Photos provided

Sonny Ramaswamy (right) knew he was in good hands during his 11-day motorcycle tour of India last year. Purdue's associate dean of agriculture and director of agriculture research programs was accompanied by his son-in-law, Andrew Park (left) and Travis Mellon. Both are doctors.

For Sonny Ramaswamy, it was to be the trip of a lifetime. Ten days, 1,100 miles across a chunk of his native India on the saddle of a motorcycle.

Sure, it would have been easier to make the trip by car — safer, too. It's not that Ramaswamy is reckless, but Purdue Agriculture's associate dean and director of agricultural research programs does list bungee jumping as one of his hobbies.

So leave the safety concerns to his wife, Gita, who was recently appointed associate dean in Purdue's graduate school.

It wasn't that she was overly concerned about Ramaswamy's safety. But she was definitely concerned about Andrew Park, Ramaswamy's traveling companion on the Indian adventure.

You see, Park had only been married to their daughter (Megha) for about a year. Gita wasn't about to lose a son-in-law she had barely broken in.

"If you harm one single hair on his head," she warned Sonny, "don't come back at all."

The inspiration for the trip was the movie The Motorcycle Diaries, the 2004 film documenting Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Alberto Granado's 1951 motorcycle ride from Argentina to Venezuela as a last fling before they were to finish medical school.

So, too, for Park, who was about to embark on his medical residency in New York.

Sure, they could have done the Rocky Mountains. But that would have been too easy.

"All those roads are paved," Ramaswamy says. "Besides, there is absolutely nothing in all the world quite like the Himalayas."

For the rest of your life, you get to tell people you rode the Himalayas. That, alone, pretty much trumps any bar bet match of one-upsmanship, anywhere.

Not that there were no creature comforts on the ride. They rode Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycles, followed by a guide in a jeep, loaded with daily provisions and clothing.

Ramaswamy was born in India and lived there until coming to the United States for good in 1976. He still visits India regularly, but his trip through the northern mountains of his homeland would be new territory for him.

They rode a little more than 100 miles a day, in all sorts of weather, some bad, on all sorts of roads, mostly bad, with all sorts of results, all great, according to Ramaswamy.

The trip started in the lowlands, traversed the famed Ganges River, the spiritual center of the country, visited the home of the Dalai Lama and included the Rohtang Pass, some 13,000 feet above sea level.

They called home each night to assuage the fears of their wives but saved a few stories, like their trip through Jalori Pass, for when they got home.

Sonny Ramaswamy saw a little of everything on his 1,100-mile motorcycle journey across India, including a traffic jam caused by a herd of Himalayan mountain goats.

"There was no sense scaring them unnecessarily," Ramaswamy says.

An avalanche had closed the pass the day before, but the bikers wanted to try the rutted, narrow gravel road anyway. Each switchback up the mountain was just another place where they could easily slip off the side of the mountain.

"Our thumbs were sore from laying on the horn all the way up the mountain," Ramaswamy says. "There were so many blind corners, we had to use the horn to warn any oncoming trucks that we were coming."

One of the truck drivers didn't hear Rama-swamy's horn as the trucker hurtled down the mountain pass. Ramaswamy squeezed hard on the brakes and slid to within a foot of the truck's headlight.

"This is it," he thought, "it's all over."

But that adrenaline rush was just an exclamation mark on a trip chock-full of memories, most more sublime than his frozen-in-the-headlight ascent to Jalori Pass.

"We rode through freezing rain for several hours one day and came to this tiny village," he explains.

"We stopped by this little hut, and the owners invited us to come in and sit by the fire. They gave us tea and food while we warmed up and dried off. Then people just kept coming in out of the mist to see us and hear our story. I don't know where they were coming from, because there weren't more than four or five huts, but it was just magical."

While it has been a little more than a year since Ramaswamy's ride, the memories are as fresh as today.

"It was an unbelievable experience," Rama-swamy says. "Certainly, it was one of the greatest experiences of my lifetime. India is such a diverse country, both in its people and in its land. As we traveled from the lowlands north toward the Himalayas, we got to experience all of that diversity. It was incredible."

Upon his return to the United States, Rama-swamy promised Gita that his Motorcycle Diaries days are done, but his riding days are far from over.

He's looking forward to riding his Harley Davidson Sportster (a 50th birthday present from his wife and daughter in 2001) on the rolling back roads of the Wabash River Valley around the Purdue campus.

The Wabash may not be the Ganges, but it's a safe bet he won't get a sore thumb tooting his horn at oncoming traffic, either.

Contact Ramaswamy at sonny@purdue.edu