Solid Smoke

My Mahindra Mojo had munched over 11,000km and my rear tyre had been almost completely worn out. The Mojo comes with Pirelli Diablo Rosso 2 which are soft-compound tyres. That meant they would offer great grip on the roads, but would wear out faster. My rear tyre was worn out way beyond the limit indicated by the Tread Wear Indicators and at one or two places, the steel radial wires were slightly visible. That's terrible, I know! My daily rides were limited to 5-6km through private roads and so I felt lazy and put off replacing the tyre. And one day, this happened! A few weeks back, one fine morning, I got a call from a friend to go on a bike trip to Hoggenakkal , which is around 140km from my place. Against my better judgement, I agreed and we rode to Hoggenakkal. Throughout the ride, we were mindful of the tyre condition. Anyway, the onward ride was uneventful and Hoggenakkal was terrible and disappointing (borderline disgusting). On our ride back to Bengaluru, we got h...

Yesterday, my mother brought a Rs.10 coin. I pounced on the new coin (I've this relatively new habit of keeping samples of different coins), but was surprised to find the year was shown as '2007'. If the coin was released in 2007, why have I not seen it yet? Anyway, in case you have not seen one yet, here's how the coin looks: That brings us to the design of coins. What do you think of the design of this one? Lately, the government has released coins of various denominations that has the picture of a female hand showing the denomination. A raised thumb for Rs.1, two fingers for Rs.2 and a fist (??) for 50p. I find them atrocious. The ones released a bit earlier had two sets of intersecting perpendicular lines (like the one shown above). I don't understand the meaning of that as well (if that dot is a head, then the arms are a bit too long!). And the quality of these coins is so bad that some of them have become quite unrecognisable in 2 years time. I really loved th...

I've never been an ardent temple goer. Till recently, my visits to the temple coincided with my birthdays. Yup, that's almost once a year.. So, I was not too enthusiastic when ma family planned a trip to Sri Mookambika temple. But the promised trip to Kudajadri wooed me in. My sister and her husband did all the planning and route preparation. I did absolutely no research or enquiries on the planned route or the destinations.. lazy me! അതെ, നാണമില്ല എന്ന് തന്നെ കൂട്ടിക്കോളൂ.. ;-) We reached Kollur (that's in Karnataka) one evening, and the very next morning had a visit to the temple. The temple near the Sowparnika river is quite serene and peaceful (thanks to proper crowd management). No photos to publish though.. എന്നാലും, ചെരുപ്പിട്ട പശുവിനെ കണ്ടിട്ടില്ലെങ്കില്‍, ഇതാ ഒരെണ്ണം! Murudeshwar After the temple visit, we hired a Scorpio and sped off to Murudeshwar . Murudeshwar is a new generation temple-cum-tourist spot! There are impressive constructions around the small tem...

The Mahindra & Mahindra Jeep is a very popular vehicle around here. The Police use it, and so do the Miltary (at least they used to). The M&M Jeep can be found almost everywhere in Kerala (and throughout India, I'm told), and is a hot favourite in high-range areas. I had a trip to കുടജാദ്രി (Kudajadri or Kodachadri) a couple of days back, and now the Jeep has a new ardent fan - me! The Jeep is a famous off-road vehicle. I've been impressed by it's performance and the so called hanuman gear (in the 4x4 version) during our trip to Paithalmala last month. But this was a whole new experience for me. The road was virtually non-existant, and our 2x2 Jeep did the 10km climb with ease. It was rocking journey, quite literally. Dinesh, our driver (ഒരു നല്ല മലയാളി), told us that the Jeep is quite rugged and the only maintenance it requires are the occasional broken leaf springs and pierced fuel tanks. The previous day, we had asked the driver of a Mahindra Scorpio if he...