Adventure isn’t always on a dark cold night deep inside a dense forest… it can be there in the city on a bright sunny day as well. Adventure doesn’t need you to have six packs and be a regular in a gym… it can happen even to a 5’4” short guy who hasn’t kept up even with his daily walks. Adventure isn’t always hard, incisive, and hurtful… there is enough poetry in it to make you say, ‘Hey! Adventure is another lovely form of love, isn’t it?’
To understand adventure you need to understand the treads of adventure. It is almost like driving on tyres that are treaded for adventure… right? It does not matter whether you’re driving on a well-maintained highway or you’re going splashing across a river bed or growling up a steep mountain slope or have to negotiate a lot of rough terrain. Adventure isn’t so much about terrain as it is about a holistic mix of aptitude and attitude.
Treads of Adventure
We have five senses to help us explore the world that we live in… and they help us form the core of our passion for anything that we do. This is where adventure makes its grand entry. I know some of you are thinking that it would be blissful if passion for eating kebabs or drinking beer is also an adventure. Well, it certainly has the potential for graduating to being a culinary voyage but let’s just say that adventure is more than pampering your taste buds.
Helen Keller once wrote that ‘life is either a great adventure or nothing’ and she was right. So what are the essentials for adventure?
‘Five essentials help you understand what adventure really is,’ is what I’d say. I’ll strive to explain this by sharing a few pictures I clicked during one recent adventure.
Obstacles are not killers
To keep moving ahead is the target and this happens only once you’ve realised that obstacles are meant to be conquered. They are not murderers or killers waiting to pounce upon you.
1. Obstacles are not killers
The best way to do this is to look, see, and believe, that is, accept that you are face to face with a situation that needs you to first understand it fully and then take the right steps. For instance, while off-roading on the Thar 4X4 that was fitted with JK Ranger All Terrain tyres, I measured the incline intuitively and allowed the tyres with deeper grooves to make the journey inside this ditch an adventure that could be won.
Actions need to be unflinching and watchful
How you respond is what has the potential to convert any potentially dangerous situation into a memorable adventure. Risk is inherent to adventure but how you tread it is what really matters. It is almost like the tougher sidewalls of the JK All Terrain tyres helped me negotiate this part of the track with ease.
2. Actions need to be unflinching and watchful
Adventures, let me add here, give you enough scope to innovate and decide on a course of action that may not have yet been experienced by anyone else… well, I did feel that crossed these alternating deep ditches at a pace that none of the other participants did.
Forget fear
Adventure and fear do not go together… look at the way the tyre in the picture is fearlessly converting a mud and water risk into yet another smooth ride up. What is essential is the calm assurance of aggressive wide lateral grooves in this case. For us mortals there is a lesson in this… focus on what is vital and convert every implausible situation into a triumph.
3. Forget fear
Most important, do not be ruled by fear!
Giving up is not an option
Adventures are not about turning your back upon an opportunity nor are they about allowing illogical fears to overwhelm your innate enthusiasm. Adventure is all about taking yet another step, another plunge into the unknown or less known and emerging on the other side bathed in smiles.
4. Giving up is not an option
Surge ahead — the mantra of success!
Let me add here that it is giving up that is tethered to the terror of failure and that it is the urge and the spirit to constantly moving ahead that converts life into a celebration. Almost like the variable draft groove technology of the JK All Terrain tyres on my vehicle that helped my off-roading adventure seem like a smooth and problem-free ride.
Encourage visions of success
Well, actions that give stress and constrict the body and mind into a trauma are no adventure. There has to be a certain degree of joy and this is what acts as the fuel to hop from one spirited activity to another… from one adventure to another!
5. Encourage visions of success
Adventure is all about aptitude as well as attitude
This post was inspired by a day that I spent off-roading on vehicles fitted with the JK A/T tyres. Let me add here what I read on the JK ranger site: “The real off roaders are born with passion of driving and living on the edge. Every moment of their survival depends on the decisions made within seconds. Keeping these REAL OFFROAD PEOPLE in mind, JK Tyre has developed RANGER SERIES of tyre which stops from 100 to 0 within 4 second.”
Adventure, let me also add, is a ‘Song of the Open Road’ and is almost like ‘The Road Not Taken’ because someone somewhere thought that ‘Hard Is the Journey’. But listen, adventure is actually ‘an unusual and exciting or daring experience’ that wilfully ‘engages in daring or risky activity’… therefore, tread well!
.
.
.
Treads of Adventure… on #JKTyreRanger
#JKTyreRanger
http://www.jktyre.com/ranger/ — details here
.
.
.
Arvind Passey
18 January 2016
