172kmph

Last time I wrote about 151kmph in my Palio on NH4, I had promised myself I was going to take the car on the express-way some day. The revv-happy car begged for a high revv, high adrenaline drive on the wiiiide and loooooong empty stretches on probably the best road in Maharashtra.

I didn't get an opportunity till March-2011 though. Every time I took the car on express-way before March, every time I had some or the other issues in taking the car all the way up on gas. Sometimes it was dark on the expressway, sometimes there was just too much traffic to allow for the risk, and sometimes it was the age of people in the car that prevented me from even thinking about it.

Then came March 8, 2011. I had bought a 21" Wacom Cintiq pressure sensitive tablet from a friend in Goregaon Film-city, and since he was leaving Mumbai in couple of days since, I thought of a plan to make a dash for Mumbai early in the morning, and get back to Pune before office hours. It was a wicked plan, but if successful, it would allow me absolutely ideal conditions on the expressway while coming back - early morning, low road temperature, low traffic, warmed up engine, and most importantly - nobody else in the car whose life would be my responsibility. The expressway and the car would be all to myself. I realized that I may not get such an opportunity to strike 2 birds in a single stone, again.

That day, I left Pune early in the morning, 3:45am, if I remember correctly. I could barely contain my excitement, and could hardly sleep the night before. Even though alarm was set, I got up on instinct, before the alarm went off, and got ready quickly. In no time, my car was on expressway. I had decided to keep it steady while going towards Mumbai, since it was a dark night, and visibility obviously was poor. I was going to cut lose while coming back anyway, so I rather concentrated on getting to the destination, picking up the tablet and then getting back on expressway as quickly as possible, before the Mumbai traffic could bite me.

I reached Filmcity by 6:15am - 2 hours 30 mins door-to-door from Kothrud to Goregaon Fimcity. This was largely thanks to the sometimes-awesome-sometimes-horrible-but-this-time-awesome GPS navigator - Motonav in my Moto Milestone. The maps are probably from MapMyIndia, and the app routed like a charm. That app has been my guiding light in quite a few occasions now, and it has faithfully got me out every time.

After completing the transaction and picking up the tablet, I left Filmcity by 7:15am, took a wrong-turn earlier than the GPS suggested, and then wasted 5-10 minutes further till it got me back on the right route. By the time I reached Vashi toll booth, the sun had already risen up, and it was neither hot, nor chilled - just a pleasant morning with a cool breeze flirting shyly across the face. I was taking in all that while driving in the high speed lane, when I noticed an Innova honking behind me. Before I realized the reason, he changed his lane, cut me in, and then started choking me behind him, as a revenge. That was the kind of provocation I needed when I was all propped up for a high speed blast on expressway in few minutes. I cut in 2 lanes to my left in a wild single swoop, like the auto drivers recklessly do in Pune. Unlike the auto drivers though, I wasn't reckless, but had my eyes on both the rear view mirrors. Again switched one more lane to the left to avoid a bus in front, and was racing parallel to the Innova in no time while cutting through the traffic. But my Palio's 2nd and 3rd gear proved too much for the Innova guy. In a few moments, he was in my rear view mirror, and though he tried a lot to race me, he could never see anything but my car's tail-lights after that.

First it was the cool breeze, and then the pleasure of comprehensively beating a highway bully on his provocation, that set the tone for the expressway for me. I was hyper excited since the plan had worked well and I was on schedule. I was in right frame of mind, with all conditions favorable, to take the final plunge.

I joined the expressway by around 8:15am. Cut through the initial "slow-moving" traffic and once the stretch was long and inviting enough, I cut lose. This was the moment I was waiting for. I built up the speed right from 2nd gear; flirting with the red mark on the RPM gauge. Soon I was racing with the wind. A Swift Desire (VDI if I remember correctly) tried to race with me, in vain. He never made it to the front and gave up trying around 140kmph mark. I kept on building the speed. I literally whizzed past a lot of cars, which were probably doing a respectable 120-130kmph. I bet they would have wondered if Audi/BMW had started building a hatchback, and since when. ;)

I was comfortably past 160kmph mark now and the car was stable. I kept the peddle floored. 165 - 166 - 167 - 168 ... the progress was a little slow in this band, despite the gas. 170kmph - 171 - 172 ... and I noticed the car was a little wobbly now. The same car which was rock steady in 160s, was noticeably wobbly during the 170s. I had a pair of Bridgestone Turanza ER-60 in the front, which are rated for high speed till 190kmph. But in the rear, I had a pair of old Good-Year Assurance, which I was not very confident about. The wobbliness of the car, added to the lack of trust on the rear tires, created doubt in my mind, and in a flash I took my foot off the gas.

I kept it around 145kmph till I again got a psyche and went till 165kmph just for the fun of it. But in the back of my mind, I had accepted 172kmph as the tops for the day, and felt there was no point in going any further till I get something like Micheline PP2 or Yoko S-Drives on. I had already breached 160kmph, which is the psychological 100mph (miles-per-hour) mark. I had already breached 165kmph which the manual mentions as the top-speed (bollocks!) of Palio Stile 1.6 Sport. And besides, this was an accurate 172kmph speed, since it was measured on the GPS. I am sure if the speedometer in the dashboard was working, it would have hovered somewhere around 180kmph mark, due to inherent measurement errors in the mechanical speedos.

Not a single car overtook me on expressway that day.

I reached home at 9:30am - 1 hour 15 minutes after I took to the expressway, and 2 hours 15 minutes after I left filmcity. In all, I left pune at around 4am in the morning, and came back from the heart of Mumbai on the same day by 9:30am in the same morning. Many didn't trust me on that, but the Cintiq stands a tall witness to the fact.

For a driver who had learned driving 8-months back, achieving 172kmph in a stock car, without any mods, is a booster to be cherished for long time. And cherish it I will. But equally true, it doesn't stand anywhere in comparison with those who have scaled 200kmph and higher in their cars, modified or else, on the same expressway. John Krakauer maps this emotion to words well, when he gets fascinated with the life in Chamonix, in his Eiger Dreams, and muses -

"It's a luminous fall afternoon in downtown Cham,
and I am sitting on the terrace of Brasserie L'M,
loitering over a strawberry crêpes and café au lait,
wondering whether I might, given my limited talents,
ever rise above the life of terminally banal."

Shivneri, Sangli, Online Booking and Me

PART1: ~8pm, Friday, 17-Jun

Every time I go to Sangli using public transport, something just has to go wrong. This time round, I booked a ticket for 6pm Shivneri to Sangli from Swargate. After waiting for one full hour at the bus stand, for the 6pm Shivneri, which never turned up, a quick, sane recheck of the ticket printout suddenly made me realize I had actually booked a ticked for 6AM bus rather than 6pm!

So even after leaving office by 4pm, here I am on the way to Peth now, just crossed Katraj ghat at ~8pm (!), with Pethnaka still (at least) 3hrs from here. Then Sangli will still be at least 1hr from there, via a truck, or if I get really lucky - an asiad. Not to mention that there is this constant worry about rain killing those books and laptop in my backpack.

To add to this misery, couple of idiots sitting on either side of me, are constantly chatting on phone for last one full hour. There was a 10 minutes break. But now they have started up again! How fucking difficult it is to stay calm and silent for sometime? Why dont their batteries just dry up? Doesn't their mouth ache due to so much of continuous talking? Don't they get exhausted holding the phone near ear for so long?

If there happens to be a break between all these phone calls, they start chewing something like those salted and roasted peanuts, the smell of which gives me a kick in my guts and strongly reminds me that I am hungry too.

And as if all this is not enough, there are these lamest of the lame and gayest of the gay songs playing in this Kolhapur-bound Shivneri's stereo, that are driving me nuts. I mean I pay premium price for a Volvo ticket and I can't even get a moment of silence forget a peaceful journey? If anyone wants to hear this lame and meticulously-chosen-to-torture 90's Hindi music, he should get his own player and shove those ear-buds up his ... ears. Why force everyone to compulsorily listen to this junk? But that's the way it is, and I need to bear this for 3 more hours at least. Best of luck to myself!

So in short, yet another miserable and fucked-up journey to Sangli via public transport. Jai Ho!



EDIT:PART2: 10:30pm, Friday, 17-Jun to 12:15am, Saturday, 18-Jun

I was partially dozing when I suddenly got a jolt and woke up to find that the bus was standing near a fly-over on NH4. I cursed the conductor for not even announcing that the bus had reached Pethnaka. Hurriedly I got down after one other guy, and thanked my stars for waking me up just at the right moment. A 2 minutes walk after getting down and I realized I had actually gotten down near Karad fly-over and not Pethnaka fly-over. Bravo! It was 10:30pm and it had started raining too! Just what the doctor ordered. Life couldn't get any rosier.

Just then, as if it was all scripted, I spotted a Miraj bound asiad entering Karad, and after a 10 minutes wait on the pavement, I was in the asiad, on the way to Sandli-direct, sitting comfortably by a window seat taking in the cool breeze.

So just like that, I was out of the hours long misery and into a blissful state, sure that I wont be stranded anywhere, and will reach Sangli today night itself. When I am hungry and such a stark transition takes place, it makes me feel like someone up there is playing with me, telling me - "see that fella? see how I can screw you? and then unscrew you too in a jiffy? that's my power. now surrender." Well, guess what, here is a finger for you.

Then I reach Sangli in the dead of the night, eat something, and I get my sanity back.

Of Androids and the Everlasting Fetish

It's just been an year since I bought my Moto Milestone, but it has already started looking very old and outdated in terms of hardware. The 600MHz single core processor on it pales in front of the 1GHz dual-core Tegra's and Snapdragon's that have come out. Responsiveness is the most essential feature of any cellphone, and the Milestone seemingly lacks that now, in comparison with those dual-cores. Not to mention the buggy 2.2 Froyo upgrade from Motorola that kills my home screen time and again, and adds to my frustration.

I have been contemplating buying a new blazzzing-fast, top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art android for sometime now. Samsung's Galaxy series automatically comes to mind, even though their reputation is notorious when it comes to delievering pure android experience. They spruce up the UI quite a bit I hear. The other option being Nexus-S that has launched recently, but looks overpriced when compared with a similarly juiced Galaxy. The Galaxy S-II with its super hardware, was looking very tempting and then came the news of Samsung working on its next flagship Galaxy S-III. Though the release is slated for 1st quarter next year, another news that has grabbed my attention, and put my Galaxy plans on hold, is that of Nvidia being in the process releasing a QUAD-CORE(!!) mobile processor, code-named Project Kal-El. Even my laptop doesn't have a quad-core as of now! The details about the graphics performance are impressive, and makes me longingly look forward to its release and subsequent release of an android featuring it.

Besides, now that not many handsets are being released with hard qwerty keypad, the focus having been shifted to swype instead, I think I will need to reorient myself towards swype, let go of the hard-qwerty drool, and grab the first Tegra quad-core android that comes out in the market.

Beyond Crossroads - A Month Goes By

World beyond C++ has been perplexing and kind of intimidating so far. Probably the same reason makes it quite exciting. I mean, it's not like c++ was a cakewalk or something. I had worked hard to get some good purchase on the linux workflow - builds and makefiles and scripts and editors and gdb and the gamut of technologies that make a c++ backend work.

By the way, this 'getting purchase' thing has come from John Krakaur's highly influential Everest disaster saga - 'Into Thin Air'. I was blown away after watching 'Touching The Void' and then was literally breathless reading 'Into Thin Air'. Couldnt put it down. Anyway, I better keep this newfound fascination for mountaineering, for some other time.

So coming back to c++, I never had a full grasp of how much different the world is outside c++. Python, ruby, rails, php, java, javascript, jquery, struts, ejb, soap, xml-rpc, spring, swing, ajax, django, php frameworks .... the world was oozing with tools and technologies for the web platform, and here I was sustaining some glorious yet already-implemented c++ backend for last couple of years. I was happy only learning and reverse-engineering the marvelous architecture, even though I knew it wasnt going to be implemented again.

I kept neglecting my hunch that entrepreneurial chances are more prevalent in emerging technologies, precisely due to their relevant immaturity; rather than in a time tested technology that's losing its relevance over time.

God knows how much time I am going to take to get a grip on this fish-market of web-technologies, but till then it will be very painful to feel so incompetent whenever I come across a fabulous webapp (or framework) and understand zilch about its internals.

These days I feel like some stone-age tribesman from the amazons. Just out of the wilderness and smack into a modern civilization. I know how to make a stone-spear and hunt using it; but hey, these modern civilizations eat processed food and besides have sharper weapons much more effective than my hand-made stony meanie weenie. So where do I go? All that's useful, and left with me, are some leaves wrapped around my waist ...... and some instincts.

सुकलेल्या खोडाचं गुलाबी स्वप्न

आजकाल नवीन लेन्स घेतल्यापासून रोज कुठेतरी रानात फोटो काढत भटकत असतो. तसाच आजही गेलो होतो. घरी आल्यानंतर फोटो चेक केले आणि ते एका मागोमाग एक एडिट करत असताना हा फोटो समोर आला -


फोटो तर छान आला होताच, पण त्या सुकलेल्या झाडाला फुटलेल्या गुलाबी मोहोराचा विरोधाभास बघून सुचलेल्या या चार ओळी -

जीर्ण तनु जरी झाले तरीही
मनी पाकळी फुटे गुलाबी
ययातिपरी शापित जगणे
शरीर सुके पण ओठ शराबी

Destination Malvan: Day 2 - A Surreal Drive on NH17 back to Pune

Continued from previous post: Destination Malvan: Day 2 - Dolphins and Snorkeling

There were few reasons, why I felt against taking the same route back to Pune - Malvan -> Kankavli -> Gaganbavda ghat -> Kolhapur -> NH4 -> Pune. That route would have been quicker, but nothing is as boring as taking the same route back to your home. Besides, NH4 is not as serenely smooth towards Pune, and on Sunday, tremendous evening traffic, which I had experienced while coming back from Raigad via Varandha ghat, makes it dangerous road to tread on. And there is no driving pleasure due to its one-way nature. You just have to go through the motions and traffic. If there is an accident somewhere, it's even more cumbersome to switch lanes and get going. And believe me, accidents do happen here during rush hours. People are careless thinking they cant have an accident on a one-way and then one unseen pothole, or one unseen animal on the road, or one unseen car parked by some idiot in the night without blinking hazard lights, can lead to a series of high speed accidents/scrapings/heated arguments that can hold up the entire traffic behind them.

Apart from that anti NH4 stance, there were some pro NH17 feelings making their way as well. NH17 is considered to be one of the dangerous roads, at least in Maharashtra, due to its single-lane nature and the high-speed and careless Mumbai-Goa traffic. So for a new driver, it's a challenge he cannot say no to, and also an opportunity for testing the turf before taking on some highly difficult drives like Manali-Leh, later on in life. Other than these reasons, we were also thinking of doing Ganapatipule on the way back. So NH17 won over NH4, despite being at disadvantage in terms of time and distance in comparison with NH4. And we took Malvan -> Kankavli -> Ratnagiri -> Chiplun -> Mahad -> Mangaon -> Tamhini Ghat -> Pune route.

We started from Malvan at around 2:30pm and reached Kankavli, which is about 40km, in an hour. Took our late lunch there and by 5pm started our main journey. It was around 480kms of journey back to Pune on NH17. Out of those 480km, nearly 350kms were on NH17, and it had already started nearing sunset. So majority of this drive would come during stark night, on a dreaded single-lane highway, without any street-lights, alongside bad mannered and careless drivers, and through zigzag ghats, since NH17 is comprised mostly of ghat sections. It was a monumental drive coming up, and god knows I was excited as hell to take on this monster. It's not always that you learn to drive, and then within 3-4months you get to tackle one of the most dangerous highways, during night, all by yourself. Honestly, despite at the risk of sounding like a preacher, I strongly believe and feel that these are the real pleasures of life. I will any time splurge on such drives, rather than spending in malls and multiplexes.

Anyway, so we began our journey at around 5pm. Ratnagiri was 129kms from Kankavli and chances of Ganapatipule started appearing bleak as the drive progressed. But boy, was that an eventful drive! Shortly after leaving Kankavli, towards Ratnagiri, the road started getting better and the daytime views on NH17 are pretty good. It made us drive leisurely without realising how it's going to affect us later. I was driving at around 60kmph, using gear shifts to control the speed, so that the brakes don't get overheated, which can result into a fatal brake-fail situation later on. Suddenly one yellow Maruti Alto overtook us at a blind corner and cut us in, to avoid incoming traffic at the corner. That was a very provocative manoeuvre and I felt like bumping into that guy for overtaking in such a dangerous way. It was a challenge, and though I had stayed away from falling prey to provocations on highway, this time I just couldn't let go. I accepted this challenge and thus began a half-an-hour race on the NH17. Suddenly the speed picked up to 90-110kmph, even in the ghat sections. His was an Alto, painted yellow, with a 1-litre engine; and mine was a Palio with a 1.6-litre engine. So the only way for him to stay in the competition was to take undue risks that I wouldn't take. That's what he did. Overtaking at blind corners was what he regularly did, and got lucky with it every time. I always refrained from doing that. Overtaking at blind corner is a gamble which if goes against you, you don't get to gamble again. Simple as that. So blind-corner-overtaking is a complete no-no. सिर सलामत तो रेसेस पचास.

My advantage, on the other hand, was when there was climb in the ghats. Having a powerful engine helps you climb steep roads without much difficulty. Still, I wanted to race without straining the engine. So I maxxed out at 4500 RPMs, strictly not more than that. I had a long journey ahead of me, and didn't want to strain the engine unduly. So the accelerator was never floored during the race. This game of cat-and-mouse catch-up went on for around half-an-hour. I would catch him, and when I am almost there, he would take his nose out without realising what kind of risk he was taking. Due to this, while he got away, many a times, I got stuck behind some slowwwy slowwww containers blocking all corners for vehicles behind them. But ultimately, I caught him on a moderate climb with some straight road, drove for couple moments in parallel, gave out a war cry and raced ahead at 110kmph. Within couple of minutes, he disappeared from my rear view mirrors.

By the time the race was over, sun had set, and it was getting dark. So I slowed down a little and took it easy. We reached Ratnagiri at around 7:30pm. Ganapatipule was ruled out now, as we still had 350kms to cover till home. So we took a short break, and after filling up petrol at a highway petrol pump before Ratnagiri bifurcation, we carried on at 8pm. Our next stop was Mangaon, just before climbing Tamhini ghat. And it was almost 210kms from our location. So we estimated that by 11pm we would reach Mangaon, and from there, Pune is around 120kms and it will take at least 2.5hrs for us to get to Chandani chowk. So target was Mangaon by 11pm, and then Pune by 1:30am in the morning.

Rest of the journey onwards from Ratnagiri, was not as eventful, though we did have butterflies in stomach, on couple of occasions. It was stark dark on the highway by then, and people were as manner-less as they can get anywhere else. Nobody bothers about the comfort of the incoming driver. People never mind driving with 'upper' all the time. I used to switch between 'upper' and 'dipper' when I saw incoming traffic, but not many were responsive and very few cared. So rather than getting into a sticky situation myself, while trying to save some careless ass from a little discomfort, I stopped doing that. I only responded when somebody switched to dipper pro-actively. To top it all, I also saw some highly irresponsible mofos who were driving with as much as 4 high-power xenons, where even 2-high power xenons can absolutely blind the driver of incoming vehicle. Initially I would curse no end, vehemently. Eventually, it became a norm and I also ran out of my stock of choice-words. So as the night wore on, and the initial bout of highway-night-driving-frustration began to recede, the cabin fell silent.

During the night driving on that single-lane highway, to my own surprise, I was consistently driving at 100-110kmph. The ghats would bring the average speed down later on, but there also, in the ghats I managed to successfully overtake a v-tec, a fiesta apart from other sedans. I also gave a successful chase to an innova in the ghats after Chiplun, on the way to Mahad. I was driving quite good, enough to chase that impressive innova driver, so much so that after some time, we were the only two headlamps seen in the area, without trace of any other vehicle. But at the end, that innova guy was just too good for me. One bad judgement on my part, when I got little stuck behind a truck, and he vanished ahead of me.

We reached Mangaon by 10:45pm, 15-mins earlier than our estimate. Took a short 5-10mins break before we began to climb the lonely Tamhini at that late in the night. We had lots of baggage in the boot, including a costly DSLR gear, and I was really worried about waylaying in the 'famous' Tamhini forests. I told people about the risk, told them that we aren't going to take any break until we reach home, locked all the doors from inside and carried on.

The road condition of Tamhini was absolutely abysmal. It was very frustrating to drive in that area, in 2nd gear, because of the huge potholes. It took us 3-insane hours to cross Tamhini in that speed; and we reached Chandani Chowk by 1:45am and home by 2am. I took a pledge right after reaching home, that I will never ever take to Tamhini again, unless Tamhini is my destination. The roads are just abysmally pathetic after this monsoon, and it's better avoided.

The Malvan chapter closed at 2am in the morning of 27-Dec in Pune, after an eventful and surreal journey on the NH17, where I learned some of the hardest but most essential lessons from a driver's perspective. And thankfully, this learnings didn't come at a fatal price, and we reached home safe and sound.

Destination Malvan: Day 2 - Dolphins and Snorkeling

Continued from previous post: Destination Malvan: Day 1 - Pune to Malvan via Kolhapur

On Sunday, 26-Dec, we got up early in the morning, rushed to the Malvan jetty, where the guy, with whom we talked the previous night, was waiting for us. He managed a boat for us, and excited, we scrambled in

the boat for a best-view location. We were going on a dolphin-trail.

Dolphins are sighted near Konkan coast around Ratnagiri, it seems. Last time we had been to Anjarle, in Dapoli, there too, we had a chance to go on such a trail, but our laziness had killed that opportunity. This time round though, we were in the boat, and on the trail.

Early morning boat-ride, with a pleasant and cool sea-breeze, and sighting and subsequent trail of a small group of dolphins, was what we did and enjoyed a lot during the couple hour trail. We wished the dolphins would jump out of the water and give us a shot of a lifetime, but that wasn't to be. All we could see was a dolphin's tail/fins, as they were breast-stroking (to map it to human swimming styles).

After coming back on shore, our guide packed us on a boat to snorkeling destination. Now this was an interesting part. I had been looking forward to doing snorkeling, if not scuba diving, for ages, since when I was in England. Little did I know that it was available in our own backyards.

Scuba diving, it seems, was also available, but it was discontinued. God knows why!

Off we went in the boat, near Sindhudurga fort (the backside of it), where we were given, snorkel ls and goggles, and I was finally in the water looking below the water to spot anything that can be of interest! There were different kinds of fishes, sea-weeds, corals etc. The water was a little disturbed, so it was long way from being as clear as they show on NagGeo or Discovery. I had managed to pack my Samsung Marine in the pocket of my swimming shorts. I was all 'gadgety' on this trip, and it paid off. I pulled that phone out in the water, and managed to click some pics under-water. The phone, as was advertised, didn't give a single problem, and allowed me to shoot underwater. What a privilege! Have look at these pics which I took with it underwater -

The snorkeling activity lasted for around 20-mins. The guide would take us to some underwater creatures, pronounce their names, and that's it, we move on to the next. I don't remember a single name now, apart from the zebra-fish. Besides, what I felt objectionable in his practice, was using a bread slice to attract fishes, so that tourists can have a better look at them. This I found unhealthy for the marine life, because one of my bird-photographer friend had once told me that he never places baits to attract birds, so as to shoot them. Placing such baits can alter the bird's feeding habits and will make it dependent on your baits for food. This can unable the bird later to secure his own food, once you are done with your shooting and stop placing the baits.

By the time we were done with snorkeling, and returned back on the shore, it was around 11:30am, and there was a huuuuuuuge crowd going to Sindhudurga fort. So we instantly dropped the plan to see the fort. We had our breakfast that time. Came back to our room, had a bath, readied ourselves, paid the host his dues, and by 2:30pm, left Malvan for Pune.

Continued in the next post - Destination Malvan: Day 2 - A Surreal Drive on NH17 back to Pune