After a week of thinking I was dying in Pushkar I felt ready to remove my ear plugs and sunglasses (I had worn these 24 hours a day while I was lying in the room, as I couldn't bear any noise or light) and get back on the bike to continue on our journey. An extra week and few days in Pushkar meant that we had to get some miles under our belt to reach Goa on time. Although we still did have plenty of time we had to factor in the possibility of another unplanned delay on route.
We had a vague plan of heading towards Mumbai and then, rather than driving through it, we would take the by-pass around it - if we could find it. It was going to take a few days to get there so we planned on riding the bike each day, until we felt we had had enough, and then find somewhere to stay in the nearest town. The first night we spent in Uddipur. We had originally thought we would spend a few days there but our delay in Pushkar meant we only spent one night there. It was the first time that I had been to Uddipur (Colin has been many times before) and I wished we could have spent a few days there as it is a truely beautiful place and would loved to have hads time to explore it. At least there's always next time. The next night we stayed in Ahmedabad and shortly before we arrived there we crossed The Tropic of Cancer. The next night we stopped in a place called Valsad
The next day our plan was to go round the Mumbai but Bal Thackery a prominent right wing politician died and amazingly the whole of Mumbai shut down - shops and businesses closed, public transport stopped and unbelievably the streets of Mumbai were deserted. The hotel manager told us that there were a lot of road blocks so probably not safe to take that route. We couldn't stay another night in Valsad as it was a hell hole so we had a sketch at the map and found a small seaside town not far from where we were. We decided to head there and hole up for a few days until the Mumbai situation returned to normal.
We left Valsad on 19th Nov and headed to Daman. We were on a six lane highway with great road surface condition and were flying along. The road wasn't busy but we still had to keep our eyes peeled as very often, even on these main roads, traffic comes straight towards you on the wrong side of the road. Imagine that on a motorway back home.
As we were driving along I spotted a big sign for MacDonalds. Not a place we would normally go to but after two weeks of vegeterian pushkar, even a MacDonald's burger sounded like meat. As I pointed it out to Colin I realised we had already passed the exit ramp to get to it. Oh, no problem for Colin though. He just spun a u-turn on the six lane highway, drove down the entry ramp to the highway and pulled into MacDonalds car park. Not one vehicle on the highway or on the entry ramp paid any attention to us. Colin rewarded himself by eating two MacMDonalds meals. He said he deserved it after his ingenious, skilled motorbike riding! I couldn't resist a photo with the main man himself. Full stomachs, we continued our ride to Daman.
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