Starling Sihaghad

The road shines under the gaze of my front lights as we ride in the cold of winter morning. I can see my watch without taking my eyes the road and my hand off the right grip of the scooter, that it’s four-forty in the morning. The wind is cold as the breathe of the ice queen as she freeze my finger to senselessness. My eyes concentrate on the small elliptical path illuminated in front me on a moonlit sky through the dark visor of my helmet.

"Fuck, it's cold"

This thought is frozen in my head repeating itself like a stuck record. I juggle the grip of my cycle as I put my hands into the pockets of my jacket, trying to extract as much warmth from my body as possible.

I tap Nick on his knee as I point to my right and shout out to him

" Look Nick, a lake, this road seems familiar. "

Nick, a little apprehensive(as he should be)of my driving grunts in recognition as if to tell me to concentrate on the road in front of me rather than passing scenery.
Driving a two-wheeler has a very different dynamic to it then driving a car. In a car you're in your own compartment and what you don't realize is that thought the glass window everything appears like the television but on a motorcycle you part of the scene rather than be merely being a passive observer.

Nick and I are traveling to Sihaghad, having newer done it before we only have a very hazy almost literally on where we are going. I have found that most Indians(even me) are very bad at giving directions so probably even if you got someone to give you some direction you would most likely end up confused or even worse lost. Therefore in my infinite wisdom I have found a simple way to get somewhere is to ask as many people. Who said men do not ask for directions? Its simple lets say you want to get to point B from point A. What you do is ask various people along the way How to ? get to point B and follow the directions unless they contradict each other. If you've reached a contradiction ask another person and set the contradiction right. Probably repeat step 2 and step 3 and you'll get to your desired location. I’ll publish the full algorithm later if you like .
I followed my algorithm to the simplest of its guidelines and we reached with little or no problem.
Driving up a mountain on a 104cc Honda Activa scooter those have its problems coupled with bad roads and potholes so big whole armies could disappear into and steep inclines made the drive less than ideal. To add to this the tiny red indicator on my fuel dial pointed to empty. I didn't mean it to be like this but circumstances are sometimes stronger than human will.Trackback to 4:34 am as we pull into the Karve Road Petrol(gasoline, call it what you want) Station the power failis, leaving the station incapacitated and us with no fuel or at least not a lot of it. But we drove up the mountain in the cold and in the darkness and by some luck we didn't give ourselves the privilege of driving down a ravine.
As I said before navigation on roads in India is mostly by dead reckoning the compass in your head tells you where to do go . Let the North Star lead onto the path of Venus and in her beauty may you find peace.

As we rode up trying to avoid the unavoidable potholes Nick said silent prayers to himself, tightening the grip his legs had on the seat each time we bumped into something. As I said and have hinted at several times before we reached up, we conquered the cold , the road conditions and lack of fuel, we conquered Sihaghad.


Dawn is a time for creation, the creation of a new day a day conceived but not yet born .The starlings lit up the sky, a harbinger to this creation. In circles they flew dancing to welcome us.
TO BE CONTD ...in part 2

Note you could catch Nick's Blog and Read What He is Reading.