Tales from the Saddle......: Enduro Glory Part IV Of Great Strengths and Plum Cakes!!

The trek back was what everyone was thinking of when we were descending. Now we were faced with the terror of actually climbing it back up to where we had parked our bikes. The journey from the village to the start of the ascent was a tricky one and easy to get lost. Just when we thought we had lost our way we see lights coming from none other than Sid’s team. They were a good hour and a half behind us. But they had saved us twice already now. Greeted them and soon we started to climb. It was here that Padi and Nachi both got rogered. They even have a heated argument on which direction to go. So now I am almost carrying Padi to the top. Somewhere midway to the top Nachi gets so bonked that he can’t take another step and I was feeling absolutely, perfectly strong and fine. So I take his big haver sack and put it onto my front side. So now I have Padis small backpack and my big and heavy haversack (on which hung all our 3 helmets) on my back plus Nachi’s haversack in front of me. Despite the added 30-35 kilos I had no problem in climbing and carrying Padi to the top. Both the Joshi’s were really bonked, I mean they were even slower than me with all my load. So strong and determined I was feeling that I finally make it to the top with the siblings in my tow. On our bikes again we retrace our tired n sore arses to Mangaon. Here we were notified that if we reach Thangaon in the next 30 minutes we would actually get a 30 minute bonus off our time. However the distance between the 2 villages was about 11 kilometers through some pretty heavily rolling terrain. We reached Thangaon the main base camp of the organizers, taking 45 minutes or so. It was dawn by the time we reached there.

At the camp the teams had to select one person from their team who must swim in the ice cold waters of the Pashan lake. Naturally It was me, being the best swimmer. Stripping down to the bare essentials I swum straight across the small channel and came right back instead of walking all the way around back to the camp. The swim really freshened me up but flared up my saddle sores and scratches. All teams got a compulsory 3 hour break at the camp. The Joshis dozed off immediately without further ado. I however roamed around the camp and talked to some pretty volunteers. Wouldn’t have woken up if had slept. About 2 hours later Sid and his team arrived. Padi had packed a nice big plum cake for us to eat. We took it out and started eating it, which surprised everyone because even the volunteers were running low on food and there we were gorging on cakes!!! Hahahaha, boy were we happy. A little pre mature celebration.

We had developed a nice cushion for ourselves. Now the finish point was only about 1-2 hours of comfortable riding. We knew if everything worked out fine we were going to win it. We had a little scare when Padi’s bike got a flat, but it was well within our rest time so we quickly took care of it. We were interviewed by one of the TV NEWS crew while on it. Nachi quickly did the rifle shooting and we were soon off. We were taking it easy on that ride and were soon caught up with Sid’s team who were fighting for the second place with the third placed team. Rode with Sid for the rest of the way. Reached the finished at around 10 am and that’s it !!!! We had won the only adventure race in India!!! We had won the Enduro!!! One of the most difficult races!!! Many even fail to complete!!! We had done it in 22 hours!!! Despite everyone doubting us!!! There was Santosh Pawar who had come to receive us at the start point, had a quick lunch there and got dropped home by Aniket Mahashabde. Slept for 24 hours straight.