Varanasi, India

Riding2up News from Varanasi India - April 2009Riding2up April update from Varanasi - India

Yes that's right we're now in India and we are starting to clock up the countries since Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal and now India.

Quick Facts:
Days on the road : 136
Punctures : 2
Kms : 14288kms

Tune in to 2RRR 88.5FM (in Sydney) with Maite and Christophe on 28th April for the latest Riding2up news in French.

To recap a little here is a bit on our last few weeks in Nepal.

Trekking in the Himalayas

As we were keen to see the Himalayas and diversify our riding a bit we opted for trekking over whitewater rafting as it was a lot cheaper and the rivers were very low. I would've preferred canyoning but this has not been catered for in Nepal by tour operators since around 2000.

Our six day trek took us from Nayapul, 2hours by bus from Pokhara in a loop up to Poon Hill at 3200m and back down to Nayapul. The start of our trek went also to Annapurna Basecamp, Machaputhre base camp and the Annapurna circuit via Jomson.

It was an amazing experience and we are keen to do a longer trek given the time and opportunity. We even had some snow overnight and the min temp was -5 degrees and it was quite funny as Pascal was walking the whole time in sandals.

One horned rhino encounter

We had a three day stop in Chitwan National Park in Southern Nepal and it was the place of an amazing encounter with the rarest species of Rhino, the one-horned rhino. We hired a guide and tracker and headed into the jungle and grass plains of Chitwan. The tracker was very keen and got up several trees before putting us down wind of the Rhino for an amazing sighting by foot. We were all very apprehensive as Rhinos are notorious for charging and when we got to close it turned flicked its ears up and we bolted... but the rhino didn't charge and we although frazzled were completely amazed by it's size. The experience was awe inspiring.

INDIA - border crossing, homicidal drivers, detours and punctures.

We left the little town of Lumbini, the birthplace of lord Buddha (quite uninspiring), in the early morning cool with a swarm of mosquitoes tailing behind. Upon arrival at the border, Pascal was swiftly whisked away to complete official paperwork whilst I was left in the company of about twenty to thirty short Nepali men who spoke very little English. They mostly just stared and oogled Francois joking amongst themselves. I never know where to look in these situations as I want to avoid all the same repetitious questions about millage, price, cc etc but also to be friendly without encouraging untoward advances... It turned out to be a fairly straight forward border crossing that took a little over an hour. We exchanged the little Nepali rupees we had left and hit the revometer wheeling our way into India.

The welcome to India signpost at the border would have been more accurate if it simple stated Welcome to Hell. The plains of Uttar Pradesh were flat, dry and oppressively hot. After the natural beauty of Nepal, I found myself in complete dismay on the bike thinking 'why on earth did we come here?' On first encounter, the plain wheat fields, homical bus drivers and sprawling towns had absolutely nothing to recommend them. In reflection the area was scenic enough to ride through seeing stacks of cow manure patties drying in the sun, women carrying harvested wheat, billowing brick furnaces and many cyclists swerving this way and that but we're glad we didn't have to stop.

After a few hours riding we stopped at a roadside stall for a cool drink and a quick bite to eat. Francois was almost immediately swarmed by Indian men til we couldn't see the bike anymore bare a rear vision mirror poke up from the mass. Pascal told them not to touch the bike then having second thoughts made his way back with the crowd parting to see him sit proudly in the drivers seat. After finishing our packet of chips, I too tried to make my way into the crowd but had to push and shove with no amount of excuse me's allowing an open path. Some boys at the front turned around and saw who I was so allowed my passing but not without a complementary clap on the bottom. I found myself thinking that Indian people must not reproduce in the normal fashion of copulation but spawn in (big) petri dishes.

From Gorakpur a couple of hours south of the border we had our first of a few memorable events. We got hopelessly lost in Gorakpur and for the amount of people we asked for directions we came to the conclusion with all the blank stares that either they don't know their local geography of are simply stupid... It could've been an episode of Black Adder. But for the sake of mankind we'll assume with the former. This just added to our frustrations in the increasing heat and there was little relief in sight. We finally took a road heading due east and then what we thought was south to realise we were again heading east, this after 2hours brought us to a country detour, a dirt track, a bridge under construction, a few small farming towns and finally the road to Varanasi.

The road was bad and the traffic terrible but we persevered in the heat eager to get the kilometres out of the way and immerse ourselves in ice cream (our imagination was beginning to wander as we began semi hallucinating in the heat). The kilometres passed slowly and the crazy drivers got worse.

They just drive anywhere even on main roads, we'd be coming around a corner or just on the open road at speed and two cars and a truck or another time two buses or yet another time five jeeps would be completely on the wrong side of the road heading straight for us and only pull in a just enough to let us pass but not before making us brake hard and pull off the road. The logic here I think was because the road was badly potholed and our side may have been marginally better drivers would move over to drive on the smoothest patch of raod, even in face of oncoming traffic. They don't really seem to want to kill us but the drivers of especially jeeps, tuk-tuks and buses drive such a close line that we have not even the tinniest of buffer and riding is a hair-raising experience at best.

Our fist puncture was just 52km from Varansi. We had just passed a small town and on the outskirts I felt Francois lose steering, I immediately pulled over assuming a puncture, the front tyre had a huge piece of glass stuck through the thick tread. The shard of glass was 4cm long and 2cm wide and had punctured the tyre at an angle, really messy. I was not too confident that our repair kit would work but what choice did we have, so I went to work. One patch and we had 10 onlookers, two patches and at least 30 spectators, three patches later and once I went to pump up the tyre with my mini air compressor, the sound must've attracted scores more as we were completely surrounded by every man, woman and child complete with all their bicycles, motos and rickshaws. It was a logistical task just to get back on the road and rolling again. The repair wasn't permanent and had a slow leak but it got us to Varanasi where I subsequently performed a complete tyre change.

We arrived in Varanasi 12 hours after starting the day and had passed some 450kms on our way to our hotel. We were both so exhausted we ordered room service, ate and almost immediately fell asleep.

You don't need to read about my tyre change below unless you are bored or inclined to do it yourself some time soon...

Today I inspected the tyre which was completely flat and as we are carring two spares, one front and one back, it was time to change the front. As I innspected the tyre I saw another puncture, this time a nail, I just hope all the roads in India aren't this bad too us. So I went about the tyre change. First the front wheel has to come off, to do this both brake calipers are removed then the axle. The wheel just rolled off. Now to the tyre change, first the old tyre has to come off - I went in search of chocks of wood to place under the wheel to raise it off the ground and protect the front disks from damage. I also made some makeshift rim protectors out of a plastic soap bottle to save the wheel rim from being scratched or dented whilst using the tyre levers. Tubeless tyres have a beed around the rim holding them in place and this must be 'broken' before the tyre can come off. I managed by pressing down hard with te heal of my food while standing on top of the wheel. The old tyre came off then I washed the new tyre which had accumulated dirt and dust from riding before soaping it up with lots of detergent to help it 'slip' onto the rim. This took a bit of time and so I had a staff member of the hotel help hold a tyre lever in place to stop the tyre popping off again while I leavered it on. It wasn't so hard but as per a bicycle three tyre levers are essential. Out with the 12V compressor and I pumped up the new tyre it provided more than enough bars of pressure to pop the new tyre into position up on the rim, but when it did we both jumped and the force sprayed us with detergent.

It didn't take me long to refit the wheel and brake calipers, pack up the tools and take Francois for a test ride to get the front brake working again.

Now I'll try to have the old tyre repaired as it still has around 5,000kms of tread left and in case we have another double puncture day at least we have the spare

Check google maps and picasa web album soon for further updates.
http://www.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=108051183506461822149.00045c66af99fde3d5a05&z=3

http://picasaweb.google.com/riding2up/
http://picasaweb.google.com/riding2up/Pokhara#

Best Regards,

Pascal & Arja

www.riding2up.net