India - Rajasthan
We were shocked and saddened to hear about the earthquake that has devastated Bam. Our hearts go out to the survivors and we hope the wonderful people we met there are OK. A German biker passed through the day after the quake and reported that the guesthouse we stayed at was flattened. Akbar, the owner and his staff thankfully survived but we believe one English tourist was killed: http://www.erwinvoogt.com/overland/bam.html
Today is New Years Day 2004. Seasons greetings and a Happy New Year to all.
We have now been on the road for 5 months, have visited 12 countries and covered 15 000 miles. We have visited many fantastic places, met many people and made some wonderful friends. B.O.B. has let us down twice - gearbox problems in Bulgaria and the suspension mount breaking in Pakistan, but is going strong and is still a pleasure to travel on. As we have moved east, the standard of driving has progressively deteriorated - much as expected and driving on Indian roads, especially in cities, is akin to a video game.
The Indian weather has been colder than expected and we have been wearing all our winter woollies whilst riding. Most mornings we have woken up to cold fogs which burn off by mid-day leaving us with a warm afternoon. Hopefully all that is behind us now as the last couple of days it has been getting warmer - roll on sun and sea down in Goa.
click here to see us at the Taj
Visiting the Taj Mahal was great, the Taj, surrounding buildings and gardens are exquisite and supremely evocative. The most breath-taking part of the experience was the price - 20 rs for Indians compared to 750 rs for foreigners. We had experienced this dual pricing ever since Turkey, but the price differential here took it to new levels of absurdity.
For the last couple of weeks we have been enjoying the delights of Rajasthan. Opulent forts and palaces, colorful cities and even more colorful turbans and saris, huge handlebar moustaches, painted elephants, bright green parrots screeching in the trees, golden sunsets and sand dunes, camels with floral patterns cut into their wool, searching for tigers and bird spotting.
Those map readers out there may be interested to know that our route from Delhi has been to Agra for the Taj Mahal and Red Fort, then on to Fatehpur Sikri - a deserted Mughal city that surpassed even the Taj for architectural splendor. Many of these buildings used to have gold lined ceiling and walls but we were told that when the British arrived they built fires inside the rooms so the gold would melt and they could take it back to England.
Click here to see Indian Santa
We spent some time enjoying nature and watching wildlife at Keoladeo Ghana National Park where we hired big black Indian style bicycles and escaped the madness and noise that is India for a few hours. Very peaceful but we had such sore butts after that so weve decided to stay with the TDM. We visited Sariska Tiger Reserve where we did not manage to see any tigers but saw lots of parrots, cranes, pelicans, kingfishers, ducks, hens, jackal, deer, antelope, warthogs and monkeys.
We rode west to Jaipur, Pushkar and Jodhpur. Spent our time in Jaipur and Jodhpur visiting palaces and forts and had a couple of relaxed days in Pushkar taking in the vibe of this holy pilgrim town come backpacker hangout.
Lisa still seems to be possessed by the demonic shopping bug with the handicrafts being just too tempting for her to bypass. So she now has many delightful new purchases and we have far too heavy a load on the bike, time for another visit to the post office.
We are now out in the desert relaxing at Jaisailmer - a superb desert fortress that glows golden in the setting sun. We saw in the New Year with a few cold ones in the company of Hugo - a retired Dutchman we last met in Iran who is cycling from Holland to Nepal (www.hugo-kruyt.nl). The fortress here reminds us a little of the citadel in Bam that has now been devastated and in fact weve been told that all the water used by hotels and restaurants inside the fort is causing it to slowly crumble back to its origins which is rather sad.
We intend to spend a couple more days here before heading south on our continuing quest for sun and hot weather.