1500 miles in 36 hours

I am the First Indian to do BUN-BURNER (1500 miles in 36 hours).

Iron Butt’s BUN-BURNER Ride by Devjeet Saha.

I always had a craze for bikes and bike related activities, mostly speed riding and such. After beating the Train Aravali Express in a Mumbai to Jaipur race (1251 km) by almost an hour in April 2008, I was looking for greater challenges. I was surfing the net and I came across Akshay Kaushal, who had done the SADDLE-SORE of the Iron Butt Association of USA, which is 1000 miles in 24 hours. So I checked the ironbutt site and found that the next higher level of ironbutt rides is the BUN-BURNER ride, which is1500 miles in 36 hours. I set my heart on it.

First I had to locate a suitable route – where the roads should be good and traffic should be light. It would be better (and safer) if the roads were two-lane (like NH4) or three-lane (like the expressway) with road divider. So I went on my bike from Pune to Jaipur, bought maps and charted the most likely route, which was Jaipur – Rewari – Hissar – Bikaner – Jaisalmer– Barmer – Ahmedabad – Rajkot – Ahmedabad – Udaipur – Jaipur. I set out to check the road, traffic etc on this route. I found the roads in Haryana to be quite bad, heavy truck traffic who don’t give you leeway, and no road dividers. Besides, Rewari & Hissar had no bye-pass and one had to ride through town.

I entered Rajasthan at Rajgadh and the road quality improved dramtically. I continued on my planned route. I had entered Gujrat and it had become night and in my hurry I overlooked signboards and made a wrong turn and came on to some side road and had a nasty fall @ 10:30 pm night on 10.Aug.2009 @ 40 km before Palanpur. Having a full-face helmet and riding jacket, my torso was safe, but I did not have riding pants, so my knee took a nasty wound which has still not healed fully. Anyway, my exploratory trip was aborted. I rode my damaged bike to Ahmedabad, shipped it back to Pune by road and took a flight back toPune.

In spite of my accident, my survey was complete, because the Ahmedabad – Jaipur route I knew very well having ridden Pune – Ahmedabad - Jaipur four times in the recent past.

Now I had to do the real thing, the BUN-BURNER attempt.

I decided to start from Jaipur at 07:00 a.m. on Friday 4-Dec.2009. So I shipped my bike toJaipur by Gati on 27^th Nov. and reached Jaipur by train on 30^th Nov. The bike was promised to be delivered at Jaipur by road on 1.Dec. as written in the GATI receipt. But it did not arrive: not on 1.Dec, not on 2.Dec and I was panicking. I made frantic phonetics to allGATi offices and somehow got the mobile number of the driver of the truck that was bringing my bike. I offered him a “baksheesh” of Rs.2000/- if he drove non-stop and deliver my bike by 3.Dec evening. In the event, I got my bike at 9:30 pm on 3.Dec. Thank God! After that I got the bike done-up to rectify the damage GATi had done. I was ready but quite worn out due to the tension and running about resulting from non-arrival of my bike in Jaipur in time.

I was flagged off by bikeguru Dilip Bam from a petrol pump on Ajmer road in Jaipur at 07:45 am on Friday 4^th Dec.2009 as scheduled. The month being December it was damn cold in the desert, and the journey from Jaisalmer onwards was extremely cold. On my torso I wore a thick full sleeve T-shirt plus two sweaters plus normal jacket covered by the TEFLON riding jacket. A muffler round my neck and thermal pajama under my riding Teflon pants covered my legs. I Rode on the route mentioned in the second para above taking 30-minute breaks at Jaisalmer & Ahmedabad and arrived back at the same starting petrol pump at 19:35 pm, riding 2689 km and beating the deadline by just TEN MiNUTES. I had done the BUN-BURNER and was thrilled. I still am, and looking for greater challenges!