Vashisht to Bilaspur

We had planned to leave Vashisht to start our bike ride to Agonda in Goa yesterday but due to unforeseen circumstances, e.g. the bike service not being finished yesterday morning as had been arranged with the mechanic, we set off on Saturday 20th. We have a rough outline of a plan of our route but nothing set in stone. The only goals must meet are firstly, reaching Nepal before 31st Oct and staying there for a minimum of 1 day to fulfil our visa requirements and secondly, reaching Agonda before 4rd of Dec as that day we have a flight booked to return to the UK for a 3 week holiday. There are places that we definately want to visit on route so we plan to just take our time and stop off in a place for a few days when we want. Our only concern is that this is the first time we have had a motorbike and we are riding it a long distance in India and Nepal and none of us has any mechanical knowledge, unless you call filling the bike with petrol, mechanical knowledge!

We bought saddle bags and a tank bag for the bike. Between them there isn't really that much space and by the time we had packed our computer, kindles, speakers chargers etc. and all the spare parts we had been advised to carry for the bike (even though we don't have a clue what to do with them) there wasn't much room for clothes. As we knew we would have very little space we had already posted a rucksack with clothes in it to our friend Raggu in Agonda. Hopefully it will arrive and not be lost in the Indian postal system.

So, bike loaded with bags we excitedly finally set off on our journey - at 11am rather than 9am as we had planned. Oh well, it's not always easy to stick to the plan. The first place we wanted to visit was Shimla. We wouldn't get there in 1 day so we planned to ride to a town called Bilaspur stay there for the night and ride on to Shimla the next day. Bilaspur is famous in Himachal because it has a large man-made lake.

The first 3 hours of the journey were bitterly cold but the weather improved as we dropped altitude - Vashisht is 2300m and Bilaspur is 670m. It's very difficult to categorise Indian roads in terms of motorways, A roads etc but there are national highways, which are the major roads and other lesser roads which vary greatly in condition. Riding a bike on these roads is very different from riding a bike in the UK. Due to the road conditions here there are days that you can ride for many hours and cover very little distance.

For the first few hours we drove on a lesser road. The road surface was great, not a lot of traffic road except in the villages and small towns we rode through and, despite the bitter cold we enjoyed the ride. Then we joined the national highway which was very busy at times. Poor Colin needed 3 sets of eyes to keep track of everything he had to dodge. My job as co-rider was monkey watch as, the more we dropped in altitude, the more monkeys there were playing about the roadside. In fact, when we stopped for lunch, a couple of monkeys went up to the bike very interested looking. If we hadn't shooed them off they would probably have opened the bag and ran off with the first thing they could grab!

After riding for 6 hours - with lots of wee breaks of course - we arrived at Bilaspur. It looked like a very busy town so, rather than head into the town and look for somewhere to stay and be able to park the bike, we skirted around it and drove a little bit further. As there were no other towns close by and it was 5pm, the time we had already decided that we would always try find accommodation by each day as it is dark here at 6pm, our only option was to book into a roadside hotel. 

The first place we looked as was really grotty and felt like walking into a scene from 'Psycho' but the second place we found, Tiger Hill Hotel, was very basic but clean. Although, if we had been looking forward to a lovely hot shower we would have been disappointed as the geiser didn't work so no hot water and, if we had been looking forward to relaxing in front of the TV in the room we would also have been disappointed as that didn't work either but, it had a restaurant which even had a menu so we had a good feed. Unfortunately we hadn't considered the fact that the hotel was on a bend and lorries would be screetching round it all night and also, we had a front facing room which meant that we could enjoy the acoustics all night. Fortunately I always carry ear plugs with me in India. Poor Colin never slept a wink. Oh well, every day is a learning curve!