Ashwin Upadhyaya's Blog

Cycling.. Just like marathons..

The endless road. You ride alone. Get together sometimes. When you ride, you want to stop. When you stop, you need to get on again. Riding can be painful but you still want to do it. There is beauty everywhere. The beaches, the rivers, the forests. You immerse in an illusion. Tend to think you are part of what you see. How fast it fades. How soon its all over.

On the 20th morning, we started to trace the route. From Panjim base camp, we rode to Dona Paula. We were to take a launch boat from here to Marmugoa port. With no boat in sight, I enquired with a local about the launch boat set to depart at 9 AM. “Sir, no ferry or launch boat have come here for the past 20 years”!! Baffled, I asked another one, “Can I get a launch from here?”. The answer this time was “Sir, no launch.. Only breakfast is available”.. Okay.. I moved on.. Meanwhile, someone spotted our launch boat. It was a contract boat reserved for us only and hence no one knew. We carried our bicycles onto the launch, crossed over the waters towards Marmugoa and started our unforgettable adventure. At marmugoa port, we had to lift all our bicycles from the boat to a platform several feet high several times. It’s not easy to explain this…
Well, words and images are no match for the real thing. The real thing means much more to the one who experiences it. The sea looks different while on a boat. The rust smells fragrant on the port. The sun is welcome at a river side. And is just not so at the beach sands.

From Marmugoa port till Majorda beach, we cycled under blood sucking sun on black tar. Majorda beach to Mobor beach is one of the longest beaches in India. We ourselves cycled some 22kms along the beach and the beach is longer than that. The sand is quite hard, so our bicycles don’t sink in. Although I was very excited about this stretch, the sun sapped out most of my energy by the time we reached the other end of the beach. From Mobor beach to Assolna was along the road and a short Ferry ride. In this land crisscrossed by rivers and backwaters, ferry boats are a common feature. Wherever a bridge is yet to be built, the government operates boats ferrying people, vehicles etc from one end to the other all through the day.

Oh, and I forgot another interesting thing that happened in the day. In the morning before leaving Panjim, we were led by the youth hostel to attend a bicycle promotion event by FM 92.7 and sponsored by Avon. A short promotional bicycle ride through the city, a free t-shirt, some snacks and a lucky dip happened within 1 hour. The lucky winner was one of us, Avik…

A nice event to start the day and a nice ride of about 50 kms later, the cycling came to an end at Assolna football grounds in the evening.

Just like the contingent of fighter planes that went over our heads while we cycled along a not so pleasant, rather hot, dry highway near Dabolim, I know that the time has also flew by. I can come again for this same event again but I can never experience the same.

To be continued…

1. Biking in Goa – Part 1 – At Panjim
2. Biking in Goa – Part 2 – Panjim to Assolna
3. Biking in Goa – Part 3 – Assolna to Netravali to Dudhsagar
4. Biking in Goa – Part 4 – Dudhsagar to Bondla to Panjim

“I am planning for Goa Biking expedition. Anyone interested?” – mail from Du in July…

Today, I am back from the expedition and definitely, this was one of the best cycling I have done till date. I was already in Goa since the 16th with my family. On the 18th, I changed 3 buses from Baga beach to Magson’s super center in Panjim. 100 meters from here was the youth hostel and I was the 10th one to check-in among the Group-4 bikers.

Youth hostel arranges cycling expeditions in Goa during the month of December every year. The expedition happens over a period of 5 weeks and every alternate day, a group of about 15-20 cyclists starts from Panjim, Goa and travels the spectacular state of Goa over a period of 7 days. YHAI’s website has more details regarding this: Blog Link and Main Page.

In the evening, the others of my group had arrived. Life in the youth hostel camps is pretty easy except for a little bit of discipline. Morning Tea at 6:30 AM, Breakfast at 8 AM, Lunch at 1 PM, Tea at 5 PM, Dinner at 8 PM, Bournvita at 9 PM, a camp fire at 9 PM and by 10 PM, everybody’s off to their tents. Lights are off at mid night. The same repeats at most camps. You need to get your own plate, tumbler, spoon etc and you need to do all the washing yourself. Proper camp life. A few orientation sessions about cycling, trekking etc are scattered in between.

Night came and we still had not laid our hands on our bicycles. We slept in a slightly disappointed mood. Sleep is not easy to come in these hard, uneven tent floors if you haven’t done anything in the day.

On 19th morning, we woke up at 5:30 AM and were ready for the artificial rock climbing and rappelling activity. 2 hours were spent thus and then there was breakfast. At 9:00 AM, we finally got our bicycles. Fullu happy. All were Merida Sub 5 bicycles but all were in a pretty bad state. After an hour of cleaning with Diesel, the bicycles started to look and feel okay for the week ahead.

After a briefing on bicycle handling, we went on a ride around Panjim city. The city is beautiful. Well maintained roads and not much traffic is just ideal for bicycling. We cycled through Dona Paula, Miramar beach and were finally back at our camp by afternoon.

 Some more cycling in the evening and after a few orientation sessions, we were happy about the coming few days. The route map is shown here:

View Goa YHAI Biking Route in a larger map
Night came, we escaped from the camp-fire to get a good night’s sleep..
To be continued…

1. Biking in Goa – Part 1 – At Panjim
2. Biking in Goa – Part 2 – Panjim to Assolna
3. Biking in Goa – Part 3 -Assolna to Netravali to Dudhsagar
4. Biking in Goa – Part 4 – Dudhsagar to Bondla to Panjim

A talking robot is about to become common place in the form of iphone’s Siri. Lawn mowing robots, house cleaning robots and military robots are already not so uncommon (See previous blog). And although we don’t realize, we interact with robots on a daily basis in the form of ATMs, customer care bots etc. Looking at the current pace of progress, how would the future look? You could read about a possible scenario here: Robotic Nation.

If you read the above story by Marshall Brain, it is easy to think how inevitable the robotic revolution is. So, lets just assume that robots will be as common as humans in the not so distant future. I keep wondering about the changes this robotic revolution would bring. First of all, what are the changes this would bring? Some of the easy-to-visualize ones would be:

1. A gradual decrease in jobs involving physical labor. Due to the cost difference in labor salaries, this decrease would probably be more in developed countries but would eventually affect the entire world.
2. An increase in human reliance on machines. For example, can we imagine ourselves going back to banks standing in long lines to draw money from our accounts? The trend is socially irreversible.
3. An increasing danger in terms of weaponised UAVs, military robots etc. How long would it be before development of such machines would be a simple enough job to be replicated by rogue nations?

And then, there would be a lot of changes which are hard to imagine now. For example, population patterns (cities vs rural), poverty levels (couldn’t robots feed everyone?), life expectancy (a personal health assistant for every one) etc. I could imagine robots for every problem in the world. But yet, something just doesn’t feel right.

When all the people in the world need not worry about food, clothing, shelter and such basic necessities, what would the people worry about? Conquests? In such a case, wouldn’t it be natural to make robots which could prevent wars? And then what?

The shift from hunting to agriculture caused a few populations to be pushed out of existence. The fittest survived. We are now probably approaching the stage where industrialization is reaching its goal in the form of automation of everything, including agriculture. Would this shift too cause a few populations to be pushed out of existence? Would those who do not adapt themselves to the new order vanish too?