I was very happy when I pressed 'Publish' on this book...and a bit thoughtful as well.
There were a few milestones I associated with this book 
1) This is my 10th book! I am now in double figures! WooHoo. 
2) This is the 5th Amigos book... a trilogy in five parts, as Douglas Adams might say. 
3) This was my 3rd book of 2019 - after 'Three Men Ride the Cliffhanger' and 'One Man goes Backpacking'. I didn't hit my target of 4 books a year - but I was reasonably happy with 3 books, given all the travelling I did in the year. I am targeting 4 books or more for 2020...let's see how that works out. 
4) This is among the very few travelogues about riding in Gujarat - a rara avis of sorts. There is a lot for travellers to see in Gujarat, and Gujarat will also benefit from more travellers I think - they will open up mentally and become more tourist friendly. 
5) This book was partly written on the road. Quite a bit of it was written while travelling to other areas. Some was written on my phone, using a bluetooth keyboard, while I carried my laptop in some travels. 
6) It was published slightly less than two years after we did the actual trip. We did the ride in Feb 2018 and the book was published in Dec 2019

We haven't had a Amigos ride since this one - though I did do some epic solo rides and duo ride as well, which I will write about, inshallah. But hopefully the Amigos will be back on the road soon.

What plans for 2020? I have already started on the next book in the backpacking series - One Man Hikes the Himalayas -  and on the To Be Written line are the solo ride books about Uttarakhand and North East, and starting my long pending international travel books and my cycling book. ...let's see what happens there. 

Travel plans - not fixed yet...but I have been at home for almost a month now and feeling a terrible itch! The roads are calling!  I have now been to the northern most point of India, the western most, the eastern most - and now its time to go to Kanyakumari...on bike! 

Ah, I almost forgot...you can pick up the book here

​Do write in and let me know what you thought of the books and what your travel plans are for the new year.

My this years trip to the Kumbh was a home-coming of sorts - as it brought to mind my first trip to the Kumbh - the Maha Kumbh - I should say - in 2001

And it was even more fun for me, as I was writing my book about my backpacking adventures, before I got into biking. This is the stories of how I first started backpacking. My first trip was to East India, along with my friend Chinmay. We went to Kolkata, explored West Bengal, Sikkim and Bhutan and ended up in Assam. 
This got me hooked on to backpacking and I went on a solo spur-of -the-moment trip to the Maha Kumbh in 2001. 

The book was a real blast to write, and I hope that it will be equally enjoyable to read as well. Do check it out! I found some old yellowing photos as well - do check them out here- One Man Goes Backpacking 
​