Ride Report: The India Ride Expedition

**ryanjpyle** · 10-04-2012, 04:08 PM

Day 32: Today we celebrated Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, a national holiday in India, by exploring trendy and modern India; we visited the UB City Mall in central Bangalore. It was clearly the "people watching" place to be and Colin and Ryan got their fair share of funny looks with their shaggy unkept beards. Bangalore, known loosely as the Silicon Valley of India is a dynamic city rushing to upgrade itself in to one of India's most exciting and modern cities. It's clearly a place to keep an eye on and it's a location we all hope we can revisit again at some stage in the future during a more lengthy trip. At the mall, Colin and Ryan had the privilege of connecting with several motorcycle enthusiasts and friends of the India Ride today at the mall and we had a chance to share not only some life stories and life lessons. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, organized by our partners Lenovo, and we met some great people with brillant individual passion for travel and adventure. We wish them all the best in their future travels.

**ryanjpyle** · 10-04-2012, 04:10 PM

Day 33: Today was a "moving day", it's a term we like to use for those days when we just bite down and get some hard kilometers under our belts. So the team was up early and out the door and traveled from Bangalore to Puducherry today. It was a lovely journey on narrow back roads and it brought us back in touch with a more traditional India, after the modern shopping malls and high-rises of Bangalore. It also feels great to be back near the ocean, but now instead of the Arabian Sea it is the Bay of Bengal that will be in our sights for the next 7 days as we slowly make our way from Puducherry to Kolkata. Much more news, coming soon!

**ryanjpyle** · 10-04-2012, 04:11 PM

Day 34: As our epic journey through India continues, we are striving to understand the complexity of India. And clearly after 34 days on the road we can all agree that India's complexity and diversity is what makes the country very very special. Today we had a chance to look at the future of India, as we visited a Lenovo manufacturing facility in Puducherry in southeastern India. Lenovo, now the world's largest PC maker, is also #1 in India and it's production facility in India is turning out 1,000,000 desktops (Think Centers) and laptops (Think Pads) per year for the India market. As India's middle class expands and business in India continues to mature and take shape you can expect industries like this to strive from strength to strength and it was brilliant to experience just one example of that today in southern India.

**ryanjpyle** · 10-05-2012, 03:05 PM

Video Release: Running off a mountain with nothing but another man strapped to your back and a thin layer of vinel, to supposedly protect you, is a serious leap of faith. The act of paragliding itself is as scary as it is exciting, and therefore, given these contrasts, we thought it would be the perfect subject to base our new video release around. So here is video that show the elegance, the excitement and the sheer fear of Paragliding. We hope you enjoy.

LINK: https://vimeo.com/49850782

**ryanjpyle** · 10-07-2012, 03:44 PM

Day 35: Today was a day of many challenges, first was the challenge of the roads; as there was much road construction and plenty of traffic to keep our pace slowed. The second challenge was that of distance; we needed to cover a great distance today as we begin our journey north to Kalkata. The last challenge of the day was the intense heat; as by mid-day Colin and Ryan were literally "cooking" in their riding gear and helmets. As the India Ride team covered a massive 486km today from Puducherry to Ongole, we knew the day was going to be tough. But the southern Indian heat, even in October, played a factor all day as temperatures rose in to the high 30s and there wasn't a cloud in the sky; making the conditions very difficult on our riders. It's not uncommon to get heat stroke while riding motorcycles in intense heat, and although our team was able to avoid that today it has been a regular occurrence on this trip.

**ryanjpyle** · 10-07-2012, 03:49 PM

Day 36: I wish we could say that the heat has broke, it hasn't. I wish we could say that the riding has gotten much easier, but it hasn't. As we push and grind our way up the eastern coastline of India many things have become apparent, the key one is that India has challenged our team to the very core of their being. While the rewards of a journey like this are brilliant and world class, it's the constant push of spending 10 hours a day on the roads, that is slowly wearing the team down. After a 36 days on the road our bodies are not as strong as they were during week one, and our minds are not as sharp. And yet the incredible psychological and physical battles remain as our team still has a long way to go, and much to see, before returning to Delhi in around three weeks time. Today the India Ride team covered an epic 576km from Ongole to Visakhapatnam on the eastern coast of India.

**milton** · 10-07-2012, 11:30 PM

[QUOTE=ryanjpyle;49300]Day 36:..........................

Cheers, brothers! Have some fun, please.

**ryanjpyle** · 10-09-2012, 03:51 PM

Day 37: Spirits were very high today as the India Ride team covered a solid 442km from Visakhapatnam Beach to Bhubaneswar in eastern India. We had a good nights rest, a great breakfast and we woke up to fantastic roads and little traffic. Perhaps more importantly than all of that, the searing heat that had crippled our efforts during the previous few days has lifted and there was a lovely cool breeze that powered our adventurers throughout the day. For those of you who have been counting, our last 3 days of riding have been distances of: 486km, 576km and 442km. In Iowa or Indiana that would be pretty easy fare. In India that is some insanely long riding and some very very long days. But yet we prevail. Upwards and onwards.

**ryanjpyle** · 10-09-2012, 03:53 PM

Day 38: It's been an exciting Monday to say the least. Today our road weary team enjoyed an "off the bike" day and visited the Chandka Elephant Sanctuary - and what a stunning day we had. Our "off the bike" days are crucial for our team to rest and recover from the hazards of long days on the roads, but more importantly they allow our team to connect with aspects of life in India. Whether we are connecting with friends and partners, villages, temples, religious sites or animal parks, these days mark very important stops on our trip and are crucial aspects of our television production. Today's visit was a chance for Colin and Ryan to get up close and personal with some of our earth's most massive mammals, the elephant. These amazing creators are huge, and at first very intimidating, but after spending over an hour interacting with some elephants our team was comfortable enough to hand feed them coconuts.

**ryanjpyle** · 10-11-2012, 04:16 PM

Day 39: Is anyone out there getting tired of us yet? Well, I hope not because every day we are giving it our all to make our way around India ........... on two wheels. Today marks the end of something special, for the last two weeks our team has been riding along Indian coastlines: first the western side and more recently the eastern side. Today however we said goodbye to the Bay of Bengal and headed inland for Kolkata. For the remaining two weeks of our journey, we are on schedule to return to Delhi on Oct.24, we'll be making the journey to Darjeeling before entering the home stretch through Varanasi, Lucknow and Agra.