It's about the relationship you have together. How you look after each other. What you do when you are not riding. Do you look check your bike often, do you perform routine maintenance, do you keep her clean?
In some ways it is like al relationship with people. Sometimes the relationship is like it is between boyfriend and girlfriend, a romantic and exciting love affair. Sometimes it is like friends, looking out for each other and enjoying each others company. Sometimes it is like being a parent, looking after a bike, caring for it, restoring it, coaxing it into life.
I am not a natural with bikes, I am certainly not a mechanic like Dan. In the past, when I had a bike back in England many years ago, I admit I was careless and let the bike go to rust.
But now, I can honestly say that I have tried my hardest to look after Ambliss and Carmen and learn what I need to do to get the bet from them. I have tried my best to make the relationship work, and been rewarded as the bikes have been brilliant for me.
Today was one of the hardest days that you have in any relationship, the day that it ends. I have just taken Ambliss back. I have just said goodbye. I have returned her to Rajesh.
I feel terrible. Its like I have abandoned a friend, have betrayed them into slavery or sold them back into a brothel. Like I have been a bad parent, a bad boyfriend or a bad rider.
In some ways Ambliss is only a machine. An assembly of chassis, engine, electrics and wheels. Bulbs, wires, gears and chains. Levers, pistons, plugs and tubes. In its crudest reduction, just steel, rubber and plastic. Having an emotional attachment to a tool is ridiculous, even calling it a name is silly. It is only a machine.
In other ways though she is alive. She has pace and power, strength and endurance. She drinks, she eats. She has a beating heart and a roar like nothing else in the concrete jungle.
She has a personality, she is often cranky in the mornings and doesn't like to get out of bed, wake up and start. She can be a bit playful - sometime the indicators work, and sometimes they don't. They have confounded every mechanic who has worked on them. And she likes attention - whenever I show her off to someone she inevitably starts first time and keeps them safely seated on the back.
I had to win her over. She tested me properly before she was willing to trust me. In the first few hours, her gear lever fell off, she punctured a tyre and ran out of petrol due to her fuel tap pointing contrary to every other bike.
Once I had passed these little tests though, she gave herself to me without reservation. She handled every terrain and condition thrown at her from long straight drives to windy and bendy 45 degree slopes, from slow driving in mad congested traffic to racing at almost 90 on deserted highways. She would drive for days without a moments misfire. She never had any major sickness's or illness's or needed expensive treatment.
And she has heart. She is loyal and courageous. If knocked over she will get back up and keep going. I remember when the rack disintegrated in Uttarakhand. I loaded the luggage onto the back seat, prayed that we would make it to Rishikesh and didn't think we had a hope in hell. Ambliss got us there.
She can take a beating too. She has even taken a beating for me and protected me from harm, most noticeably from the crash. I could have easily been crushed and lost a leg at the minimum, but her leg guard and handlebar kept me undamaged.
We have been a real partnership for two months. She has been part of this story as much as anyone really, it would not have been the same journey without her.
Ambliss didn't want to go, I could feel it. Firstly the right mirror which I had had to take off whilst she was on the train refused to go back in properly, the thread had got fouled. Then I wouldn't start her for ages. And when she finally did wake up, and I pushed her off the stand, the back tyre was totally deflated.
They all felt like tactics used to delay me taking her back. Obstacles that she had thrown in my path to try and keep us together. I sighed and got the pump out, but it was so bad or the puncture was so deep no air would go in. I would have to push her to Tony Bikes.
All the way down the street, I seemed to hear her whisper in my head 'Don't take me back, please don't take me back. I want to stay with you. Please don't take me back, please, I want to stay with you...'
'Hush now little one,' I spoke to her gently too sad to be cross about her playing up. 'Be brave, you've got to go back. Be brave little one, for me'.
'I know I have to, but I'm scared. I don't want to. I don't want another owner. I want you'.
'I know little one, but you're not mine to keep'.
'I don't want too', she the whisper turned into a wail.
I felt like a monster, taking her back. I tried to keep the pain from my voice. If I cracked up now, I might never take her back. 'Come little one. You're not mine to keep. Be brave, like you have been with me. It will be ok'.
'I know, I know' she sobbed. 'I have to, but, but, these two months have been special....' she trailed off.
It was all I could do to stop the tears in my eyes. There was a lump in my throat.
But when we got there, Tony Bikes was closed. Monday! Delhi closes on a monday. Half in relief, half very frustrated I turned the bike around and started pushing her back up to the hotel. Ambliss seemed to glow for the reprieve, even though we both knew it was only temporary.
'Hey man!' A car had pulled up. I was concentrating so much on Ambliss I didn't see who it was at first.
'Rajesh!' I was startled to see him here. 'I thought it was your day off?'
'I just came by to drop something off, Its a stroke of luck be here now. Come, lets go to the office'.
So I wheeled Ambliss back round and pushed her back to Rajesh waiting at Tony Bikes. This time, Ambliss seemed calmer and more in control.
'Its ok', she whispered. 'I feel happier now I have seen him. It will be ok'. Now it was her turn to comfort me.
'I could take you back to the hotel, we could have one more day together'. Now I didn't want to let her go, I felt desperately sad.
'No, its time now. Its time to say goodbye. I need to come home now'. This choked me more than anything.
'Bike ok?' Rajesh asked.
'Yeah, just a flat tyre. Otherwise, an all perfect'. I was amazed I got the words out without breaking down.
'Ok, let just store it tonight. We will have a look at her tomorrow and do the paperwork then'.
'No worries', I said. we chatted awhile longer about the trip but both of us wanted to go. As I walked of down the street, I could hear her calling out to me 'goodbye'.
I turned round and quickly hurried back to the workshop before Rajesh closed the shutter. I laid my hands on her petrol tank, as I did often when I spoke or thought of her, and in my heart said goodbye to here too.
I returned to the hotel full of sadness. It felt like a break up. Had I really been a bad parent, a bad boyfriend, a bad rider to Ambliss?
I remember one break up with a girlfriend. She said to me, 'Can we just pretend, just for one more night, that we are still together, we still love each other, and everything is going to be alright?'
That is how I think that I will deal with the grief of saying good-bye to Ambliss and I suppose the grief at finishing this journey. In my mind now, we are still roaring down the Highway from Mahendrenegar in the mist, still riding a song from Jaipur to Jodhpur and still clattering over the battlefield of Kunzum and Rohtang.
If I pretend hard enough, maybe I will one day really be a good rider.
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