Roadtrip Day 7: Bike Repair Day at Navasari & exploring Gujrati food at Surat [March 15, 2021]
After great frustration came great satisfaction.
I was up at 5 AM, winded up my tent, had my morning tea & then watched sunrise as I had nothing much to do. I also clicked pic of the petrol pump where I camped. As a quick recap, I was at the petrol pump in the night because my bike had broken down at around 10:30 PM previous night.
I was hoping for Mr Dilpesh to send folks to me. I dropped him a SMS as I did not want to disturb him early. But it only became clearer to me later that he intends to send folks once they checkin to office, which will not happen before 9 AM. That was a bit of let down but I did not have much options anyway.
In the meantime, I checked the battery by shorting to figure out that battery is working fine. I called up my friend Amit who is pretty good at these things. But we could not make much headway. At around 9:20, folks from Royal Enfield service center came. The mechanic seemed to be in a bit of a hurry but was able to diagnose the problem to current not passing from ammeter. He said the female connection from ammeter had a lot of ‘salt’ which is causing the problem. He shorted some wires & then asked me to ride to service center. My bike stopped shortly & then we figured the fuse is blown. He changed the shorting & the wires literally started to burn. So he removed the shorting quickly.
He then pushed my vehicle to service center which was the Indian version of towing. At the service center I called up Mr Dilpesh & requested him if he can ask the guy to slow down a bit. Well, nothing much changed after that. He changed the ammeter & kept trying some permutation & combination. It was 11:30 AM & we did not have a clear solution. Earlier, the problem was broken circuit but now we had faulty circuits causing shorting & blow fuses.
On top of it, the mechanic only understood Gujrati. So it was really tough dealing with him. While he understood what I am saying, I was not able to understand much of what he is saying. Neither he was making an effort to explain until I prod him a lot.
Another customer turned up & he saw my plight. He gave me number of another mechanic in Navasari. I also pinged a friend of mine from Gujrat, Mahek Shah, to get contact of some good mechanic in/around Surat. Unfortunately, we could not find anything relevant in Surat so I decided to go the mechanic that I got in Navasari itself.
After the ‘patch work’ on my wiring was done, I paid the bill (around Rs 500), called the mechanic who promptly sent me location on whatsapp & started riding to his location. I was pretty hungry by then & decided to have lassi at shere punjab on the way.
When I reached the garage (the name is Devi Bike Garage), the mechanic named Jitu was expecting me. Apparently, the customer who gave me his contact has spoken to him about me. His brother Abhishek & Jitu promptly started to inspect my vehicle. They explained how the wires that are being put are thin & hence are getting heated. They also explained how on turning the handle, the ammeter is also moving, which indicated at some angle, some wire is shorting with the body. They also provided proper wire insulation to ensure the shorting does not happen.
My brake light was disconnected (by the previous mechanic) & I requested them to see if it can be connected as it is very unsafe driving without break lights. Apparently, my shock absorbers were configured very loose/light which is leading to the breaklight wire getting bumped/brushed/smashed with the body & then the wire has started to short. They tried moving the wire to a different location, provided insulation at the part & also changed my shock absorber configuration to a more hard/rigid mode.
I did a quick ride & did notice that the fuse is not getting heated at all. It was heating significantly earlier. I also figured that the phone holder charging is now burnt & it is not working. Probably because of some shorting the previous mechanic did. But then I decided not to worry about it.
These folks also gave me general gyan around bike riding. Suggested to change oil every 3k kms. They also told me not to take small turns as I have lot of luggage tied at the back. They also figured that my front wheel has dug & my handle may wobble because of it, specially because now I have more weight at the back. I had figured most of these things myself & I was surprised at their attention to detail.
They also told about how their father was a great guy at repairing things & they had picked it up from their father. They also mentioned that when they had folks visiting them for long rides, they ask them to leave the bike for a week, get it ready & then ask them to do a 300 km ride, post which, if they see any issues, fix those & then get it ready for longer rides. I was not able to find such dedicated guys in Bangalore. My own mechanic was always time strapped. I suggest to folks that if you intend to do long ride, dropping by at Navasari for a few days & have your bike checked/worked, is probably not a bad idea, even for Bangalore folks. You can reach Jitu bhai at 8469833899
Btw, it is worth mentioning that both Jitu & Abhishek had studied from Belgaum & had taken great pride in telling folks that the bike is from their village. While in my previous post I talked about how a bike mechanic close to Shirdi refused to take money from me & had rated Maharashtra a notch above Karnataka, this particular incidence made the score even I guess. Karnataka: 1, Maharasthra: 1 :-D .
By the time I was done with it all, it was 3:30 PM. I was relieved that my bike was looked at by experts as well as folks who have attention to detail. On asking how much to pay, they humbly said, whatever I think is right. While I tried to pay 500, Abhishek said just 200 would be fine. I paid 300 as I felt that it would not be fair for the amount of time they spent fixing my bike.
I then started to ride towards Kadodara. In my previous post, I had talked about plan to find hotels at Kadodara first & if I dont find anything suitable, will head to Surat. I checked at Way Wait hotel but they did not agree to reduce their tarrif from 600 to 500. So I decided to ride to Surat & check into Be Happy AC dormitory. After a heavy traffic ride, I reached the location. It was mixed first impression. While there were big cars parked, the building looked pretty old & deblitated.
I went to the 4th floor to checked the dorm & it was actually pretty clean dorm. I also met Askok bhai, who is brother of the owner, who explained things to me in detail. I decided to check in.
I was really tired & wanted to sleep after taking bath. I decided to go down & have some tea. While down, I kept walking & reached place with some hawkers selling various items. I had mixed bajji for Rs 20 & it was nice.
The hawker owner told me about ‘khaugrata gali’ nearby which is known for differnent food items. I decided to walk till there & eat more things. Later it turned out that it became the eating day for me.
Below is how the gali looked at the entrance.
The place where I had the dosa & pav bhaaji
& their owners
I decided to have the cold choco drink for dessert. Apparently it is shakified version of chocolate icecream. It was decent.
After having a lot of stuff to eat, I slowly walked back to the dorm. Earlier I was tried. Now I was full & tired. So it did not make much effort to get to sleep. That was end of day 7, which started on a pretty anxious note but ended with a fairly satisfying note.
Love reading about your experiences Ashish. Keep writing. More pictures/media are welcome too :)