I was visiting friends in Pondicherry, staying at the beautiful L’Escale in the French Quarter, overlooking the ocean from the breakfast deck on the roof, when Nicolas, the owner, who was helping me make arrangements to visit Mount Arunachala, a three hour taxi ride away, asked the fateful question…
“Why don’t you take a motorcycle???”
The electrical charges that flew thru me in that moment just about blew every fuse in my brain…
“OMG Yes!” was the initial impulse…
“You’re gonna DIE!!!” was the second…
You see, I’ve been tooling around India by taxi, rickshaw, bus, train and scooter plenty over the past few months, and I’m still in awe of how it all works… without daily carnage… everywhere…
And, I’ve never driven a motorcycle, not since I was 10…
“You can rent a Royal Enfield motorcycle; they’re the famous touring bike of India”, Nicolas continued…
“You’re gonna die” was repeating like the refrain from an old Bob Seger song…
But something else was more prevalant, something else was just sitting there smiling… a Cheshire cat smile… as if, somehow, it knew the deal had been sealed…
My mind sputtered, it stumbled, it raced around looking for support, but it just wouldn’t fire…
“I, I, I ….” I stuttered, completely trumped by that Cheshire smile…
Ride a motorcycle through India??? Oh my God, I would LOVE that!!! I felt my entire body shimmer in response…
“But, but, but…” I continued, hopelessly…
Riding down the open road, in India of all places…. the Land of Siddhas and Saints… Hey, if I’m going to do something crazy like that, why not India!
“Um….” I said, wheels spinning…
It was hopeless… the mind knew it was too late… the battle was over, it had lost, and I was RIDING A MOTORCYCLE ACROSS INDIA!!!
In that moment, I was already on the bike, the wind in my face, the road stretched out before me…
How was it possible that I was contemplating such a bold and reckless act? Hey, I love adventure, I spearfish with sharks, I do all kinds of crazy stuff, but learning to ride a motorcycle in India??? Of all places, India seemed the craziest…
Or was it? It was clear to me that the drivers here enter a collective flow, a form of egoless trance, where everyone becomes one and they just weave, dodge, weave…
Still, this was a friggin’ crazy idea! I could die!
The Cheshire grin just smiled its silent smile…
Something was different… the dire logic and rational of the mind just wasn’t having its normal effect… like throwing still uncooked spaghetti on the wall, every fearful image and thought it threw just kept falling flat on the floor…
And then I smiled… I knew what it was, knew in that moment what had changed…
I’d just completed a 28 day ‘Deepening’ process at the Oneness University, here in India, home of the global Oneness movement, and in the course of 28 days ‘I’ got to see the relationship between ‘me’ and ‘my’ mind…
Not only see it, disengage from it to!
If I ever needed evidence of the fact that I had, in fact, learned to dis-engage, this was it!
Smiling, I turned to Nicolas and said “Yes, that would be amazing…”
This was just the beginning…
A few hours later, I hop on the back of his scooter and we head cross town to get my bike… Its nigh time, rush hour, and the streets of Pondicherry are choked with vehicles of every description… I tuck my knees in tight as Nicolas weaves between cars, buses and the endless flow of motorbikes, scooters, bicycles and rickshaws…
It occurs to me that I will be driving a motorcycle back from this place…. a motorcycle… in rush hour… in India…. in the dark…
The mind starts in again… “What the F&!@* am I doing??? I’m friggin’ NUTS!!!”
Still it doesn’t stick, doesn’t trigger a response… just that silent grin…
We pull up to one of a million storefronts, Felix’s shop. He goes off to get the bike, Nicolas and I wait, and he tells me that Felix builds these bikes from parts, and that Royal Enfields are famous throughout India. Every shop knows how to fix them, and fixing them is easy.
Felix pulls up on a bike… its big and red…. that’s how much I know about motorcycles; its bigger than the scooter we rode over on and its red. I’m not feeling very confident…
I told Nicolas on the way over the history of my motorcycle driving experience. A friend of my older brother let me take his Honda 300 for a spin in a grassy field… I was 10, the bike was HUGE… he rode on the back, I got it into first gear and promptly found the only hidden hole in the entire field of grass. Over we went. End of lesson.
I’ve ridden plenty of scooters, rode a scooter completely around Jamaica one day and night with two friends, they both had motorcycles, but the shop only had a scooter left (Whew). I did a pretty good job of staying up with them, even when we disappeared way up in the Blue Mountains…
Maybe I should just ride a scooter to Tiruvannamalai, I think…
The inside smile tells me without saying a word that that train of thought is hopeless…
Felix puts a blinker on the bike, then a battery, then motions me over.
I like him. He’s an older guy, and his face has a warm smile, the confidence of someone who knows what he’s doing and does it well. I wonder if he knows he’s about to rent his motorcycle to a guy who doesn’t know crap…
“The shifter is on the left side, not the right” he says, “and the foot brake is on the left too… Remember that and you’re fine”.
I get a few pointers about how to start a Royal Enfield, as starting is one of the trickiest parts. I demonstrate some beginner’s luck and hop on… fortunately, the bike’s pointed down the side street, rather than back out to the main thuroughfare. Saying a prayer under my breath, my system flooded with a mix of excitement and terror, I release the clutch and slowly give it the gas…
Felix's shop in Pondi
To be continued….
(Check out the trip photo album here)
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Joe Noonan, Founder, Planetary Partners
An author, speaker, life coach and spiritual guide, Joe leads retreats around the world and facilitates self awareness programs for those on the path of awakening.
A guest on National Geographic, Fox TV and Oprah, Joe reflects back to people that this world is already a Heaven on Earth, and that the tools to find joy in the moment are around and within us. That harmony is inevitable and that innately we all just love each other and sometimes we forget — he is here to help us remember.
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