Traveling by bike

Maybe writing this is redundant, but after a few bus trips in India, I have come to appreciate how great traveling by bike truly is. Don't get me wrong it has its own unique set of problems, but if nothing else it removes you from the tourist conveyor belt passing through the country. People just don't know what to do with you, most of the time there are just long curious stares and a few off the cuff comments. Avoiding the bus and train stations greatly decreases the chances of running into touts or anybody else that will pester the hell out of you until you give them something. Really these are just thoughts you have when you are on an overcrowded bus unsure if your bike is going to make it intact to the next destination. Although we could avoid this by actually riding our bikes, so in the end its a self-inflicted wound.

Watch out they spit

I guess no trip through Rajasthan is complete without a camel safari, or least that's what everybody kept telling us. To sweeten the deal we actually had a nice ride to get to the starting point for our epic one night safari into the sand dunes around Khuri. It was amazing, prolonged stretches of riding with complete silence, punctuated by an occasional splash of orange from turbaned goat herders walking down the road. The deeper into the desert you venture the quieter it gets.

Our first night in Khuri we were treated to extravagant accomodations, at least by our miserly standards, of three soft beds and traditional Rajasthani music and dancing. Plus we got to head out to the dunes and catch the sunset before the evening festivities began. The next day our safari began.

Turns out riding a camel and riding bike have one thing in common, your crotch hurts a lot the first time you ride one. Other than that the trip was pretty sweet, for one whole day we heard not a single car horn, the solitude was complete, with the exception of random noises that camels seem to make when they have a gangly white guy riding on their back. We enjoyed a pretty epic sunset in the dunes and than sat down to a desert feast concocted by our friendly camel drivers, and finished up by laying out under the stars. Although this was somewhat lost on me, because after the contacts come out its all a blur.

The next morning we finished up back in Khuri after a brief ride from our campsite. We really didn't have to venture far from town to have the illusion of complete isolation in the desert. Most of the morning was passed making jokes about my six-legged camel due to my gangly legs hanging off the side. All in all time very well spent.

Desert riding continued

Due to some time constraints we have taken to slightly more mechanized travel. After a couple of days of sight seeing in Bikaner, the fort was badass, we took a 5:30am bus to Jaisalmer. Its a little eerie riding through an empty market in the morning, nothing looks the same without throngs of people and car horns blasting in your ears. As with our trip from Dharamshala, I realized that buses are not the optimal transportation for me. I think most of it has to do with trying to fold my legs up behind the seat, or having them stepped on out in the aisle, the joy of being 6'5".

Fortunately the bus ride was only six hours, and the most eventful part was a sudden stop to avoid taking out a goat, which led to 10 gallons of milk spilling on the floor of the bus. If you're not comfortable traveling on a bus, just let a little warm buffalo milk mixed with dirt wash over your feet...tasty. Of course navigating the throngs of touts at the bus station was the other fun part of the ride. They really want you to stay at their hotel and they don't take it well when you ignore them, one guy resorted to calling me stupid. After he said that I was just itching to stay at his quality establishment. Besides that Jaisalmer is beautiful, it has a really cool fort, and the whole town outside of the bus station is pretty low key. Tomorrow we head out to Khuri for a few days of desert solitude and a camel safari.

The bike route including our "ride" to Jaisalmer

View Rajasthan bike route in a larger map

Desert riding

Riding through the Rajasthani desert has been amazing, wide open spaces with about half the traffic and people as Uttar Pradesh. We've even have had a few moments of complete isolation on the road as the only traffic. Add that to the perfect 70 degree weather and Rajasthan is awesome, its even been possible to find the odd hotel in the middle of the desert between major cities. We rolled into Bikaner this afternoon for some sightseeing before moving west.

I'm conspicuous

People always talk about how chaotic and seemingly hazardous the traffic is in India. As it turns out, it's not Indian drivers you need to worry about,but oblivious foreign tourists on bicycles. I put a pretty good chunk of my handle bar into the back of some poor lady walking down the street and sent her sprawling to the pavement. That was right up at the top of the list for situations I didn't want to deal with in a foreign country. Luckily after I apologised profusely for my complete douchebaggery and obliviousness, which may have been lost on her since she didn't understand english, she sent me on my way before to large of a crowd gathered around and things got anymore interesting.

The rest of the ride to Sikar was pretty low key, no accidents, no bike problems, and we hammered out 110km in pretty good time. By pulling out the handy Hindi phrase book in Sikar a nice young man at the Hindi temple was able to direct us to a nearby hotel and at his insistence act as our guide for the night. We didn't see much of Sikar, but we did meet his family, catch part of wedding procession at the temple, and get to watch Adam manhandle a couple of kids in arm wrestling matches. All of the kids were looking longingly at Adam by the end of the night, I think a few had developed man-crushes on Adam's biceps.

Although we didn't see any tourist sites in Sikar, our guide Ashok did give us a tour of his school the following morning. I continue to be amazed at the status and attention we are given simply as a function of our skin color. We met the principle and then were taken to every class room to stand up in front of a room full of kids for a few moments before moving on. A little awkward, it brought back a flood of memories from middle school and high school. Amidst all of this we also got our first motorcycle lessons, and I can safely say I am much better off riding a bicycle than a motorcycle, and we'll leave it at that.

Sketchy people

Turns out the guys we met in Bharatpur were a little sketchy. After hanging out with us off and on for two weeks they told us that they needed a loan to help cover the purchase of a tractor. This was followed by a long awkward silence, while we stared at the ground and thought about how quickly we could leave the room. Finally we told them in many different ways that there was no way we were going to loan them any money, and jetted the hell out of there. Meeting them wasn't all bad though, despite their sketchiness they did introduce us to some people that were genuinely awesome and left us with some amazing memories of India. It's all part of the adventure I guess.

Jaipur

After 180 km in two days we rolled into Jaipur, and nothing says fun like getting lost in the afternoon traffic of a major Indian city. Inevitably when we arrive in a city I take us on the most circutious route possible to the hotel, often passing within a few hundred meters of it long before we actually find it. My sense of direction is amazing.

But there is no better way to recover from two long days of riding than to sit on a rooftop drinking beer and taking in the local kite festival. From dawn till dusk the skyline was swarming with colorful diamond shaped kites darting everywhich way, usually in attempt to cut the line of a nearby kite. Every time a flier claimed an opponents kite a loud shout would ring out in Hindi saying "you're done!", and you could watch the maimed kite float aimlessly to the ground, filling the streets, trees and powerlines with a graveyard of unworthy fighters. Highly entertaining.

Turns out flying kites is harder than it looks, at least for me. My attempts to fly the kites usually resulted with them taking a nosedive into a nearby roof. After a while I just gave up because I felt bad sacrificing kites to random roof tops. Now that I think about it the alcohol may have played a role. Good times in Jaipur, now we have a few days to kill before we head west out into the deserts of Rajasthan.

Our bike route

View Rajasthan bike route in a larger map

Rural India

Its been a while since the last update and a lot has happened, so here goes. Keolodeo was sweet, a whole day of biking without a single horn blaring or numerous people crowding around us whenever we got off our bikes, such a relief. Not to mention all of the birds and the resident 12ft python in the park.

After Keolodeo we took a bit of a detour on the recommendation of some people we met in Bharatpur and headed east to stay with some of their friends in a small town in Uttar Pradesh called Mainpuri. The ride out there was largely uneventful with the exception of riding through Agra. Nothing says vacation like riding a bicycle through city traffic in India. Pick a line and keep your head on a swivel because vehicles come at you from every direction.

We broke the 170km ride into two days, with the first stop at Firozabad about 100km from Bharatpur. The only entertaining part of Firozabad was killing time in the Jain Temple snacking and rehydrating, and getting the full foreigner treatment from a gaggle of little kids. It will perhaps be the only time in my life that anybody will be clamoring for me to autograph their palm.

Our stay in Mainpuri was amazing, I could go on for pages and still not cover everything. The people were unbelievably friendly and gracious, my stomach is still full from all of the food they plied us with. We received the star treatment for most of the week we were there because I don't think tourists ever make it out that way.

We had a chance to take part in the opening festivities of the district cricket tournament. I threw out the ceremonial first pitch to the district Senator and Paris presented the trophy to the man of the match at the end of the game. They even let us try our hand at the in game commentary, although I found it difficult to commentate on a game where I don't really know the rules. Apparently we were such a big hit at the game we even managed to make it into the newspaper the next day, although since I can't read Hindi I have to take our friends word for it. One week there and we felt like part of the family, I really can't even begin to describe how great everybody was there. It was an amazing way to spend a week in India, off the beaten track taking in rural Indian culture.

Still rolling

The ultimate goal of the first three days of biking was to make it to Bharatpur and Keolodeo National Park. From Jhirka it was about a 100 km push to Bharatpur and Keolodeo. Originally we planned on an early start to give ourselves plenty of time to make the ride, unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. We woke up to maybe 10 m of visibility, not the safest riding conditions, especially in India where people aren't great about turning on their lights. So instead of an 8 am start, we didn't head out till close till 11 am, leaving us about 7 hours to make it to Bharatpur by dark. We hit the road with our lights flashing. I was rocking blinking Christmas lights, a red flasher on my backpack, and a blinking LED on my front bag. Based on the fact that we didn't get hit, I would say it was adequate.

The roads were good all the way from Jhirka to Bharatpur and we were able to make pretty good time. Our late start left us cutting it close to get to Bharatpur by dark and we just managed to squeeze into town at last light. Then it was just a matter of navigating the chaos of the markets and masses of people to our hotel on the other side of town. After spending some frustrating time riding through town with an entourage, we were able to clear out to a gas station to ask for directions. Again we were saved by a friendly samaritan. I can't remember his name, but we gave him the name of the hotel and he took the time to guide us to the hotel on his motorcycle, which was huge. It was a long day and we were tired and ready to crash, who knows how long it might have taken us to find the hotel without him. Now we have a few days to relax in Bharatpur, take in Keolodeo before we push on into Rajasthan

Rolling along

It has begun, and so far so good. We started the trip by taking a private cab about 45 km southwest of Delhi to Gurgaon, because we really didn't want to spend the entire first day of the trip lost in New Delhi, which given our combined sense of direction was the most likely outcome of such an endeavor. Leaving from Gurgaon gave us a straight shot south through Harayana into Rajasthan.

Miraculously riding through the cities and on the highways hasn't been all that bad, the chaos actually adds to the entertainment valuwe. The cars and trucks pass with plenty of room to spare because Indian drivers are not shy about jumping into oncoming traffic to get around obstacles. People along the roads look at us like a four wheel rolling zoo. Anytime we stop a crowd of thirty to forty people quickly assembles around us to gawk and make the odd comment to us in Hindi, while we communicate as best we can. As a result stopping in the markets isn't such a great idea because inevitably the crowd around us grows to the point where they block the street and start backing up traffic, which I'm sure the locals love. It amounts to loads of good times.

We managed about 47km the first day to the town of Nuh. By sheer luck and with the help from some very friendly people in town we ended up staying at the palacial government resthouse free of charge, which was fortuitous because the only other hotel in town was closed. The Deputy Commissioner in town was even nice enough to send over some cooks to set us up with dinner for the night, also free of charge. When we tried to pay they recoiled in horror at the affront. We even had a chance to work on our Hindi wih one of the local university women who spoke english, a huge help seeing as neither of us speak a bit of Hindi.

In retrospect taking off on a bike trip through rural India with no idea how to speak the language was maybe not the best idea. The high point came when I had to show somebody the phrase from our Hindi book, "I know very little Hindi" because I couldn't actually say it in Hindi, what can I say I'm pretty brilliant.

Day two we rode another 37 km south to the town of Firozepur Jhirka, and were again lucky enough to score some cheap lodging at a government resthouse. People don't seem to know what to make of us and have generally gone out of their way to send us in the right directionand help us out, a nice change from Delhi and Agra. All in all we have had great luck so far, super friendly people and beautiful scenery.