Fuel Trouble #1

From Bhim Tal, on towards Naukuchia Tal. The lake’s name literally means that it’s nine-cornered.

Naukuchia Tal - The nine cornered lake. See if you can count them.

There is a diversion off the road from Bhim Tal to Naukuchia Tal, to the local para-gliding school. They were off-season too, but we got an idea of the kind of scenery we would be gliding into.

View from the para-gliding school.

We stopped at Naukuchia Tal for lunch. A word about lunch. The staple diet all over Uttaranchal is Parathas. They are consumed as breakfast, lunch, dinner, in-between meals and midnight snacks. They can either be eaten plain, or with more Parathas. If you are allergic to Parathas, avoid Uttaranchal.

Naukuchia Tal close-up.

Bikes and bikers on the shores of Naukuchia Tal. - Courtesy Prashi

From Naukuchia Tal, the plan was to head back to Bhowali, and on towards Mukteshwar. We reached Bhowali, and just as we pulled into the pump, Prashanth ran completely dry. Quite an interesting occurrence it would have been, except that the pump was still dry. So we were stranded, and trying to figure out how to proceed, when we heard that Nainital now had fuel.

Since I still was running comfortably, as was Sandy, we both headed back to Nainital and get fuel in my 20 litre extra can. I also used to opportunity to fill up my own tank. It was interesting to ride down the ghats with an extra 20 litres of fuel on my bike. In case the irony of that slipped past anybody, let me repeat that.

An RD350 fetched fuel for a stranded Bullet.

Meanwhile, as Prashi waited at the petrol pump, a bullet with a Royal Beasts sticker passed by, which Prashi waved down. Prashi wanted to locate Karthik of Royal Beasts, and thought the lone rider would shed some light on his whereabouts. As Prashi approached him, the Beaster took off in fright. More on the Beaster later.