The tall and lanky young man sitting next to me in the front row of the Singapore Airlines flight from
Singapore to Auckland called himself Daman. After some prodding, he revealed
that his name was Damandeep Singh and that he was from Haridwar in Uttarakhand.
Damandeep was returning to New Zealand after a brief vacation. He had studied
dairy farming in the island nation and was the manager of a dairy farm in
Hamilton town, south of Auckland.
This was my second visit to Aotearoa or the ‘Land of the big,
white cloud’ as New Zealand is known in the native Maori language.
The first time was in the year 2010, when I had travelled to
both the North and South islands in New Zealand with my wife and daughter as a
tourist. This time around, I was part of Team Radstrong, a ten-member, Ironman
Triathlon team from India taking part in the Ironman New Zealand race in the
scenic town of Taupo.
There are two things one has to be prepared for when travelling
to this island nation. One, the spellbinding natural beauty; second, members of
the Indian diaspora that you will see at every street corner.
The Ironman New Zealand race is a popular sporting event and
hence the immigration officers at the Auckland airport were extremely helpful
and cooperative in ushering us into their land with our bikes and bags.
One of my Triathlon buddies and I hired a self-drive car near
the airport and drove to Taupo, a driving distance of three and a half hours.
We picked up some burgers at a highway café and munched on the same as we
watched the Sun go down at a distance. Cattle and sheep grazing in the vast
countryside was a constant sight and we even stopped midway to shoot some
photos.
We reached Taupo at 2300 hrs and it was a dead town. And if it
were not for the lone, 24/7 MacDonald by the lakeside, I might have gone very
hungry to bed. The morning revealed an extremely beautiful town. Some of us
went up to the Great Lake, the venue of the swim leg in the Ironman race. There
was a very cold wind blowing and the lake waters were an icy 13 degrees. Yet,
we wore our tight wetsuits and jumped in. It was a divine experience. The
waters were crystal clear and you could count the weeds at the bottom of the
lake.
For food, as one part of our group was vegetarian, we began
patronising the many Indian restaurants in town. At the ‘Indian Affair’
restaurant, Aman, the charming, stewardess from Jhalandhar in Punjab made us
feel at home with her chaste Hindi and some excellent servings of aloo-gobi,
dal tadka and butter nans. However, we were soon addicted to another Indian
restaurant, ‘Indian Delights’, because it faced the beautiful Taupo lake and
the food was lip-smackingly good. Brijender, the jovial owner, was a Garhwali
villager, who had made Taupo his home for the last five years. Between Brijender
and his super-efficient stewardess, Raj (from Kurukshetra in Haryana), we were
treated as royalty.
Race day on March 7 saw all of us at the lakeside at 0700 hrs
waiting with bated breath for the 0800 hrs mass, gun-start. 1,500 Ironman
triathletes all started to swim at one time. It was sheer bedlam. All hands,
legs and feet clashing against each other. However, the commotion lasted for
only the first 200 metres and the field evened out after that. Everybody had
space for themselves as most of us completed the 3.8 kms of swimming in less
than 2:20 hrs.
The 180km bike ride was across some very picturesque
countryside. Plenty of rolling hills like Goa and long stretches of highways.
Very strong, cold, headwinds and crosswinds threatened to blow us off the roads
as most of us persevered to complete the ride in the cut-off time of 8:10 hrs.
The 42 km marathon to be completed within 6:30 hrs was the icing
on the cake for the participants as they ran along the Great Lake with several
hundred spectators cheering them lustily.
The Sunday after race day was spent either licking one’s wounds
or celebrating one’s success in the race and in packing our bikes and bags.
While most of my triathlon club buddies decided to visit tourist
spots like Rotorua and the Huka falls, I took a bus back to Auckland as I had
many friends to meet in that city.
Auckland is the commercial capital of New Zealand, but does not
unnerve you. It has plenty of expressways for smooth flow of automobile
traffic, but there are very quiet, tree-lined, neighbourhoods also. I was
fortunate to be interviewed by a Konkani channel, ‘Susegad Dhanpar’ on Planet
FM one morning, while I caught up with my close Indian friends the same evening
in a Pan Asian restaurant called Mini Moon. As the lingua franca at the table
was Konkani, we witnessed a medley of Konkani kantare, even as we quaffed down
the choicest of Australian wine.
I was also invited the next evening to speak about my Ironman
journey at the Rotary club of Somerville. On the penultimate day of my tour (
March 12) a kind, Indian friend volunteered to drive me to Hamilton town, two
hours away, to meet with my college friend, Naaz Shah, former India hockey
Olympian and captain. Naaz is a full-fledged teacher at the Hamilton Boys high
school and a hockey coach at the grassroots levels.
Naaz decided to show me the popular, Hamilton Gardens, which was
a revelation. This public property run by their municipal council had designer
gardens representing all corners of the world. There was the Japanese garden, the
Chinese garden, the Mughal gardens, the British gardens and the American
gardens. Naaz later treated me to a sumptuous Mediterranean meal in downtown
Hamilton.
Friday,
March 13, saw our team trooping into the Auckland airport in the morning for
the flight back home. It had indeed been an eventful short trip.
