India – The Gift That Keeps on Giving!

Stopped at a local bike shop….no shimano parts here!

India – the gift that keeps on giving!

Sunday: After a breakfast of cold omelette and roti I set off today towards the main Highway to Varanasi on a mission to get on to it tomorrow with a view to gadging a lift from a passing truck or van. The road out of town was actually not too bad – it’s Sunday and therefore less commercial traffic on the road. About 20 minutes in I had to stop at a train crossing. This is quite a sight to see, with literally hundreds of vehicles piled up on either side of a dilapidated crossing gate. And as soon as the last carriages of the train had gone through, the race was on to get through the bottleneck – it was a scene from the Whacky Races! Funny enough I got across almost first – I’m getting good at barging my way in and playing the ‘I can’t seeee you’ game!

As has become the norm now, I found a street tea stop in as quiet a place as I could – I ride through the towns in the full knowledge that I’ll be mobbed. But the small villages where the cattle outnumber the people I fancy my odds a bit better! And as is the norm, a complete stranger paid for my food and drink.

I only had 65 to do so it was lovely to plod along at around 20kph. Until it wasn’t. As I got closer to the town I was staying in, the traffic became unbelievable. Out of nowhere cars appeared and then everything ground to a halt. Nothing was moving. There was even an ambulance trying to get through but in India, road real estate is given up for no one or nothing. I had to cope with three such blockades which did little to help my pollution sickness. What bemused and simultaneously frustrated me was, with nothing moving, drivers of all vehicles were sitting on their horns as if magically that would clear them a path! It was like a pencil with no lead -pointless! And one other sight confirmed to me that the buses were the most lethal thing on the road. As I was leaving a town on a bend, a bus coming the other way hurtling towards congestion on their side came round the bend sideways – I exaggerate not. It was sideways, such was it’s speed….and it had feck all intentions of slowing down for the looming congestion….I braced for the sound of metal on metal but it didn’t come!

I got to my next $&ithole of a hotel around 2 which was good as I had time to clean the bike and relax away from the fumes. Tomorrow, and the next few hundred K to Varanasi, are going to present some interesting challenges. I’ve not booked any accommodation because my hope is to get a truck or van as far up the road as I can. If that fails I’ll ride to the next town and try get a room. One of the things that brings some comfort is knowing your next night is booked….so when you set out riding with nothing booked, it adds a new layer of stress, but one way or another I need to get to Varanasi…..it’s my ticket out of India!

….that gift….keeps on giving….

Monday – Today I awoke with the dreaded Delhi Belly, tho in truth it wasn’t too bad – a slight fever and the need to be very close to a loo! Feck knows what I ate or drank, but it seems a lottery on any given day…some ya win, some ya don’t! And today was a national holiday due to some opening of a Hindu temple (on a previous Muslim mosque site, so a source of quite some religious tension) so nothing was moving anyway – Indians do religious holidays very loudly and at full bore, so streets were closed with loud speakers blaring out stuff followed by adoring Hindu ‘fans’ as they waved flags and chanted. I wasn’t going anywhere today! My friend Asraf, the guardian angel of Kolkata, was able to pull a few strings and connect me with a local friend of his who duly arranged a truck for me tomorrow to Varanasi 😊. This guy then takes it upon himself to entertain me for half the day, taking me to a tea place, then to his gated community where there were chants and celebrations to be had for the residents. Quite an experience tho a bit boring waiting for the 1008 chants to Lord Ram (in whose honour the temple was built for) to be completed between the attendees. There was food galore (which I had none, so as to starve the stomach bug out of me) as well as fireworks which were more like bombs. Each time one went off I jumped out of my skin.
I returned to my room to discover that there was a wedding this evening in the hotel hall, so I kissed goodbye to any hope of getting any sleep tonight! But that’s ok – I’m in India so….go with it! As it turned out it was an engagement function in an arranged marriage. I was of course invited, as is the way here, so I stayed to watch the main proceedings with fascination.

Tuesday: I was collected this morning at 6:30 for the drive to Varanasi. It wasn’t too long distance wise but it took nearly 8 hours. I have never been so continuously grateful than I was throughout those 8 hours, as it was quickly established that there was no way in hell one could ride a bike on this road, the main ‘expressway’! What it served up was unrelenting roadworks which were dust bowls of chaos, the pollution was so intense and the fog reminiscent of a scene from Oliver Twist. There was absolutely nothing engaging about this route. Nothing to break the monotony or distract from the ever present carnage…..trucks tipped over, tuk tuks pushed off the road, cows meandering amidst the carnage….often causing it….tractors on the fast lane (not, by the way, wishing to imply there were any ‘lanes’ ), underpassing, over passing, through- passing…..I made that last one up, but the general principle is that when someone is in your way, you just go through them ….but as long as you used your horn, all good! Then there’s the countless vehicles on the wrong side of the road, indignant should anyone indicate that perhaps they might want to try going with the flow, not against it! And all done with feck all visibility…..because there isn’t enough risk! In truth I reckon 60% of the road was road works….not the sort we might be accustomed to, with traffic lights and lane closures. No….what I mean is the road simply disappears whilst they build a new section, throwing all the vehicles on to a temporary track of dust and rubble with both sides of the three lane highway collapsed in to two ‘lanes’….hahaha I used that work again, lane…..no such thing here. I think our average speed was 35kph….on the ‘Express….way’!

I was dropped about 20 km out Varanasi and I cycled in to the town, riding over the river Ganges for the first time. As has now become the norm, where Booking dot com says a hotel is and where it’s actually located are two different things, so the inevitable ‘where the f$&k is my hotel’ dance ensued. Eventually found it about a K from where it was supposed to be, down a tiny Varanasi back alley.

Once showered and fed I headed to the Ganges and the various Gnats very close by, including one of the burning gnats….the crematoria’s along the banks of the Ganges. Having read up about the ritual and seen it on TV it was incredibly humbling to bear witness to this aspect of Indian culture. I was transfixed by the process and the ‘naturalness’ of it all….death being part of life, ‘ashes to ashes’ and so on. I had expected there to be quite a smell but that simply wasn’t the case. And there just didn’t seem to be anything ghoulish about watching bodies burn – there was a respectful silence and observance of the rituals and no wailing or mourning….in fact it seemed so matter of fact, with children playing with their kites not 15 metres away….life goes on.

One of the things I’ve really missed on this part of my journey home has been things to see, places of interest to visit. The route has been monumentally boring in terms of distracting vistas and engaging places to visit. But today there was, finally, something to stand back and engage with, which was such a pleasure- even tho the point of interest was the passing of one’s spirit from this life to whatever was to be next for this Hindu person.

The Hindi festival to celebrate the opening of a new temple