Light was falling fast when Ronald Shalo pitched his tent on a cliff at Mana, the last Indian Village in Uttarakhand, sometime in December,2017. He parked his bright-red Bajaj Chetak, set up the green tent against the backdrop of a snow-clad peak before huddling underneath the tarpaulin to take refuge from the freezing weather outside. “The five layer clothing helped me survive the night but in the morning, I was left with a frozen hydration bag. I couldn't find a drop of water. I almost thought I am going to die as there were no humans in three kilometres from the place I was camping,” recalls Shalo, who has umpteen such nerve-racking stories to share. Back from a nine-month-long expedition in which he covered 29 states and five Union Territories apart from Nepal, Bhutan and Burma – all on an antique Bajaj Chetak – Shalo is happy to be heading back home.
The Coimbatore boy left home last August with Rs.50,000 in search of what he calls 'nomadic nirvana'. “It's no dream ride, no targets or destination and no route map either. I just headed north, kept riding and followed the roads before I found myself in Jammu and Kashmir in the next two months. From there, I traversed the entire Trans Himalayan region and reached Arunachal Pradesh in the North East.” In the course, Shalo has grown a beard, lost weight, learnt bits of Hindi, made friends, families and foes across borders and returned back with bagful of experiences and amusing tales.
“I am a pampered boy from a rich family and I was tired of the rat race towards materialistic pursuits. That's why I undertook the trip and wanted to see how people live happily with whatever little they have. From my experience, I would say people in the North East are the simplest and the happiest. They live in bamboo huts, cultivate local produce, eat and smile and stay happy,” says Shalo, who left a logistic job to take up the trip. “When I ran out of money, I sold off gadgets and home appliances on flee market. The trip helped me understand that money is just not everything. In these many months, there were many times, I have been penniless. Once, my wallet was stolen in UP, I was about to be thrashed by a mob in Nepal and my bike was vandalised in Gangtok. But, nothing could dampen my spirits. So, it's always the will power and spirit that matter more than money.”
Known as 'Scooter Nomad', Shalo is hailed by the biking community for choosing to ride on the humble old 1991-modelled Chetak instead of a powerful modern bike. “I bought the scooter eight years ago from a scrap dealer for just Rs.2300. I rejigged it a bit with some help from local mechanics and welders and it's a torqy scooter now. Keeping the core intact, we modified the physics of it,” says Shalo, who prefers the scooter over the half a dozen superbikes that he owned previously. “A scooter is like a cockroach, it's robust and cant be killed easily. Plus, the mechanism is simple and hence you can fix issues yourself. I carried minimum and essential spares and learnt to repair myself, as only old-school mechanics know to repair a scooter.”
However, riding on a scooter in the mountains comes with a lot of challenges, says Shalo. “In the Zojila Pass, I had to walk along with the scooter in first gear and full throttle, as it was a steep incline and the scooter wouldn't climb with 60kgs of my luggage,” he says. “And the mileage is just 25 kms and tank capacity only 4 litres. I carried two five-litre cans and had to stop and refill my tank every 100 kms. I learnt patience and the value of it, doing all this”
Shalo skipped highways in favour of dirt tracks and nameless roads. “I am not the kind to pose at touristy places. Rather, I prefer going to locations that are unexplored. For me, travelling is not about munching miles, conquering the terrain and being proud. But, staying with locals, riding through villages and learning to live life the way others live,” says Shalo, who in the whole trip, took a rented accomodation only six times. “I spent nights under the tent on roadsides, at fuel pumps, police stations, Gurudwaras and army camps. I cooked my food over firewood and lived on two meals a day.”
Shalo, who passed through Madurai will finish his journey next week on reaching Coimbatore.
