I first met Ashwin in the midst of a rather hectic, and badly specced out tiger census exercise in a forest in Northern India. He would go on later to take up a job with the Nepal Forest Dept and then tempt me with invites to various forests in Nepal! It was after one such invite that the plan to ride to Nepal first took seed, perhaps to be combined with a ride to Sikkim. A chance opening on the business front in end January, coinciding nicely with the Rider Mania in Delhi also helped push things along.

Shipping the bike out a week in advance, i took a flight out to Delhi on Saturday, hoping to begin riding on Monday. With me on the ride was Manas from the RTMC, Bangalore, incidentally my neighbor as well! Manas was attending the RM and we were hoping to begin riding on Monday after the event. However Manas came down with a bad case of Delhi-belly on the eve of departure and we were forced to postpone departure for 2 days.

The rough ride plan was to ride down the Mahendra highway, from north to south. Enroute we planned to halt at bardiya national park, and then head to Pokhara via Butwal and from there to Katmando, rejoin the Mahendra Highway at Hetauda and ride south to exit nepal at Kakkarbhitta.

Day 1: Ghaziabad to Khatima

We were to head down the NH24 which goes from Delhi towards Bareilly and then turnoff towards Tanakpur to make the border crossing: a total of around 300 odd kms: not too difficult considering that most of the roads were 4-laned.

Leaving Manas’ aunts home near Ghaziabad at around 10 am, we made good progress down the 4 laned highway. Stopped for a late breakfast of puri-subzi on the banks of the Ganga at Brijghat near Garhmuktheswar.

We made fantastic speeds on the NH24 until Rampur where we were caught in a horrific traffic jam. Rampur is the point at which, we take a turnoff for Nainital via Pantnagar. Getting out of the traffic jam and onto the road for Pantnagar took more than an hour, and it was past 0230 when we crossed over towards the road heading for Pantnagar. The road had been 4 laned till Rampur, but after that it was a 2 laned mess. Rudrapur or Uddham Singh Nagar was the point where the road further diverges: the straight road leading onwards to Nainital. A right turn from Rudrapur would take us towards the border town of Tanakpur. The road from here was 2 laned but ran through some pretty scenic terrain. Lots of Sikhs to be seen in this part of the country, and lots of signboards in Punjabi! For a while it was like riding through Punjab! Rudrapur was the site where a number of Sikhs from what is now Pakistan displaced at Partition were resettled which explains the demographics. We finally stopped at around 4pm a little beyond Rudrapur for a hearty vegetarian lunch.

Our original plan was to cross over the border into Nepal the same day. But there was a lack of clarity on exactly how far away from the international border we were and how much time the border crossing formalities would take. If the border closed at 6pm as some were saying, we would be forced to backtrack. So after a quick map-check, we decided to make a night halt at the border town of Khatima. A little before Khatima, 11 kms to be exact we came across a stunning spectacle: a HUGE expanse of water, almost like an inland sea. The Nanak Sagar! The lake is created by a dam on the stream called Deoha considered to be holy among the Sikh community. Perhaps it would have been less dramatic if we had been told about this!

We were checked into our hotel on the Pilibhit road by 545pm. The weather had been reasonably pleasant till then, but the temperature crashed to near sub-zero levels as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon: which made us regret the fact that we left our rooms to go into town for dinner. Room service might have been a better option!

Next: Crossing borders…

It was 2007, and like we do every Feb, planning had already started for that years pilgrimage to the Himalayas. I was originally planning to ride down with Poncho and Chotu, and we had already worked out the itinerary and other details. However in March, work pressures would force me to back out of the ride, and Poncho decided to ride ahead alone. Being a “Leh-Vargin” meant that this ride was a must do for him, especially since the only other “Vargin”, Chotu, had done it the previous year. So solo it was for him, while I cursed my luck at being left behind.

Fate however had other plans. An old friend from my Symbiosis days, Manish was also making plans to ride up to Leh on his (then) new Thunderbird. He was going out with 2 other friends of his and he dropped in regularly to consult about routes etc at my shack in Mumbai. Meanwhile a window had opened up on the work front, and I quite suddenly found myself signing up to join them for the ride barely a week before D-day! I clearly must have been drunk on some potent stuff!

So early on a rain-washed morning in mid-August, I rode out alone from Mumbai on the Ghodbunder axis, hoping to sync up with the gang either at Thane or at Fountain Hotel which is the usual sync point on rides up north from mumbai. Manish and gang, who were to ride down from the Pune side, were late in starting up and texted me to push ahead. As it turned out, i reached the days planned halt at Mt.Abu 760 kms away bang on schedule, while the gang, having made a very late start, only managed Udvada by their end of day. It was only late evening the 2nd day, that the gang managed to catch up. Oh well! This gave me an unexpected day to take in the quaint hill station that till that day had only been seen in films.

It was only in Mt.Abu that I first met up with the other 2 members who were to form the gang! Joggy, also a fellow Jacobaite Mallu from Pune like moi, was on a military green Standard 500. What Joggy lacked in physical stature, he made up with some of the finest riding skills seen on the road. Param, with his AVL350 was the final member of this motley group. At 38, Param was the eldest of the lot and hence the natural leader. Joggy, was the archetypical Mallu union leader, ever ready to veto any proposal suggested by Param! I was to learn 8 days later that Param had been Joggy’s senior in the Navy in the not too distant past which apparently hadn’t gone too well! Manish, my link to this group, was the loyal friend wanting to stand by his buddy Joggy irrespective of right or wrong! Yours truly was the outsider in the group who usually kept his trap shut for that reason! Why is that so hard to believe? Cougar CAN keep quiet you know?! Despite the contradictions, like with most bikers, the connection was instantaneous! Introductions over, we settled down for an exhilarating discussion on the ride ahead.

Here’s the summary of the news so far which prompted the latest round of theatrics. Kingfisher is bankrupt! No money to pay its staff, or for fuel or the airports or indeed the lease rentals of its aircraft. 4 of its aircraft have already been repossesed, and the sword looms over the rest of the fleet as well. The banks cant lend it more money nor can they show the same degree of benevolence as they did last time Kingfisher “restructured” their debt at public expense.

Vijay Mallya therefore came out to “set the record straight”: or so he would like us to believe! Brave attempt indeed, except that it doesnt convince anyone who is aware of the muck behind the glam.

I would like to present a point by point rebuttal of Mr.Mallya’s valiant attempt to pull wool over the eyes of the public.

Here is what he said in full.

I know all of you would like to quote a particular airline which is showing profits… you can also show profits through sale and lease back of aircraft.

The reference here is to Indigo which, perhaps with an eye on an upcoming IPO, is showing “cooked up” profits through sale and lease back method, where aircraft which are owned, are sold off to a leasing company and then leased back, allowing the accountants, through some skillful jugglery to show cooked up profits. No doubt, Indigo has a nice ponzi scheme of its own going on which seems to have got quite a few of the clueless journo’s barking up the wrong tree.

But what Mr.Mallya conveniently fails to mention, that his airline has been showing losses DESPITE resorting to the very same creative accounting that Indigo has been carrying on: albeit on a smaller scale. Will Mr.Mallya explain how many of his own planes have been sold and leased back over the years?

So creative accounting may explain Indigo’s profits, but the same couldnt hide Kingfishers problems: which perhaps is one indicator of the deep hole that the airline finds itself in.

We cancelled flights not because we couldnt afford to fly. Even today, we are operating the schedule that we have offered to our guests. The cancellation of 50 odd flights has been blamed on entirely wrong reasons….but it was a commercially prudent decision. We cannot as a commercial company afford to fly routes that are commercially loss making. We are not in the same arena as the national carrier Air India, that perhaps has a national duty to perform with the Govt as its shareholder. We are accountable to our shareholders and investors…

Mr.Mallya comes out with this indefensible and thoroughly contradictory statement. On one hand he says that Kingfisher is not in the same arena as Air India and so cannot fly unprofitable routes as a social service like the national carrier does. On the other hand he also says his airline is aware of the social responsibility and so has not pulled out of routes where they are the sole airline providing airlinks!

For one thing, Kingfisher till very recently had outsourced the social flying obligation to air india by block booking seats on AI flights to Tier-3 routes instead of operating them on their own. Two: if Tier-3 routes are the cause for the lack of profits, why arent the flights to Hubli or Tuticorin facing the axe, instead of say Delhi-Hyderabad or Patna? The simple reason being that the Tier-3 routes with no competition gets them better yields than the metro routes where they are crowded out by the competition. Ofcourse, Mr.Mallya chooses to window-dress this fact and that alone can explain the contradiction! But the fact remains, that “flying unprofitable routes” is not what caused KingFishers current sorry state: the reasons for that lie elsewhere!

And the fact remains, that if commercial decisions warrant the closure of a route, the right way to do it is to not publish it in your schedules and not take bookings against flights that you do not plan to operate. The DGCA has specific rules that specify precisely this. But this is precisely what Kingfisher did: they published schedules, took bookings from passengers and cancelled flights at the last minute. At the time, we were told by his own PR staff, that the cancellations were for aircraft re-configurations, and now we are told that the cancellations were because the routes were unprofitable? If they were unprofitable, why publish the schedules? Why accept bookings? Why block valuable slots?

This is precisely because something unforeseen happened between the time the schedules were rostered and published and Nov 2 when their operations’s first started going haywire. We know what these are, but a discussion on those factors will be a separate topic. The point here, is that Mr.Mallya is deliberately obfuscating facts when he says that flight cancellations were a “commercial decision to cut losses”.

His CEO later makes the wholly untrue claim of having kept guests informed throughout the cancellation saga! Well, if this had indeed happened, would the country have witnessed the scenes at the airports that we did Mr.Agarwal?

Mr.Mallya then goes on to rant over the “ad-valorem” state taxes. Fair enough. It is nobody’s case that the tax structures in India dont need a relook. But it is also a fact that the same competitive environment exists for all the players in the market. Once again, the sorry state that Kingfisher finds itself in cannot be put down to this.

Mr.Mallya has basically listed a number of, well, “reasons” for the mess his airline finds itself in. However without solid reasoning offered for them, they remain but pathetic excuses for incompetence.

What are the reasons for the mess that Kingfisher finds itself in? Well for one, the cost-structures for the 5-star service on offer can only be sustained when they can start charging the premium for such a service. And the indian market has ruled that it is unwilling to do that. A random check on fares for 11 metro routes on a portal like makemytrip reveals that Kingfisher is often the cheapest on a route after Low-Fare Carriers like Go, Spicejet and Indigo with other Full service carriers like Air India and Jet charging between 400 and 1200 more expensive on the same route. The 5-star service comes at a price. The question is: are they recovering it?

Second came the mad rush for market share. Jet went in for Sahara for precisely the same reason: capturing a chunk of market share at enormous cost. Kingfisher tried the same when they acquired Deccan, the added benefit being acquiring the right to go international due to the 5 year rule. Along with Deccan came the accumulated losses of that airline. The only reason Jet does not find itself in a similar mess is perhaps they got loans far cheaper than Kingfisher due to some prudent management. With a more rational management at the helm in Kingfisher, perhaps they would have got the same. But rationality is hardly something the country expects from the King of Good times.

Third ofcourse was the massive influx of capacity that far exceeded the demand which forced all carriers to under-price their offerings in an attempt to get bums of seats. Kingfisher ofcourse did the same to stay in the business. This isnt something that can go on for ever. The game here is who dies first. Being more highly leveraged than the other players, meant that Kingfisher was always the most at risk in this high-stakes game. And that is precisely what has happened.

Last but not the least, the loss of their benefactor is a key factor in their current woes. The former Civil Aviation Minister, a known family friend, whose entire family was known to travel around the world in Mr.Mallya’s fleet of private jets, is no longer the toast of the town. Infact, UPA-2, weary of the all the scams has discarded Mr.Praful Patel for fear of carrying one more albatross around its neck. And the loss of Praful Patel has meant the loss of their chief benefactor. He was the guy who got Mr.Mallya’s airline the plum routes. he was the guy who got the national carrier to withdraw out of routes so he could start flying with lesser competition. And he was the guy who managed to convince the banks to give the King of Good times the easy treatment when it came to debt-restructuring!

I still would like to know from Mr.Mallya (mr.Patel will not answer) how his airline, hemorrhaging with mounting debts, managed to get such a sweet deal from the State owned banks! I mean imagine getting your lenders to virtually waive off the debts by converting them to equity, and that too at a PREMIUM of 160%!!! It happens perhaps only in India! I would like to hear from Mr.Mallya how he managed to swing this sweet deal. And i know, he has made it amply clear on twitter that he is not looking for a bailout but another round of debt-restructuring from the same banks. I am sorry Mr.Mallya, but a bailout, by any other name, would still be as bitter!!

I would also like to know from Mr.Mallya, that if his airline is really not in financial trouble, then why his staff have not been paid for over 3 months now? Or why the leasors are reposessing planes as we speak? Or why the fuel companies are stopping fuel supplies?

The reason the airline is in such a mess can be traced to poor management. And for that Mr.Mallya himself is to blame. For a man who likes to paint himself as an Indian version of Branson, he has shown little talent for running an airline. Which explains perhaps the strange deals for aircraft being struck on his yacht in the middle of the ocean. While competitors like Indigo place orders for 150 aircraft after some hard bargaining, Mr.Mallya was negotiating orders on a different rationale: like a child in a toy store he wanted 5 aircraft of EVERY type! That explains the orders for 5 A320′s, 5 A330′s, 5 A380′s, 5 A340′s and 5 A350′s placed in just one year. And that wasnt the only year when we saw this kind of eccentricity now was it?

A final word in closing: while Mr.Vayalar Ravi and the Prime Minister were scampering around to save his airline from extinction, while his staff were fretting over unpaid salaries, while banks were wondering whether they wille ver recover their lending to Kingfisher, Mr. Mallya was ranting away on twitter from the sidelines of the Formula 1 in Dubai! Enough said… Move over Mr.Mallya, we have had enough of your dramatics!

It was a pleasant weekend on a beach in Mandrem, located in the extreme north of Goa, that the gang of 4, as they eventually became, first met up. The occasion was BullitMania – the very first of what would later become an annual pilgrimage for the hardcore bullet clubbie. And as many will fondly recall: probably the best BullitMania EVER! Now ofcourse, we know….!

To return to our story, the motley bunch got along like proverbial peas in a pod. So much so, that after the event, the gang of 4 decided to head south and explore Goa, eventually settling down to spend a whole week in a shack on a remote beach called Palolem, in the very south of Goa, which back then was not the mess it is today. Back then, it was an unspoilt beach, popular with hippies where one could find accommodation for 2 adults for as little as 60 rupees a night!

You couldn’t have found 4 people more different than these four! Cutlet (who also features in some other stories in the Road Tales series) was training to be a film maker. Then there was “Kid” from Pune, who claimed to be 18, but who we now know couldn’t have been a day older than 16 at the time. Then there was Kuggie, also from Pune: star rider/tourer etc etc and clearly the celebrity of the group, complete with the starry nakhras. Last, but by no means the least, was STUDD, dress designer by profession (though critics allege most of the clothes in his store were not original creations but smuggled in from Bangkok or Malaysia). STUDD had ridden down all the way from Kanpur in central india just to attend this biker meet! RESPECT!! Such a disparate group could only have come together through the hand of god!

Anyways, after a heavenly week spent in this heaven by the shore, the gang of 4 returned to their respective homes, but not before resolving, that next year, and every year after that, the annual pilgrimage to BullitMania would be rounded off by a visit to the very same beach shack!

The following year, BullitMania was not held in Goa (indeed it has not been held in Goa since). However the Gang of 4 still kept their resolution and rode to the very same beach even though it entailed an extra ride of over 600 kms each way. Once in Goa, the Gang also had to give a not so subtle D-P-L (dhungan-pe-laath) to some pesky riders from Dilli who insisted on tagging along that year. No offense meant to anyone brothers! but the Palolem brotherhood was a private one indeed and that’s the way they preferred to keep it!