Three
Ranjith Sajja
…is going to check off ‘TfN’ off his Bucket list
TFN and Manali-Leh are the two trips that I wanted to complete ever since I joined HCC. Having completed the later partially few months ago, I am eager to be part of TFN’11.
I am the proud owner of a Cannondale Trail SL 3 and a CAAD 9 105. This way I can enjoy the best of both (MTB & roadie) worlds. To date my toughest ride was to Nagarjuna Sagar on an MTB during typical Hyderabad summer, which also happened to be my first 100 mile ride.
I enjoy listening to indie music a lot and this comes handy on most of the long rides.
When I am not on the bike I spend most of my time trying to make faster, smaller and efficient processors at AMD.
Editor’s note: Well, Ranjith, TfN Eleven will certainly be the Ride of your life!
Gokul Krishna
…is in love with the Wheels!
A good friend told me told me about TfN and about how he took up cycling with the aim of completing it one day. I guess TFN is India’s answer to the Sturgis and is the ultimate challenge for any rider. .
I look forward to TFN as an endurance challenge and to experience the camaraderie of fellow riders.
I am an ex-Techie, but vehicles were my first love. Along with my partner Krish we started “The Bike Affair” – a bicycle store in Hyderabad a couple of years ago and something we enjoy doing full time now. Over time I have realized that cycling has so many different options and I enjoy riding my fixie in the city, the roadie in highways and the MTB on good trails.
Editor’s note: TfN is surely going to satisfy your urge for long distance cycling
Hari Menon
…wants to do the TfN for ever!
My first experience of touring on cycles was a 5-day 250-km tour around Saharanpur, Roorkee, Bijnor, Rishikesh and Dehra Dun at age 15. I enjoyed it immensely but somehow didn’t get around to another tour for 27 years, though I regularly cycled in college on my bike, a 1956 Raleigh that I’d converted into a fast urban single-speed with dropped, chopped bars and a giant 60-tooth crank.
The 2008 edition of the Tour of the Nilgiris was my reintroduction to the world of bike rides longer than 20 km.
This coincided nicely with problems with my two favorite sports; my age and eyesight were making squash increasingly tough and I was getting injured too often to run regularly. And now of course I see myself as a cyclist who happens to run and once played squash and not the other way around!
I train and race (at strictly amateur level) several thousand kilometers a year and I can honestly say I value every second I spend on the saddle — well, perhaps not always the time spend on a stationary bike in the gym. But there are many, many special moments, and as a freelance writer who sometimes writes about cycling it’s my challenge to find the words fit to describe the magic of a leisurely tour through forests, the joy of discovering new single track, the rush of a full-on maximum-wattage sprint or the transcendental pleasure of the sunrise burning away the clouds below you on a tough climb.
Tough. But I try, anyway.
Editor’s note: One of the more ‘relaxed’ riders who’d like to enjoy the view he cycled, TfN Eleven would not disappoint! Welcome back and we hope you continue the brilliant streak you had in TfN Ten!
Mark Ellison
…is going to check off ‘TfN’ off his Bucket list
I’m English but have been living in Cambodia for the past 7 years. I have enjoyed cycling from an early age with my first bike being around the age of 6 or 7, a ‘hand-me-down’ Raleigh Golden Arrow. However, my first real pride and joy came on my 10th birthday when I became the very proud owner of a super cool Raleigh Grifter, the only bike a young lad wanted in the early 1980s…
The years passed and through my teens bikes came and went, used mainly for utility purposes like cycling to school and doing the paper-round. However, with other bike riding mates we did have some cycling ‘adventures’ at weekends and during school summer holidays. For much of my 20s cycling was kind of forgotten, but the flame was rekindled in the late 1990s with the growth in popularity of mountain biking.
Before moving to Cambodia I was involved in the tourism industry in England for around 6 years, primarily in the Lake District National Park, developing cycle tourism in the area. The Lake District is also the only really mountainous area in England so it was a great place to live to enjoy my ‘obsession’ – mountain biking! In Cambodia, until 1 year ago I was the MD of a tour company which amongst other things organised cycle tours in Cambodia, as well as into Vietnam and Thailand. I am now a partner in two restaurants in the capital city, Phnom Penh.
I occasionally take on freelance consultancy work, the latest being with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation researching the feasibility of promoting cycle tourism in the remote north-east of Cambodia, primarily as a potential contributor to poverty alleviation in the region.
Back in the early 2000’s when I was living in England I regularly took part in mountain bike races and also ‘Trailquests’ (orienteering on a mountain bike). There is very little organised cycling in Cambodia but for the past 2 years I have participated in the Angkor Wat 100km bike race.
Mountain biking is not so much about distance, but more about the leg burning climbs, exhilarating down-hills, rough surfaces and technical challenges. As such my first 100km + ride was not until 2004, just before moving out to Cambodia, I cycled 117km each way to my grandfathers house to say ‘Goodbye’.
I have always dreamt of doing a challenging, long distance, self-supported cycle tour. As such in January 2012 I start my approx. 15,000km ‘Cycle Around India’ challenge, planning to follow the coast and land borders as closely as possible, for more info - www.cycle-india.com. I will be fundraising for Shabana Azmi’s ‘Mijwan Welfare Society’ - www.mijwan.org.
Participating in the TfN beforehand will be a great opportunity to meet Indian cyclists, a great introduction to rural India, and an opportunity to see wonderful parts of India that I will not see on my planned route – an excellent introduction to India and a great ‘warm-up’ for my India cycle challenge!
Editor’s note: Welcome to India, Mark!
Rakesh Nair
…Is back! To ride or not?
But the competitive section this year was too tempting, since I have never participated in sport related competitive event before, to miss. This year will see some quality riders belting it out on those high gradients.
The tour is quite addictive and it means a whole lot of fun and pain. It surely ain’t easy to ride an average 140 plus kilometers daily for 7 days in a row on “mostly downhill” route but the pain has a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. The tour takes us to some incredible tea estates, super smooth highways and on certain days it will make you wonder if they shot Martian landing here in India! The tour will bring you to places that you would have thought never ever existed. The Unni appams of Kerala, homemade chocolates of Ooty, Pandi curry of Coorg will test your taste buds after a long day on the saddle. This year I am looking forward to ride the Kannur-SB ride and also see the pristine virgin beaches of North Kerala.
I have been cycling for 3.5 yrs now and over these years I have enjoyed every single moment of this “madness”. I could never think in my wildest dream that I could be able to cycle 5 kms. I think the weirdest change I have noticed in me since I started cycling is that I have lost a complete sense of distance. Every time I see signboard on the road which says Town – XYZ – 100 kms my mind immediately says “Oh ok… that means 3.5 hrs of cycling.”
One of biggest aim for the immediate future is to ride 10,000 kms in a calendar year. TFN has helped me network with many people from different walks of life. I feel very good to say that some of them have turned out to be my closest of friends.
I eke my living as a faculty in Finance with some stock broking institutes in Mumbai. I am also involved in setting up my own training institute in capital markets. I am looking forward to ride BSA-TFN again and I hope I can find a place in the Top 10!
Editor’s note: Knowing Rakesh, we are sure he will be at the top of the Leaderboard with enough time to taste test the pandi curry and other local delicacies!
