5/11/16, Saturday.

Bhilwara to Banswara, 330kms, 8 hours riding time.

By Will

 

Saturday morning had us up quite early, 7am we popped our weekly malaria tablet of Lariam, packed up our gear and headed down to the Amit Palace, dining room for a dismally sad breakfast. Still for the equivalent of $48AUD for room & brekky what do you expect ?

Poor Jenny has now developed the head cold that I had to deal with for most of the Nevermind Rajasthan Tour. I’m nearly over it so I guess Jenny has at least another week of coughs.

While packing the bikes this morning my helmet fell off the bike (with the GoPro attached) and smashed onto the pavement. The GoPro took most of the impact, which caused the bracket to crack, I didn’t pack a spare. So no more GoPro Helmet action until I find a new bracket. I’m also having some issues with the 64 gig micro SD cards I bought back in Jaipur, the file keeps corrupting & I’m thinking it’s the wrong type of SD card. So back to just having the trusty old Nikon Coolpix hanging over my neck & snapping pics while riding along. The occasional action candid shot usually turns out pretty good !

We left Amit Palace, Bhilwara at 9am. There was a quick refuelling stop a few kays down the road. Petrol is at about $1.40AUD per litre and the total for both bikes was 1200 Gandi’s for approximately 16 litres…..$24AUD.

About an hour later we pulled over at some random roadside stop for Chai & biscuits. Our only other long (ie: not toilet or which turn to take) stop was for lunch at 2pm on the side of the road at some restaurant/bar for truck drivers that had a dirt floor & beds. While we ate our lunch we watched the nearly naked Truck Drivers freshen up by taking a dip in the nearby dam ? The Dahl, Rice & Naan was excellent & gave us the energy to battle on for the next 3 hours.
All up including heaps of nonalcoholic drinks it cost 600IR (I now call them Gandi’s) about $12 Aussie. We probably paid double what the locals are expected to pay ?

Both bikes seem to be going well, this morning I noticed the oil on Jenny’s RE Bullet 500cc was low. I only checked my Himalayan 400cc before leaving Jaipur yesterday so not sure if it was already low or burning some oil. Of cause I topped it up and will monitor.

Lalli Singh has provided us with 2 sets of spares & comprehensive tool kits. Everything from spark plugs, tyre tubes, cables, clutch kit, brake pads the list goes on. About the only job I probably need a mechanic for would be the clutch replacement, hoping I don’t have to find out… note to Jenny & myself, don’t burn out the clutch, Amit & Tony who delivered the bikes said the clutch usually only last about 3000kms on Indian roads !?!?
***(NB: our 2002 Toyota Landcruiser has never had its brake pads replaced & only one clutch replacement after doing heaps of 4WD’ing & towing over nearly 15 years, so we are quite mechanically sympathetic)***.

The only major mishaps today was Jenny’s 2 potty emergency’s which meant she to go full monty native style to deal with the call of nature. Not a pretty sight & not to many places to hide on short notice. We aren’t talking a simple wee, wee stop here people. Best thing to do is leave your helmet on then no one can see you, while “checking out your bike wheel”. Ha, ha, ha…poor Jenny.

So after riding through some great hill country & forests we arrived at Banswara after sunset, which is a bad idea, Jenny went all out and booked us into the $20aud or 1000 Gandi’s at the Relax Inn it’s actually not too bad if you don’t expect much. That is, towels, toilet paper or hot water. We do have a comfy hard bed, TV, power & 2 complimentary bottles of drinking water. Plus secure parking for the bikes.

So we are going to immediately reassess our daily plan, as today was to much & we’ll burn ourselves out and something will go wrong. Starting tomorrow we are aiming for a maximum of 200kms or 5 hours riding time, which ever comes first. The riding is quite hairy, live stock, bad driving techniques (Indian style), consistently variable road conditions, broken down vehicles & not much signage.

We have pulled out our bicycle Garmin Touring GPS “Davo”, which we bought in Barcelona last year, reconfigured it for road use only, mounted it onto the RE Himalayan handle bars & are using it to navigate also Jenny’s phone has an Indian sim & Madam Google is working quite well, though it chews threw the battery power. So far so good.