VIJAY PARMAR
This month's rant is about the temporary loss of hearing caused by motorcycle fests
Karolis recently completed an extraordinary challenge when he rode his motorbike across lake Baikal
IHAD NO INTENTION OF VISITING IBW 2023, despite it being the 10th anniversary of a show that was slowly diminishing in interest but increasing in decibel levels, to a point where it’s impossible to think let alone be heard! The arrival of a couple of ‘Golden Passes’ reminded me that the organisers still loved me and a last-minute invite by Triumph India to give the usual ‘gyaan’ softened my resolve to the point where air tickets were booked and I found myself crouched aboard an Indigo flight that left and arrived before time.
Goa was refreshingly warm considering the mountains were all sub-zero and frigid. The rental car was at the airport, with just enough gas to get to a refuelling facility, if you drove at 30kmph helped along by a busy tailwind! Google Maps is a musthave in Goa. The winding roads, not unlike spilled noodles, wriggle across the landscape, criss-crossing each other in one of the finest mazes this side of the Suez. With Siri sorting out the best route to follow, I did fine until I reached near the beach at Anjuna. Then merry hell broke loose. After several requests from Siri to take a U-turn I knew we had reached the end of her competence and my patience. I was lost.
Queries at tourists for directions elicited blank stares; a Russian aboard a scooter nodded vigorously and pointed to the sea, a Goan fisherman spat and moved on – and it had now gotten hot enough to sweat. The saviour was a waiter at a seafood shack. He was from Himachal and happily showed me the last mile connection!
The IBW venue was a short hop away from my designated quarters and I soon began the struggle to find parking. Strangely TVS MotoSoul, a festival in its own right was plugged, cheek by jowl, to the IBW venue. Why would TVS have an all-out racing festival on the same days as the IBW? They had hogged the area, making a pretend off-road course right over my favourite parking spot, which was under a Kikar tree. Now instead of a shaded spot where I was so looking forward to parking, there existed barricades and a small hump, scarcely larger than a speed breaker, which participants walking the track stared at in fear, calling it a jump!
I know that RE’s Motoverse (previously Rider Mania) is just a week before the IBW, another paradox that one can’t understand, but to have MotoSoul choose the same dates smacks of ‘pundits’ and ‘mahurats’.
The rant continues. Karolis Mieliauskas, the extreme coldwarrior from Lithuania was invited to speak at the ‘Ladakh Tent’ about his ride over the frozen lake Baikal in the winter as well as his even colder traverse to Oymyakon in Siberia, on the ‘Road Of Bones’!
Karolis recently completed an extraordinary challenge when he rode his motorbike across lake Baikal in Russia. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world and he rode its 800km length over a number of days. Karolis chose March for his ride because the worst winter storms usually pass by then yet it’s still cold enough to have up to 6 feet (2 metres) of ice.
But there are many ice cracks with open water, sometimes every 500 metres. Being alone, far from shore on the ice of the deepest lake in the world, at minus 55 degrees Celsius – it is just too dangerous, too cold and too far away from rescue!
The talk started with an AV playing and though we were engrossed in the visuals, the sound was so terrible, with the bass turned up so high, that all one could hear was the boom of the sub woofer! Almost immediately, the main stage decided to honour an obscure band, by giving them 20,000 watts of music power that started competing with the bass in the Ladakh-Tent. And if that wasn’t enough, a local croaker started up a hideous rendition of John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’ 10 feet from where Karolis stood, on another official mike!
Sad to say, Karolis lost the race for being heard and everyone present to hear of this epic saga, from the man himself, lost that opportunity! A shame.
The entire two evenings were drowned out by bikes being revved to death – something that needs to be addressed if the festival is to grow. The last thing one wants to see at India Bike Week 2024, is bike after bike, haemorrhaging to death, at the hands of its temporarily deranged owner!
The food in Goa, however, was superb. I returned fatter albeit harder of hearing! ⌧