The burning tree, the silent night

     It was long since my last ride. I was involved in my daily routine. There are this nice line written by the most famous lyricist Harry Chappin, ''plane to catch & bills to pay.'' My life had somewhat beccome like that.
        On a weekend i happened to log into old email add. There I saw the invitation for a night ride to Malshej sent by a friend. I call him NFS. He's one of the few crazy bikers I personally know. I accepted the invitation for the ride. We exchanged are phone numbers to decide more about the ride. I started recruiting riders for the night ride. The time was set, the place was set, the meetup joint was set, but there was a small problem before the ride. The other two riders didn't turn up for the ride.
         It was almost midninght & I was waiting like a fool at the bypass after thane toll naka & nobody not even NFS turned up for the ride. When I last checked on him he had left home an hour past half but still no sign of him. Later he called me up and said where are you & I was like mate I'm supposed to ask u the same thing. He told me that he was waiting for me from half & hour at thane toll & i like foll was waiting for him at the bypass almost 3.5 kms away & to add to it both are phones were jammed. we like crack pot were trying to call each other & both are lines were engaged.
       The other riders didn't know what they had missed out. Anyways it hardly concerned us. I was so very much excited about the ride that anything didn't really matter, but there was one thing that really created a havoc in my pocket. It was my mom, I didn't inform my parents about the ride or else they wont let me go.
They get extra concerned when they see me missing & to add to if they find out even my bike is missing. So it was not that hard for them to figure out as they were well aware of my good riding habits.
       The journey now begins. The night was beautiful, the breeze was cool & we both were waiting like fools.
Somehow we manage to find each other & commence our journey. I always wondered , nature looks so beautiful in sunlight, how it would look in the moonlight. So there was this excitment about riding under the moonlight with no street lamp on the way, just to trust the beam of your bike if it focuses on the road and not above somewhere in the air . Trust me most bikes have headlamps of no use for night ride, they are just to distract the opposite vehicle.we reached Kalyan by 2:00 am in the night. Everything had shut down by then
& there was kind of a dead silence in the air, as if the breeze wanted to whisper something in my ears. All of a sudden I started  falling cold and it was only getting more cooler as we proceeded ahead. In summer the night was so cold then what it must be in the winter.
       A little ahead we saw a Tree burning somewhere around at 3:00 am. It was burning in a weired manner.The tree was not burning from its roots nor from the branches, it caught fire from between as if someone in the dark set it on fire. I was just staring at the tree for few minutes, it looked like something out of this world.

It was like a source of light in the dark

                                                 
          I have a bad habbit of eating something or the other every now & then. So we had a stop ahead. It was some what like a dhaba or it was like a canteen or tapri kind of thing. There was this kid on the reception or galla u can call it. He made tea for us ,we had tea biscuit there rested are ass for sometime as it was the final stop before we reach Malshej. The highway was good and the truck drivers on their truck passing by us were not asleep, we had fortune in our favour as both our headlamps were of no use.
          We reached there early morning & there was still time for sunrise so we sat down gazing the stars and listening to our Ipods. It was sunrise soon & we clicked some pictures of nature

 












After clicking some pictures we saw a small passage leading somewhere. So we planned to go offroad.The passage was so narrow that if a single mistake by us would led us down the mountain. But I'm kinda habbitual now living my life on the edge.

Some images of our hardly 800 meters off road.

 My Beast

Rise of the Sun










Now it was time to head towards home, but my dear friend NFS had something else in his mind. He wanted me to click his picture he wanted to drag a wheelie and a endo. Here are those picture.

 Wheelie on his bike

Endo on my bike




After the photo session headed straight for home & went off to sleep.

Take care, ride hard, ride safe