On the bikes to Varanasi, Katmandu and Pokhara

First of all, my appologies for the late reaction. My laptop crashed, it couldn't stand the monsoon..... We are now in the Himalaya's and it was very hard to find internet.....

But hereby the follow up!
 

And finally we are going to do what we came here for. Although the first 3 weeks were better than expected, especial at the Ashram, because of the nice people, This is our big adventure.

After a warm farewell from the staff of the Golden Apple, we drove of. My GPS sent us all through town..... It took us an hour to get to the highway. There I found out, that my GPS was programmed to skip highways and take only small roads.......

And how are the highways in India? I know, that some of the readers of this blog are from India, so maybe it is good to describe what we are used to in Holland, Europe. First of al we drive at the right side of the street, but, to be honest, that is not a big thing to change. The biggest difference is the maintaining of rules. On highways all trafic slower then 70 km/u ia forbidden, so no bikes, people walking, cows, dogs, etc. It is strongly forbidden to drive against the driving direction. We  call people who do “ghostdrivers”and if there is one, it immediately will be announced on the radio. The slower trafic rides on the right side lane, and overholing is by the left lane......

Can you imagine what we thought about the driving here! Trucks are driving at both lanes. If you study it well you can see a sort of regularity: petrol trucks always drive on the right lane (for us, the fast lane), the Tata trucks, do as we should expect, but, just like everyone else, never look in their mirrors. So we sort of slalom through the trafic. Then you have to watch out for motorcyclist. They come from everywhere. There are people walking on the highway, crossing, or just on the side and dogs, cows and goats...... One big mess! We also found out, that our bikes are something unexpected in trafic as well. Other drivers think of us as “normal” motorbikes (mostly between 125 – 250 cc) and our 1150 cc is totally underrated. The normal Motorbikes are low in the excisting unwritten laws in trafic: Fast cars and 4x4 drives are high up, then the different trucks, motorbikes and walking trafic. We are nothing in this pick order.....  So we have to watch out and behave like all the other motorcyclist.

Our maximum speed is about a 100 km/h. IN that we match more with the fast cars. A difficult situation.

It can be, that in the middle of the highway, as we're passing villages there is a trafic light. And you pas the village through the hart of it: very busy....

A total mess in our opinion.

                      

The first km's we have to adjust to all of this and later on we are able to look around a bit more. Just like the train rides you can see the little villages, with small huts. We have the feeling of being in a African documentary. As we stopped at a restaurant, the same ritual passes by as before: loads of people are coming from everywhere to watch the bikes..... While eating a man came to our table, accomplished by a man with camera. The local press was informed.... We were interview, photographed, filmed. It was like at the Taj Mahal! But now the motorbikes where the attraction.

We continued our trip and as it became dark, we decided to look for a place to stay. But we were in the the middle of nowhere..... We saw a restaurant with a “hotel” sign. It was one of the highway restaurants with an open front. IN the back of the restaurant there were some walls for separation, without doors.  Ok for us. It was sort of quit, beside the noise of the road. W were allowed to put the motorbikes in the restaurant, save! The wooden banks were made to sit and sleep on and were put in tho the “rooms”. Now our camping gear was usefull. Nice to have a soft sleeping mat.

The toilet and washingroom were behind the building on the field, literally. A concrete basin was the washing place. Fild with water from the pump beside and the toilet was a hole in the ground (not even that, to be honest. The locals did their thing on the fields). After a rough night, it was noisy, people came by to eat etc, and very hot, we left early to go to our destination: Varanasi. At about 12:00 we arrived in Varanasi. My GPS brought us to the part of town where the most hotels and guesthouses and Marika asked a man on a motorbike if he knew a nice palce to stay for us, where we could have a save place for our motorbikes. We were lead to a very nice guesthouse …...........

And ohhh it was so hot in Varanasi. After a shower, a good meal and some rest we went for a walk along the Ganga. We saw the funeral/burning rituals. Amazing. Later that evening we went for a boottrip on the Ganga to see some more of these funaral rituals and of course the Aarti (sunset ritual) Especialy the cremations were very impressive........ The Aarti in Rishikesh was much more interesting! The whole atmosphere was different.

The next day we walked around a bit,but it was so hot, that we decided to take a swim at a pool by a big hotel (Surya). How nice can it be to just be in the water.....

On saturday the next ride was on the program: to Katmandu, about 700 km. We left early at 7:00pm. The road conditions changed a lot and on this route there was a lot of work in progress... lots of stones.... But that's were the bikes are made for and we actually liked the changes. It was hard sometimes to manage everything: road conditions, traffic, but a real challenge.

At 17:00 we arrived in Mothahari, a not particularly interesting place to be, but again we found a reasonable place to stay and restaurant. There were problems with the electricity, so our airco room was non airco during most of the night and we bargained about the (I must say high) price.

Another 55km to the Nepali border! We left at 7:00pm and arrived at 8:45pm. Again the roads were bad.... At the border we were welcomed warmly and directed to the right offices. First we had to go to the Indian immigration office to check our passports an then to the custom office to get the right stamps on our “carnet de passages” for the bikes. The same ritual at the Nepali border. And again very friendly and welcoming. It all took us 2 hours. We didn't have to wait, it just takes that much time to do the paperwork. And again we got a nice cup of tea while waiting.

The switch to Nepal was a big one. You could see it at the offices already. Much more organized, cleaner, tidier. And then after 50km, we arrived at the mountains..... finally..... We stopped for a lunch break: mango's and banana's at the side of the road... beautiful view...

The scenery changed, it was green, curves, not so busy on the road, friendly people, waving at us and saying goodbye, hello, or welcome in Nepal.

We took the fastest road, short, strait through the mountains, single track and we made the right choice. It was great! When we arrived at the bigger road from Pokhara to Katmandu, we immediately were back in the busy traffic.... Lots of dirty trucks... Their gasses are totally black and so were we....

These last few km (30) t Katmandu were not the most beautiful.... When we arrived in Katmandu the view over the city was amazing. But the city border wasn't. We were tired and wanted to find a place outside of the city center, for our bikes. We found a guesthouse and oposit of the guesthouse there was a small hospital. We could park our car on the parking of the hospital witch was guarded, next to the morgue, we saw later....

The doughters of the owner of the guesthouse were very helpful, because english was rare and the 2 children had to help translate. They were very curious about everything. Time to eat, time to sleep.......