Northward drift

Having resolved to make speed to Nepal faced with Gujarat's heat, and keen to avoid retracing the route by which I'd come, I had opted to take a series of highways which seemed about the best route to where I planned to enter Nepal.

From my very first day in India, I'd been warned about the Nepal border area. Bandits with automatic weapons would be sure to rob me, I was told, and I was advised to take a bus. On the other hand, with Nepal being so mountainous a country I was reluctant to enter it too far from my ultimate destination, Kathmandu. My thinking was to head to the notoriously lawless state of Bihar and take the highway which leads directly to Kathmandu. Apparently I was putting avoiding hills before avoiding robbery (or worse), perhaps favouring my chances of dodging bandits over evading mountain passes. I should mention that whilst Bihar remains India's poorest state, more up to date sources inform me that the security sitution has improved a great deal in the last ten years.

My chosen route necessitated heading just a bit further south and then east from Ahmedabad, before taking a northeasterly tack more or less all the way to the border.

Setting off I found that if I kept cycling and took a long lunch in the shade, the heat was bearable, and my first day saw me invited to stay with a farmer. I followed his motorbike out to his farm, passing the tents and huts of his labourers around the farm entrance. I am told farm labour rates are typically in the vicinity of 50 rupees (US$1) per day, and there were plenty of school-age children in the workforce.The farm was inhabited by several brothers and their wives and children, along with the grandparents. After talking a little with everyone, we made a small tour of the farm, where the potato harvest was underway. I was surprised by how many potatoes remained in the ground after the tractor's passage, and wondered if the labourers were permitted to glean them.

After washing, I was invited to join in a puja (Hindu worship ceremony) with my host. This we did sat on the floor before a small shrine, and I did my best to follow along. After eating, there was a larger and prolonged puja, in which everyone participated. It was interesting for a while, but with my lack of understanding of Hindi and especially the discomfort of the hard floor I was quite relieved when it ended.

A hotel in Godhra was my next night's shelter, and the following day I left the national highway for a pleasantly quiet state highway, which snaked its way through a rolling landscape of subsistence farms, the road condition deteriorating gradually as it went. Roadside, women and girls harvested firewood, pumped water or beat wet laundry with sticks; men worked in the fields, or as often as not sat idly. At times long stretches of the road were so rutted I had to ride on the dusty shoulder alongside thorny bushes, slowing my pace greatly. After a couple of days of this I was relieved to rejoin a national highway.

Nearing the town of Banswara, a friendly man pulled up alongside on his motorcycle and we talked a little; throughout my time in India, this was something that would occur anything up to twenty times per day when I was cycling. Usually the conversation would follow a pattern I knew well, limited by our mutual intelligibility, and too quickly turning to the subject of the price of my bicycle, or my income. I must confess that the novelty had more than worn off a long time ago, but normally I was able to temporarily overpower my inner curmudgeon and not let this show too much, and on this occasion the man was a fluent English speaker. He invited me to stay with his family (alas, back the way I'd come) and helped me find a hotel in Banswara, where a crowd gathered at my arrival and a newspaper interviewed me. Fireworks from a wedding party exploding right outside my 3rd floor window made for a late sleep.

After another long day in the saddle, the road to Pratapgarh branched off the highway for the final 20 kms or so. The road was busy, and lacked a median strip, so psychotic oncoming bus and truck drivers ran me off the road repeatedly as they overtook (Indian drivers of lesser vehicles, and cyclists, simply accept this treatment because they're used to it - right of way is to the larger vehicle and to the smaller it's the shoulder, or oblivion). Other truck drivers blasted me with deafening airhorns at close range, and I was unable to resist responding with shouted insults and rude gestures (maybe a few more Vipassana meditation retreats are in order!).

The first person I met in the town was a journalist, and I was soon interviewed by local staff from the same newspaper of the preceding day. A friendly guy in the street told me later that I was the first foreigner he'd seen in his town. We talked for a while as onlookers gathered steadily, presently becoming a mob. Soon young men, oblivious to the fact of my cycle journey, were demanding my autograph on all sides. It soon started to get out of hand, and my friend and several others had to escort me out of the crowd back to my hotel.

I arrived in Chittaurgarh once again, taking a rest day there to relax in familiar surroundings. The rest was well-advised as my journey was about to pick up the pace substantially.