MTB Foot Soldier

Dattatreya Patil is not just another passionate biker.

In the myth, Dattatreya — the incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar — left home at a very early age in search of the Absolute — the moksha. In reality, Dattatreya, too, left home to explore the world on two wheels.

Elusive as the mythological god is, Dattatreya — popularly known as Datta Patil in the cycling circuit — pedals all the way every year to MTB Himalaya. And like the sage of Dattatreya Purana, he too is barefooted. Whoever has done mountain biking knows it very well how difficult it is to ride a cycle in the terrain full of gravel and stone, dirt and streams, mud and springs. But Datta Patil is different. He hardly cares for his toes, which may crush against the rocky surface any time on a sharp bend. We have specialised shoes, some are imported, for MTB but Datta Patil has no wish to change his way of biking.

At 12, he learnt how to balance the wonder two-wheeler. Thirty years down the line, the grape farmer from Sangli, some 380km southeast of Mumbai, has ridden thousands of kilometres across the country. Last year, he pedalled all the way from Sangli to Panipat for spreading the message of “Saving the girl child”. From the mighty Himalayas to the rugged Sahyadri — he mustered courage to cover on the two wheels. His daily routine remains a bit odd. Waking up at 2am, he warms up for half an hour before hitting the road with the steel machine. By the time the children — he runs a district-level cycling club in Sangli for years — starts arriving at the break of the day, he puts up at least 100km. And, it’s not the end of his morning ride. With the children, he does another 50km at least! By 8 in the evening, he is ready for bed.

Surprising to many of us, but this routine has yielded him results. He has not taken a single medicine in the last 25 years. His cycling club where he trains children aged over 10 years has been organising trips to various destinations — from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. As he prepares them for cross-country rides free of cost, he seeks sponsor for the trips and if he cannot find one, he tries to pump funds, whatever little he has, himself. Every year, Datta Patil confers a “Swami Vivekananda Young Achiever” award to one of the teenaged cyclists also.

His presence at any event, especially in the MTB Himalaya, draws an enormous amount of media attention. But it’s difficult for anyone to confirm whether he would travel 2,000km — that’s the exact distance from his village to the hub of MTB Himalaya in Shimla — this year also. But we all know he would turn up at the Ridge on September 27. As I was doing a research on Datta Patil for the past few days, I wanted to talk to him. But he is still elusive. And, hardly anyone knows his cellphone number, if he has at all any. I shot off a mail to an id but in a fraction of second I got a failure notice. “Failure” might be a popular phrase for the mailmaniacs but I hope it’s not in his dictionary. He will remain as the barefoot soldier of hundreds of MTB enthusiasts.

MTB Mania

For a biker in one of the most populous and polluted city, cycling is a curse on the road. Finding a way out in the snarls made up of innumerable cars and buses is near impossible a proposition. Riding at a cruise speed of even 20kmph in the potholed roads called highways can best be called a dream. Inhaling carbon monoxide in every nook and cranny of the green-starved city is just a practice for a smoother, and quicker, journey to death. This is Kolkata where cycling is banned on 172 roads – something unimaginable elsewhere in the world.

Something unimaginable to me too who spent his university days in a serene town, literally known as abode of peace — Santiniketan — where cycle is the favourite mode of transport for students and residents. Something unimaginable to someone who enjoys treading along the serpentine forest path in the Himalayas, or the Saranda. Something unimaginable to an over-ambitious youth who wants to cycle around the world.

It’s all about the perfect balance. It’s all about the green machine. It’s all about the free wheels. Wheels that should know no stopping, no count of RPM, no dashboard to indicate whether you are running out of fuel and no tailpipe, no gas, no power steering, no power window, no AC ducts, no cushy seats with head rests... It’s no-nonsense entity. It’s a cycle. A two-wheel wonder. Why shouldn’t one fall in love with it? Why shouldn’t one take it on the roads that vanish in the greeny horizon of the countryside, why shouldn’t one ride it down the rocky mountains, why shouldn’t one just enjoy the breeze gliding it along the virgin beaches where waves splash on its spokes?

The love for cycling turns profound with a ride on MTB — mountain terrain biking. But what does it take to ride an MTB? Questions were aplenty. Someone told me about trek. What is a trek? Trek with a lower "t" or an upper "T"? For years, trek for me was the expeditions i had taken to Sandakphu or Roopkund. Or Kalatop or Gaumukh... or ...or.... 

But some years back, four digits changed my perception. 3700. Just four digits. I didn’t know the strength of the four digits till i hopped on to one. Some months on, i was addicted to it. Addiction, they say, is bad for health. Is it? Not only to my office and back in central Kolkata, even during Durga Puja, the mother of all festivals in this part of the country, i rode it across the length and breadth of the city. Some more weeks, and weekends, followed. I promoted myself to 4300D. For the uninitiated, these are numbers. For the passionate biker, it’s the Arabian horses in the stable, the Jag in the garage, the Dreamliner in the hangar. Wind in the hair maybe a clichéd term, but for us, the MTBians, it’s something we live with every day, every moment in every turn downhill, in every twists of freeriding. Now, it’s time to break free in the Himalayas with MTB Himalaya, Edition 9.