Bangalore to Ladakh solo motorbike ride

Nursery, ICSE, ISC, B.Com and then MBA – all these years of grooming to be accepted in the corporate world. As my learnings progressed from 'twinkle twinkle little star' to '4Ps of marketing', on 3^rd Dec 2007 the corporate world finally called upon me. That day still marks the most important day in my life for it was the day I redeemed my toil.  

The start was not a honky dory one. 1^st April 2008 – My first day in the office and the day didn't end. I swear it didn't because I left the office @ 2 am. The grilling on the job training continued for a year. To add to it, I had a funny salary (there is no other way I can describe my starting salary). There were far too many occasions where my sense of justice and endurance were pushed to an edge, but I held on to the job with a sole objective of using these learnings as a springboard for my career. Now when I think about it, it sure did act like one.  

All those grilling sessions had cemented a very strong foundation of my skill set. My career gained momentum with each passing year. After two years into the industry, and few job-hopping, my lifestyle started evolving. Linda and I moved from a box to a decent two-bedroom house, I could now take Linda for dinner every weekend without thinking twice, I started taking my parents for a vacation too. What qualified as a luxury item during my college days soon became a basic necessity. I also started putting monies to shorten my wish list. I was enjoying the newly found intoxication of the well-defined economic concept - 'purchasing power'

So, one year became two and soon six. While I steadily climbed the corporate ladder, I realized that I was missing out on a lot of things in life. Within these six years, unknown to me, I was being transformed into someone else. The adventurer in me was dying a slow death amidst the working weekend, my passion for motorbiking was evaporating in the heat of meeting the deadlines, odd working hours meant that my cuddling time with Linda had to be sacrificed, and the desire to start something on my own was fast approaching the expiry date - the entrepreneurial me was slowly giving way to the salaried me.  

With time running out fast on me, I had to choose one – the safe bet of continuing with the corporate life or give one shot at life and live it the way it was supposed to be lived.

On June 24^th 2014, I finally put down my paper.  I made it official that I was taking a break, a long break to catch up with life before it’s too late. I didn’t want to lay in my death bed with the regret of not having tried to fulfil my desire when I had the energy to do so. 

I remember a very interesting financial theory from my college days- 'Time value of money'. In short, it simply tells us that a rupee earned today is worth more than a rupee earned tomorrow. It's a very practical theory right? Now what this theory has done to me is that it has triggered perhaps the deepest life lesson that I have learned so far. Just replace the word 'money' with the word 'life' and what you get is the 'Time value of life' - A life lived today is worth more than the life to be lived tomorrow (so much for accusing me of not paying attention in the class) 

I do understand that this is a big gamble. The decision that I made on 24th June may come back to haunt me at a later stage in my life when I see my friends and colleagues with a good shelter and a support system that shields all problems from harming them, but I think it’s worth a gamble in one life. This is where my upbringing supported me strong for my mother used to tell me, “it takes very little to keep one happy”

So, how do I plan to catch up with life?

Since I have taken this extreme decision to take a long career break, I will celebrate it by doing something equally extreme –  To start with, I am going on a solo Banglaore – Leh – Darjeeling bike ride on my Royal Enfield Classic 350 named Chitti by Linda ( Inspired from the movie of one of our favorite actors - RAJNIKANT !!! ), covering a total of approximately 6700 Kms. (Source: Google map)

(Do read the other days chronicle listed on the same page)  

#Royalenfield  #trip #leh #bikeride #adventure #ladakh #travel