Then we had our lunch and came back to the resort. Then as usual we 5to6 of us gathered at Santos place and had fun time by chit chatting about what was happened during the day. Since, we woke up early in the morning and barely slept for straight two days, we were all tired. I went straight back to room and laid down for a moment. Then we 4to5 of us gathered again at BART’s room and did small R&D that what was the issue on the intercom and what could be the possibility to manage this on our return journey. Surprisingly, it still gave us tough time on the return journey. Then relaxed a bit in the room and went for bike check and chain clean and lubing tasks. 

We gathered at the pool side like yesterday for a small brief about the next day return journey and the intercom findings we did in the evening and dinner. Every one of us were tired to the core but still we forced ourselves to sit and chit chat there till late night and had wonderful time together by sharing the past experiences and fun times.

Day3: Return Journey

The most challenging and demanding part of every ride especially for me personally because of all the physical exertion over the last couple of days and the feeling that the ride will be over soon. We started from the resort and headed back towards Karaikudi for the breakfast where we had our lunch on day 1. From there we headed towards Ulunderpet where we planned for the lunch and stopped in between at Trichy for hydration. All the time throughout the ride we 4 (BART, Santo, Prem, and I) in group 2 were doing the options we could try in our intercom to make it work for the group. Eventually we ended up in a situation where BART, Santo, and I are alone in group mesh and others were not connected via intercom which gave us a bit of tough time to manage the entire group in the last part of the return journey due to the traffic we managed. But the best part about the return journey on the fly R&D is that I have practiced all the options in my intercom at least a 100 times and built-up muscle memory that where all the buttons located. Finally, we reached our usual peel off point of Rolex at Chengalpattu and took the group pictures to mark the official ending off our first ride of 2025.

Looking forward to the next one…!!!