Tour of Aravallis — Preparations
Since I started cycling a little more than a year back, I have always tried to find about various events happening in India and try to attend a couple of events each year. While last year Deccan Cliffhanger was a great experience, this year in March I did The Impossible Race and plan to do India Gate to Gateway of India ride in December, so I was not really planning to do anymore events this year. However my friend Yash told me about Tour of Aravallis and I really liked the route. Climbing famous Mt. Abu on Day 1 was really tempting, but I didn’t register right away. I kept following the event on social media. Their website looked quite professional, soon they announced hotels where participants were going to stay and they all looked really luxurious hotels. Regular updates on social media and on their website gave me an impression of a very professionally managed event.
Nagpur is really a plateau and on our daily rides, it’s really hard for us to even do a 100+ meters elevation. Toughest climb we have nearby are only Category 4, so doing an HC climb was definitely very-very tempting to me and finally I gave in to my inner voice and registered for TOA. I thought it will be a good experience to test my climbing capabilities. I wanted to be ready for the tour so I tried to do repeats of local climbs whenever I could. I fell sick during early days of August for a few days but since TOA started in september, I didn’t worry much. After I got well, I decided to do 300 KM brevet on 14th August to test my recovery and do some endurance training. I have already finished 300 and 400 KMs brevets earlier, so I was comfortable going for it. I started ok but after sometime headwinds made the day really tough for me. I suffered a lot that day and took lots of breaks to rest and recover, but finished well within allotted time of 20 hrs. I took a few days rest after the brevet and then resumed my usual daily riding and as the TOA approached, I felt that I was ready to do my best.
Next challenge for me was how to travel to Ahmedabad with my bike. I first thought of travelling by train but they all were taking a long time and I didn’t want to tire myself before the tour, so I booked flight. I got my bike serviced, unassembled and packed in the box at Ncyclopedia a day before leaving and was all set. Thankfully I have booked my flights with Air India and Jet Airways both of which don’t charge anything extra for over-sized boxes, if you are within weight-limit and box is for a sports equipment. So I landed at Ahmedabad on 31st morning and was a bit apprehensive about bike box fitting in a taxi. I called up an Ola Cab and found out that bike box actually fits in most small cars (hatchbacks) after folding back seats. I deposited my bike box with organisers and went to visit an NGO called Jeevantirth, as I was free till evening. It was nice to get some rest, home-made food and see some of the projects being run by them. In the evening they dropped me at the departure location.
Our luxury bus was already waiting for us there and was ready to take us to Abu Road town, from where the Tour was scheduled to start next morning. Delicious snacks and drinks were offered during the journey of about 4 hours. Our bikes had reached before us and were waiting for us at the Hotel. Mine was still in the box though and I was a bit worried as I had not assembled a bike on my own till then. I wanted to check if it arrived safe through it’s air and road journey. I also wanted to eat and sleep soon so as to get enough rest before the tour starts. I started opening the box myself, but was really struggling to even cut the zip ties which held together bike parts. Thankfully Montra, title sponsor of the TOA, had also sent 2 really good bike technicians to accompany us riders for the full tour. One of them came to my aid and quickly opened and assembled my bike. I was relieved.
By that time dinner was ready and I went and did some much needed refueling for the days to come. After the dinner I rode my bike inside the hotel area itself, just to check if everything was fine. Thankfully nothing seemed amiss, so I placed my bike in the bike area and went up to catch some sleep.
How the tour unfolded? Watch out for my next post.
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Originally published at palewar.com on October 1, 2016.
