If I'm honest, the bulk of my many preconceptions about this journey have been inaccurate at best; I fully expected to experience the Indian 'culture shock' so often described. But, after the education of sharing a hotel room with a food poisoned Adrian Scott, the sights, sounds (and smells) of India are a walk in a rose garden.

There are plenty of stories about the Pakistan - India border crossing at Wagah and we had been advised to keep a few $US handy to help ease any paperwork problems that might mysteriously appear. In the end the only hitch was a Pakistani customs official, upset that we had already illegally changed money with the immigration official. Finally he explained that, next time, we must also change money illegally with customs if we wished to avoid unnecessary delays. Once through to the Indian side however, things couldn't have been simpler. Yes, it took a while to sort out the paperwork, but the customs guys made sure we were comfortable and even provided cups of hot, sweet tea whilst we waited. And the customs compound provided a quiet, shady spot to change my front brake pads which were seriously worn after 8000 miles of abuse.

The first thing we noticed as we entered India and rode the short distance to Amritsar? Women, and lots of them. Some were driving cars, scooters, walking in the street and maybe even controlling their own destines. The second thing that became quickly apparent was that not many people were actually interested in us or the bikes. Sure, there were one or two stares; but nothing like the astonishment and dropped jaws we inspired in Iran or Pakistan. The sun was out, the roads were quiet and we were even starting to relax a little by the time we found Mrs. Bhandari's Guest House. Set amongst beautiful green, walled gardens, the 96 year old Mrs. Bhandari's residence is a step back in time to the 1930s. At this wonderful old lady's insistence, nothing in the house has changed and it retains all the original Art Deco features in fabulous condition. There's a swimming pool, the library has first edition Dickens and the services of four buffalo are retained to provide dung for lighting the fires.

Rattling like a couple of secondhand Porsches, both bikes are badly in need of a service and oil change, so we create an ecological disaster in the workshop area of the Guest House before waving a fond farewell to Shirin, Sven and Birgit. We ride 100 miles or so through the beautiful, lush green Kangra valley to the town of McCleod Ganj, headquarters of the Tibetan Government in exile and home to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. We figure to give the guy a few ideas of our own but are informed that he isn't currently in residence. Regardless, in the midst of roving Budhist monks and Japanese tourists we walk down to the main temple to spin a few prayer wheels and perhaps move a touch closer to our own spiritual enlightenment. This cycle of life, death and re-birth has become a bit tedious of late. Noticing a small crowd forming at a locked gate in the temple complex, we assume that some ceremony is about to take place and so wait, like sheep, for something - anything, to happen. Time passes slowly until, in the middle of a not-so-high speed convoy of reconstituted Morris Oxfords, the man himself waves at us through the tinted window of his Mercedes. Result! At last we were somewhere in the right place at the right time.

The following evening we bumped into a couple of lunatics from Yorkshire who had cycled to McCleod Ganj from the UK and were on their way to Nepal. Over a few beers they told us of their own experiences, which included some particularly scary incidents in the Baluchistan Desert area of Iran and Pakistan - through which we ourselves had passed without incident. It seems that along the way, people had thrown large rocks, tried to pull them from their bikes, run them off the road and, in one case, promised to shoot them if they arrived in the next village. Threats to be taken seriously in an area where such a high proportion of the population are armed with locally made Kalashnikovs and AK47s! Their negative view of Pakistan contrasted with our, overall, positive feelings for the country.

Foraging, dozing and squabbling monkeys line the roads in this part of the world and provide yet another new hazard for us to avoid. Take a stroll to a restaurant and a monkey will idly saunter past in the opposite direction and you can watch them clambering gracefully over the roof tops of the town. But it has to be said that most of them demonstrate a good deal more road sense than many of the rickshaw drivers we had encountered and I have yet to see one as roadkill. With such windy, monkey strewn roads, its hard to rack up very many miles in one day and it ended up taking us two days to make the climb down from McCleod and reach the outskirts of Delhi.

We expected Delhi to be hell and it really wasn't. OK it's busy and polluted, but it's actually not as bad as some of the places we have already been through. There are beggars with unfeasible deformities and touts to hassle you, but adopt the right attitude and you can actually start to enjoy the place. Just watch out for the s#!t shoe scam. I knew about this one, still got caught and have no idea how it's done. It goes like this : "Excuse me sir, clean you shoes?", after the 100th time that day you naturally just walk on by, "But sir, look at your shoe". And you look and there it is. Large as life. A lump of s#!t, neatly stuck to the top of your shoe. How the hell they get it there so accurately I will never know - it has even been suggested that they have some sort of s#!t gun. So, you swear, pay up and he cleans it off - another sucker fleeced for 5 rupees.

Before we left the UK, Adrian had been given the details of a vintage bike dealer in Delhi and could sniff a bargain in the air so we decided to investigate. We found the place easily enough 5 minutes from our hotel and were astounded to discover a huge collection of bikes dating from as far back as 1910. Harley, Indian, BSA, Norton, Triumph, Douglas - you name it. All in various states of repair and disrepair; not so much an Aladin's Cave as an Adrian's Barn of bikes. However, prices were disappointingly high, perhaps because Japanese buyers take batches of 20 at a time. Whilst we sit and chat with the manager who explains that many obsolete parts are re-manufactured locally, two of his "technicians" are working on an old, girder forked BSA and belting it so hard that I'm scared the engine castings will shatter.

The festival of Diwali is the biggest event in the Hindu calendar; like Christmas, a cattle market and World War II rolled into one. And, for once, our timing was immaculate as we holed up in our pleasant hotel to watch the celebrations unfold. During the day the streets are packed with people shopping for last minute presents and sweets; arrangements of offerings are placed carefully on street corners, lit by candles and later foraged by dogs and holy cows. The fireworks start for real as darkness falls and its fascinating to wander the back streets and alleys as the local kids try to outdo each other with increasingly dangerous pyrotechnic stunts. Everybody is dressed up and parents look on, smiling, as 10 year olds try to blow their brother's fingers off; I get the impression that the casualty department is pretty full by the end of the evening. Partially deafened and asphyxiated by the smoke that permeates everything, we eventually decamp to the roof our hotel to watch the city exploding beneath us. The noise is phenomenal and spent rockets are raining down everywhere - one even hitting me on the arm as we watch. It's hard to sleep that night as the noise continues until morning by which time we are heartily fed up of bloody fireworks.