Bareilly to Mathura

We left Bareilly to continue on our ride to Pushkar. The hotel we left in Bareilly was on the opposite side of the duel carriageway from the direction we wanted to go and Colin didn't want to drive down the correct way only to turn around and have to come back on himself. So, being Colin he did it Indian style as you can see in the video below.

Driving up a duel-carriageway the wrong way

We stopped at a dhaba for lunch and the owner was only too happy to show off his pet monkey. It wasn't a pet as such or in a cage or tied up but a wild monkey that seemed well taken with the guy. Although, woe betide anyone else who tried to go near it. He shouted me over to take a photo and the mental monkey started jumping around screaming and hissing at me as soon as it saw the camera. Colin stayed well out of the way over in his seat at the far end of the photo. I must say, he did warn me before I went to take the photo.

Cows and water buffalos can be a real pain when you are driving, especially when they get a bit frisky and start jumping around.

Ladies walking. Some of the pictures I'm taking now are not the best as, for the last few days, I have been hanging off the back of the bike with the camera while Colin is driving.

We stopped for a pit stop and this old guy walked over to speak to us. He kept chatting away in Hindi despite us telling him we only spoke very little. We just let him chatter and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Then he wanted his photo taken.

Cow dung dried out into patties which will be used for cooking. It's mainly a poor man's fuel but much needed and certainly in abundant supply. Can't count the amount of times I've stood in cow shit.

You would think two people on a bike is enough, but not in India. There is only four on this bike but one is a new born baby. The most I have seen is six people!

These shared jeeps are mental. You wouldn't believe how many people they pack into them. They are so packed that some people are only holding on with one arm and one leg while the driver is driving like a man possessed. Check the guys on the roof with their feet hanging down over the front window.

We had a really good drive with the exception of going through a small town on the river Ganges where some sort of festival going on. There must have been several hundreds of thousands of people gathering there and it was bedlam. Traffic was backed up for miles and people just walking in the road. It took us one and a half hours to ride what should have taken us 15 minutes. As the bike is air cooled it kept cutting out and I thought Colin was going to have a real paddy. At one point a bus was behind us constantly on the horn trying to get past us but we were hemmed in, couldn't get started and could go nowhere. Finally we got through it and got to a place called Mathura where we had to stop for the night as we were both knackered. It was a busy town and a nightmare finding a hotel. Everyone we asked about where any hotels were looked at us as if we were aliens - it was not a town where you find many foreign tourists. Finally we found somewhere that was way over budget and very posh by our standards now but we really couldn't go any further (our days of 5 star hotels are gone now we're not earning, and long may it last).