My pan India roadtrip started on March 9, 2021

The day has finally come. I had been planning this for long, to be precise, since the time I left my job in Oct 2020. I was two minds on this. ‘Either I am doing the pan india trip or I will do the India-London roadtrip’ this is what went in my mind for almost two months. Thanks to Covid, the India-London roadtrip seems like a distance possibility. It also tilted the decision in favor of the roadtrip.

My primary purpose(s) behind the roadtrip were

1. To do something that I have not done before & I would enjoy doing

2. Spend more time in Indian States where I have not spend much time

3. Do it exactly as per my liking. If I like to stay in a city for one more day, I should be able to. If I want to change the itinerary, I should be able to. Basically, I wanted to get closer to my inner feelings, thoughts etc so that after this trip, I emerge as a more ‘unified’ human being.

Those who know me, know that point 1 always converge on travel for me. Meditation / Yoga / spiritual retreat would probably come close 2nd. Having said that, I wanted to do something as I being the driver. So guided retreats were soon thrown out of the window.

As for point 2, I decided to skip States I have covered in good amount. They will be Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, J&K, Sikkim .. soon I realized, the list is long. So lets look at the States I have not covered much. It helped me zero in. Gujrat is on the top of the list. There is UP, Bihar, Jharkhand & Orissa too. But apart from Varanasi in UP, none of the other states excited me in the list. Soon I remembered that I always wanted to cover Uttarakhand on the road. Doing Badrinath, Kedarnath & Gangotri circuit via road was a dream. & then I realized I have not done Spiti either. It has been sometime that I have been dreaming about riding a bike in snow in Spiti. It is not that I have done Spiti in summers. But since my wife & I did Ladakh circuit on bike, this time, I wanted to do something harder with Spiti ride.

I had good list of states. When I started to put them together, I gravitated towards doing a northward trip from Bengaluru to Spiti via west (Gujrat & Rajasthan). I realized that I had silently let Spiti win over Uttarakhand ( I realized doing both will become herculean / monotonous .. I dont know the real reason, just that, my instinct asked me to .. afterall the whole purpose of the trip was to be able to hear your instincts in a clearer way .. refer to point 3 above). I also silently sneaked in Jaisalmer in the itinerary.

So finally, the plan looked like - Bengaluru - Rann of Kutch - Jaisalmer - Atal Tunnel - Spiti circuit . Link to the map - https://goo.gl/maps/jFcNCMKkoYTEhA1cA

I decided that I will do the southward planning later. I was in two minds between getting deeper into North East vs coastal eastern ride (Puri, Vizag, Chennai, Rameshwaram, Kanyakumari). I realized I still am in two minds. So the decision is deferred for now.

Coming back to original plan - I made another rule of not doing more than 300 kms in a day. Primarily because a larger distance means more time on road & less time for finding a stay in a new city. Also, it becomes pretty tiring & you tend to get into mission mode of covering large distance in a day. So what I did is, put Atal Tunnel as destination, started adding the above mentioned locations as stops & then started looking at 300 kms distances to find intermediate pit stops.

I suddenly realized that I do not have to figure this out to the T before the trip. Afterall, I wanted to live this trip by the day. So I decided to do granular planning only for a day in advance. Being a control freak, I did end up doing granular planning till Shirdi. & then I decided to give it a break.

I would also mention about other important pre-trip-preps that I did.

Preparing the bike
Apart from regular service, I decided to put a rider backrest & Ladakh carrier on my bike. Ladakh carrier, I bought from Chandigarh, which was enroute for me when I was coming back from Kashmir backpacking trip in Jan 2021. It costed around 1.4k . The rider backrest setup costed Rs 2k. I also did a bit of paint job which costed around 1k. The overall servicing costed me Rs 5k which included replacing the entire chain assembly as my rear sprocket had around 10 teeth broken. Overall, the entire bike setup costed me Rs 10k. I would like to thank Amit Chouksey, a friend of mine, without whose support, I would have probably become lethargic & had given up on my bike.

Stuff that I am carrying

A backpack which has

1. warm clothing for -11 degrees (that is the temperature Spiti has).

2. Regular clothes like 3 Tshirts, 1 Jeans, socks, underwears etc

3. Clothes for rain - poncho, faux leather gloves, rain pant, shoe cover

4. Sleeping related stuff - 1 semi thick blanket which can act as a pillow too, a double bed fleece with zip which doubles up as sleeping bag

I also decided to carry

1. a laptop bag primarily for my laptop, medicines & stuff that I would like to keep handy

2. A -10 degree sleeping bag. You will get one for Rs 2k in a store called Battle Fatigue in Delhi.

3. A tent with sleeping mat wrapped around it. The regular Quechua one of Rs 1.5k

4. Bungee chords & misc tools for the bike in a cloth bag

5. A 5 ltr water can

6. A tent cover with which I cover all the bags while putting them on my Ladakh carrier.

It took me 15 min to set all my luggage up in the Ladakh carrier with the help of bungee chords. This is how my bike looked once loaded.

The entire Ladakh carrier was utilized. The areas reserved for keeping pretrol cans, I ended up putting the bike tool pack & the 5 ltr water can.

I have also created a public list of places that I could potentially be staying at. This I have done in Google Maps. I have kept a target expense of Rs 2k per day. I figured that with the 30 kms per ltr mileage & for covering 300 kms everyday, I would need to put petrol of Rs 1k every day. Another 1k is for lodging & food. I decided to keep it 50-50. So it created a ceiling of Rs 500 per day for lodging. So I decided to use campsites as much as possible. Hence I am also carrying tent, sleeping bag & sleeping mat with me.

At the moment of writing this post, I am in day 2 of my trip & currently in Bijapur (now renamed to Vijaypura). I will be writing separate posts for Day 1 & 2 (hopefully tomorrow) & eventually for every day following it. So stay tuned. The idea is - I would like an travelogue to exist for anyone who intend to do a budget constraint roadtrip in India. If not for everyone, then at least from-to Bengaluru for someone who intend to do it on his/her Royal Enfield :).