Yikes! Bikes!

OH, MY, GOD!!!! The last 24 hours have been the absolute wildest time I have ever spent on a motorcycle in my 500,000 km experience!

It started yesterday morning when our bikes were delivered to our hotel. Crowds gathered around to see these 7 brand new, shiny Royal Enfield motorcycles(made in India) lined up amidst the dust and dirt of Delhi. Arun, the owner, had each of us ride down the street and back to test the bikes and ourselves and we all returned unscathed and satisfied with our mounts. Ruth Ann and I were especially pleased to find that we could flat-foot them once we wrenched the bikes off their side stands. Our mechanic, Mukesh, made last minute adjustments to mirrors and kick starters and then we were off.

We have a support van, driven by Sanjay and our mechanic,, Mukesh who will service and wash the bikes every evening and ride one if someone wants to travel in the van for whatever reason. The cost of such luxury? Mukesh $110 each for the whole two months. Sanjay and the van $286 each for the same period.

So we re off! We all line up and follow Mukesh first to the gas station where we fill the tanks for about $15 (gas is about $1.25 litre). Now we have to get out of town. Traffic is totally unbelievable! First- it is extremely heavy. Second- there are no lanes. Horns are honking everywhere. But there is a system to this chaos which we had noticed when walking, and now we move up from pedestrians (who are the lowest on the rung) to motorcyclists who are above bicycles, rickshaw cabs, tut tuts and scooters but are below cars and, the kings of the road. trucks. Cows, oxen, monkeys and dogs fit in where they can.

Trying to stay together, we dodge between all the aforementioned sundry vehicles with only centimeters to spare. People are so close to each other, one family had their children shake hands with Ruth Ann during a brief stop. Speaking of Ruth Ann, its really funny to see the look on peoples faces when they realize theres a woman riding. Women here all wear saris and ride side saddle so we re a big surprise. Men do an about face then tell the other two men on the bike and they all turn and look. The women, on the other hand, give us shy smiles as we make eye contact from across the globe.

Steve got up close and personal with a tut tut and stopped briefly to retrieve his leg. Other than than, we managed to get out of town where the traffic only thinned marginally but the speeds increased to about 60kph (40mph). Now that might not sound like much, but picture going down a two lane road where you re having to pass pedestrians, bicycles, tut tuts and numerous oxen-drawn carts while coming toward you are cars passing buses or trucks. Yikes! The worst scenario is when the trucks are passing the buses. Then the on-coming traffic, that would be us, have to hit the ditch and ride along there until its clear to get back up on the road. Now I m not a dirt rider, so hitting soft, deep sand the first time was pretty scary but I remembered to power out so probably hit about 150 kph as I blasted back onto the road only to have to brake hard to avoid hitting someone. This happened numerous times.

The other totally freaky thing was road diversions. We would be on a four lane divided highway (I use all these terms loosely. More like two country roads separated by a mound of sand) when we would be shunted onto the other road. Then we would be driving against traffic on the curb! People would flash their lights signaling us to get over as far as we could. Naturally, we tried to oblige providing there was a shoulder we could ride on.

I could go on ad nausea but suffice it to say that after riding 280 kms in 10 hours, the last three in the dark, we arrived quite shaken but intact. We are now staying at the Corbett Tiger Reserve for a few days – taking in copious amounts of alcohol to fuel the next leg of our journey. As for the tigers? They ll be a piece of cake compared to those trucks!