We left Nepal and the next place that we wanted to go to was Pushkar in Rajisthan. Again we knew it was going to take a few days and we had a kind of a plan of a route in mind. We were heading to the town of Bareilly where we would find a place to stay for the night.
Again it was hassle free going through both immigrations. Now Colin is out of the mountains he has no need of a big Santa Claus beard to keep him warm and badly needed a shave. This wee barber was right beside the Indian immigration. We had seen it yesterday and Colin had decided that he was finally going to have a shave when we passed it again leaving Nepal. Unfortunately there was a queue so the shave had to be left for yet another day.
Bikes and people on foot can cross the border all day but the gates are only opened for larger vehicles three times a day for one hour at a time. Because we had got up late we didn't get to the border until just before 12md and unfortunately the gates open between 12md-1pm and already the traffic was backing up.
We got a shifty on but when we were half way across the bridge they opened the gates on the Indian side (we didn't realise that they opened these gates earlier as the bridge isn't wide enough for 2-way traffic). So, traffic ploughing towards us we were forced to pull over to the left as much as we could. On the left of the photo are pushbikes loaded up with all sorts of goods and we were forced by an on-coming car to get close up against them. Disaster struck as one of the bicycles toppled onto us. Goodness knows what was in the load but it was really heavy. I was trying to support the weight of the load whilst Colin was trying to keep the enfield upright. Luckily a few of the locals came running over and saved us from a crushing injury. Disaster averted we set off.
We stopped at a dhaba in Bombasa for some brunch. The staff were really nice and desparate for a photo when they seen the camera. They were all elbowing one another to ask for a photo. One of the boys insisted on lighting his cigarette for the photo. In India, although smoking is supposed to be banned, it's still not uncool to smoke.
We chose a seat in the dhaba but we could have chose a charpoy and had a wee sleep. I don't know how these guys can sleep with all the street racket going on around. And, with your legs in this position? Indian people seem to be able to sleep anywhere at any time. We never seen any charpoys in dhabas in the mountains but they seem very common around rural India.
Some towns you pass through are less than salubrious. At least the wee coo is having a feed. At times we miss Vashisht!
You see some great loads on bikes.
People sit along the roadside working. They sit in the most impossible looking positions.
We were having a pit stop and some young lads came over to check out the freaks on an enfield.
We arrived in Bareilly which was a really busy town. We wanted to stay somewhere at the far end of the town so that we had an easy ride out in the morning and we found ourselves heading out of town before we had spotted any hotels. We hadn't really liked the look of Bareilly so we thought we would drive further and hopefully find somewhere on the highway. Luckily, sense kicked in after about 10mins riding. Time was getting on and what if there wasn't a hotel to be found in the next hour. This really wasn't a good idea as the electrics on the bike hadn't been working for a few days so we didn't have any lights on the bike. So we turned around and headed back to Bareilly. We managed to find a hotel - Hotel Mandekani. It was lucky we did turn around as the next day when we drove on that same road we never passed a hotel for several hours.
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