Hope you have already checked flag-off and some glimpses of MTB Himachal 2010... If not, I would recommend you to check out following two links before checking these photographs of very first day...
Here are few more photographs of first day of MTB Himachal 2010 - Shimla > Mashobara > Shainj (Final Destination for the day)
MTB Riders climbing a normal height on good roads on first day...
The flagoff from Shimla Ridge was a great improvement over previous year's start from the Peterhoff hotel grounds - more accessible to the general public and the first day's stages were a bit of a warm up... All the riders started from Ridge and moved towards Mashobara.. A few kilometers from Mashobara, first stretch for racing had to start... All set and it started in batches for 8-12 riders...
Some of the MTB riders were very fast and they always lead the whole group... A Group from Nepal and another was Indian Army group... They had best cycles as compared to other folks...
One of the rider coming towards the bike after taking rest.. It was raining, so some of us stopped riding and rested till it stopped... Notice the road conditions and imagine how they would have been after rains...
As far as I remember, there were only two girls who were riding.. One was indian and other was from Nepal... Here is Number 57, Indian Rider who had great sense of humor :-)
Another rider of the gang who faced lot of hurdles on the way... But he rode till the end...
Every rider had a diary with him/her.. Before starting of any stretch, volunteers used to write down the time in those diaries and duration was calculated on ending of each stretch... Riders used to move in various groups and final timing had to be calculated on last day...
Can you guess who are these?
Here comes Mr.Rocky with his racing car... For now I am not explaining anything about it because I will have a separate post on this vehicle :-)
It had been raining the day before and was still overcast ... After covering few kilometers, it started raining and since we were in Forests of Deodars, there was no place to hide from rains....
Here comes Mr Suban Walia, who joined the gang mid-way... I think, he had just parked his Swift to take some photographs of riders on the way.... A true fan of NIKON !!!
We met many friends during this event and one of the Photographer called all the dogs with same name "BOOZO" ... So here is one among them...
School children came up to the road-side to witness MTB Riders in their local areas... Here is one of the cool dude who was not very amazed with well dressed bikers in his village... It seemed, he has already seen such events in past :-) Other children were very excited about it...
Here comes Mr. Peter, a very passionate biker and used to motivate other folks... He was there for this event with his wife.. Both of them enjoyed the event a lot and both of them used to take care of some other kids in the gang... If I remember correctly, she had given her jacket to Ankit even when warm cloths were in very good demand... Yesterday, I met Ankit and jacket is still with him :-)
A cute couple from United States... Hope we will meet again next year !
Here is 'Karvan' of Officials... All the organizers, media, volunteers and don't know who else... I am avoiding to comment on these cars for now... Check out my next posts to know more about non-rider community during MTB Himachal 2010...
Here is one volunteer noting down timings for various riders before second stretch starts...
Now its evening and we are heading downwards for our night stay and SHAIJ, a small village in Shimla District of Himachal Pradesh... All these places were naturally rich and colorful....
Orange colored hills, green trees/plants and blue sky... noting can be better than this .... Lovely place and nive weather... although it was too cold, but that was fun :-)
Clouds were still there but rains during the day had already spoiled the arrangements of our night stay... Whole area was wet where we had tents to sleep.. Thankfully we got a room in a school of the village with nice sleeping bags... The only problem was charging of our Cameras and Laptops...
Please keep in mind that I was not a rider in this event and can't comment anything about the difficulty level of these stretches... If I have mentioned anything about the same, that's my personal opinion and feel free to correct me...
CHECK OUT OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS OF MTB HIMACHAL 2010 by CLICKING LINKS BELOW:
Please keep in mind that I was not a rider in this event and can't comment anything about the difficulty level of these stretches... If I have mentioned anything about the same, that's my personal opinion and feel free to correct me...
Please leave your comments about this post and share suggestions for future postings...
To know more about this event, I can be reached at VJ@travellingcamera.com
To know more about this event, I can be reached at VJ@travellingcamera.com
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