Nine bags, and a cold wind off the water

February in the Aravallis is the good season — clear, cold, the light hard and long. We met at the usual pump at seven, most people in every layer they owned, and rode the ridge road out through Sohna at a gentle pace. Nobody minds a slow ride when the alternative is windchill at speed.

There is nothing complicated about this loop and that is the point of it — it is a beginner-friendly breakfast ride, and half the group had done fewer than five rides with us. We were at the lake by eight.

Winter is the heavy season for Damdama. The caterers who service the picnic groups leave foil trays and disposable plates in drifts; there is glass, a lot of bottles, cigarette packs, the plastic film off catering trays that tears into a hundred pieces. We had bags, gloves and two grabber sticks, and we worked about 250 metres of the main bank in a line, plus the strip of scrub behind it where the wind piles everything up.

An hour, nine full bags — about 33 kilos. We sorted as we went: the glass into its own bags, carried out; the rest into the municipal bins by the road, which were empty and which we more or less filled. It looked genuinely different when we stopped. It will not stay that way, and we have stopped pretending that is the measure of it — the measure is that fourteen people spent a Sunday morning doing it.

Parathas and hot chai at the dhaba on the way back, hands slowly thawing, everyone pleased with themselves. Home by eleven.

If you ride here in winter: go early, dress for the wind and not the sun, and fill the tank before you leave the highway — there is no reliable pump on the back lanes. The loop and the fuel note are on the Aravalli Backroads page.