Another day, another puncture (Jais – Ud)


Oglejte si Trip Jaisalmer – Udaipur na večjem zemljevidu.

“I feel very olympic today!” i said and turned south instead of east. Why take the same road twice, if you know what’s waiting for you there? So we took a small field trip on the way back to Jodhpur. The plan was to crash there and continue to Udaipur the next day.

Random road block

On the way we saw where the majority of the areas electricity is coming from: wind turbines. At least 200 of them.
The road was straight and empty so it felt like an appropriate time to spice things up a little. So we let Tilen do the driving for a while. :) The straights were fine and he got used to leaning the bike in curves quite fast. But then then the road transformed into a busy town center. (more…)


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The desert road (to Jaisalmer)


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Now this is a tale of two friends, a rather strange couple may I add: one was a cowboy, the other an indian. They’ve been through thick and thin together and now their journey continues to the unforgiving deserts of the west.

After riding long in the morning sun their horse needed rest so they took some time to explore the dunes. When they came back two black horsemen were waiting by their noble steed. Dressed in style – black eagle shaped helmets with shades dark as black gold and packed full of riches they sat on a shadow stallion, smaller than our heroes’ but fitter and faster. If you would race them down a long straight the odds for our duo would be slim. But our heroes had an advantage. They were lighter and their steel monster was hiding it’s strength well. (more…)


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Chicken Curry (Pushkar -> Jodhpur)


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Our first roadkill. :/ It happened so quickly. I caught a glimpse of it and then it hit the front wheel. The mirror showed a cloud of feathers and Tilen cleared my confusion: “Starling”.
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Tilen the tuk-tuk driver

Jaipur view from an old watch tower

Came late. Got really lost this time. We were doing circles in the city because

  1. they have a 6 lane road converted to one way,
  2. no one knew where our hotel was. Every person we asked said “straight and then right!”.

We arrived at Anuraag Villa with rickshaw escort. Of course the first thing he said stepping our of the tuk-tuk: ‘tomorrow i pick you up for sightseeing day with rickshaw!’. They always find something wrong with your choice of transport “motorbike no good,drive to fast; bus is to many people; other rickshaw no know the best place for quality and cheap prices…”

(more…)


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Road Bharatpur – Jaipur


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One word: boring! I think I got used to our situation. Now traffic seems exciting and avoiding holes in the road is like playing a video game. But laid before us was just a nicely made 3-lane asphalt road. I think we’ll have to figure out something to make the game more interresting. Driving blindfolded perhaps.


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Repaired bike and a full tummy – things that make me happy

I really have to say it: the home cooked food at Falcon Inn Guest House (Bharatpur) is spectacular! Easily the best we had so far. And we are fond of eating. A lot.
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Road, road, road, HOLE! (Rm – Ag)


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map

“The Taj is waiting, hurry up!” was going through my mind as I was watching Tilen pack at 5:30. We decided to go earlier because we had about 20% longer trip ahead of us.

FINALY leaving Ramnagar! Something to set the mood:

Pretend they’re singing I’m PACKIN’ up, packin’ up … :)
Backin Up Song – Walk off the Earth

Mostly the road looked like this. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.

We thought the first part of the road would be bad (because we had to backtrack a little, and had a hard time on this road when we came), and then better closer to Agra. But how wrong we were… The national highway looked pretty much like this: about 2km of great asphalt and then… (pause for effect) a FEAKING GIANT HOLE of gravel for 20 meters. But we managed it pretty good- about 340 km in 9 hours.

I can say with certanty now that you can see anything here… Immediatly after seeing the first road sign for Agra, we’ve met a new kind of vehicle: moped-rickshaws! But as they came, soon after they disappeared too. *confused*

Another thing we saw was a truck driving insanely fast BACKWARDS on the main road. o_O When we passed it we learned there were actually two trucks connected back to back (with no space in between 😀 ). No comment on this…

The sugarcane poured out into a big swamp and people were showeling it back on the road.

Further down the road we passed two places where the big trucks, overloaded with sugarcane, tipped over. The sugarcane poured out into a big swamp and people were showeling it back on the road. :) The overturned trucks are actually a really common site in India. I think we saw at least 6 of them already (haven’t managed to take a photo though :) ) There was one in a lake right beside the road – now only a rusty skeleton stripped of everything. Must have been at least 5 years old. People just don’t seem to care.

Oh, another thing we just noticed: we’ve lost part of our luggage somewhere on the way. :/ It was just 3 liters of water, but we still miss it. :)

[geolocation]

P.s.: Today was the first ‘postcard’ day. I hope you guys get them. If some of you don’t, that doesn’t mean we forgot about you, they probably just got lost on the way. 😛


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The Great people of Delhi

Just our luck, Tilen (looking out the window) found a Royal Enfield dealer right around the corner of Amax inn.

In the office, to our surprise, we met Chris and Vivian – a couple from New Zeland, living and running the busines (BulletWallas) in Delhi for the past 5 years. Chris is a very pasionate customization artist and looking at his work made us want this iconic bike even more. (They actually customize the bikes anyway you want and upgrade them to EU standards – then ship them to EU,USA or Australia -check their portfolio on Facebook). They were our guardians in Delhi: They were of HUGE help in finding a bike to buy and providing us with every bit of information possible. We can’t express how grateful we are.

We bought a used bike at Joga motors. The boss there is Rana, the only female bike dealer in Delhi. But she’s not as fierce as she acts. She took really good care of the bike, did all the customization and gave us a present for the road: the jackets. She also has a really nice daughter, but she’s already married. So no use barking up that tree. :)

Of course we met some fellow travelers at the hotel. Just wanted to say that we hope you guys are doing well and maybe we’ll meet again in Goa (everyone is going there for some reason :) ).


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Not for the faint of heart (DE – RM)


(Yeah, we missed our planned course… but just a little 😉 )View Rollin’ India: Trip Delhi
– Ramnagar in a larger map

6 am. Packed our bags and off we went. The first real test of the bike – 300 km to Ramnagar (Jim Corbett National Park).

The day before we planed the trip online and wrote major towns in our booklet just in case something was wrong with GPS.

And so we rode into the mist…
6:30 and so much TRAFFIC?! Well, that’s a thing to get use to here. You’re never alone on the road. So honk, honk, blink, blink and be careful! Oh and another thing – traffic signs: sometimes in Latin, mostly Hindu. Take my advice: if you’re not sure where to go anymore, go straight. :) And every once in a while ask someone(that’s driving at least a ricksa).

After a while Tilen found a practical holder for the GPS-of course our phone navigation didn’t work(it would help remembering to download the app before the trip :P) so we had to improvise.

Leaving the city chaos, the trip got nicer and nicer. The scenery changed from gray concrete and rubbish to grasland and farm fields.

Now that we've seen it, we believe it. :)

But here we came across another problem. All those farm products need transporting and that’s where the trucks (with power greedy drivers) come in.Gravel, bump, bump, bump, aiiiiir and landing. Some cursing in between and hysterical laughter after. We survived! There are only two trafic rules in India:drive on the left and ‘bigger is better’ – lighter vihicles must give way to heavier ones. So driving with a bike is … like being almost at the bottom of the food chain.Ok, back to the trip. About half way to Ramnagar the road got bad so we had to slow down and were not able to pass the big trucks. So we cruised on for a while until we heard something new,something huge blowing its horn and pushing the big trucks out of the way. It was a massive 8-wheeler with an (unnaturally) crazy Indian driver. I guess you can probably imagine what happened next… Gravel, bump, bump, bump, aiiiiir and landing. Some cursing in between and hysterical laughter after. We survived! :)

The last 50km weren’t going anywhere. While driving through one of the last towns we found a shue nail (using our front tire, that is). We stopped, a crowd gathered and the first person offered us a pump or a fix. His son took it apart, fixed it and was extremely happy with the 50Rp (about 85 cents) we gave him.

At about 16:00 we found the Corbet Motel, put our filthy clothes in the washer, ate and went to sleep.
Enough adventure for one day.

[geolocation]


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Brrrum brrrrrrrum….

… and we were off in the busy Delhi streets. We spent most of the time in Delhi getting info for buying a bike. We met a lot of great (and i mean GREAT) people that helped us with that. But more of that in the upcoming posts. I need to get some rest (Tilen can sleep while i’m driving. 😉 ).


(Picture of my own Royal Enfield Electra, 350ccm – don’t get fooled by this, it’s a really fast bike :) )

Next stop: Jim Corbet National Park (Ramnagar).


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