28 Jan. DELHI - NARNAUL 225km.
8:00 am. I ready for my long awaited Rajasthan Journey. It's like winning the lottery to get the MC in 1 gear. I have tried to dress me on this chilly morning at only approx. +8 c. I quickly discovered a simple shirt and a thin vest under my thick leather jacket was not enough. My leather pants were not hot enough. So after 10 minutes. Driving out of town, which was just a little busy, I had to stop by the roadside and find my woolen sweater, thin extra pants and thin leather gloves. A quick strip on the roadside.
It was nice to know that I have enough clothes to cope with this cold morning breeze and just increases the faster you drive. But I am as I said in the southwest, so the temperature will rise along with spring here in India.
MC still make noise when I was running in high gear, but luckily only periodically. Perhaps it has something to do with the chain that might go against the chain guard. On the other MC I've drive on, there has been no chain guard. The noise was occasionally excruciating. I had decided to start my journey and did not expect that the workshop could figure it out. I had repeatedly asked them to find out the cause of the noise.
Google Maps.
The largest card I could buy of Rajasthan 1:1.500.000 the card is no bigger than 60x50cm. I was on the internet to see if it was possible to obtain a more detailed and larger maps. This time, I have been on Google Map and had been printed out all the planned route and some alternatives onto A4 pages in scale 1:250. A total of about 40 pages. It allows me to be better inform when I'm standing out there in the terrain. On this journey, I would again choose the smaller roads and alternative routes to see and experience the Indian countryside and villages more closely and not just noisy trucks and buses there all the time are coming dangerously toward one. It requires full concentration to drive on the main arteries here in India.
I am a very visual person, because of my profession, therefore I would like to have the opportunity to stop, if there is anything that catches my interest, records and possible. take a photo. It's hard to stop when you are up in high speed. Nor is it completely safe to suddenly brake hard. You had quickly be driven 20 meters past that situation you wanted to caught before you can stop. So it's always very hard to take the decision to stop in most situations. The smaller roads are usually in worse condition, they are more bumpy and winding. And you can easily take the wrong road.
Well so far the roads is good. But there are also roads with eroded asphalt, filled with bumps and holes. The holes belong to the tolerable, not direct craters with sharp edges. So the MC front wheel shock absorbers this type of holes OK. But it requires constant one's full attention in order to avoid the worst crater.
After the first 100 km. I understand that it is still difficult, even with the printed a4 pages to brief me properly. The key is to keep the direction which my compass helps me.
After a few hours drive, I found a MC workshop in one of the small village. All shops is on the main road. They did the chain guard and I also got tightened my foot brake.
Brick factory after Brick factory shows up with their beautiful high chimney.
In the state of Haryana I passed a lot of bricks factories. I decide to drive into one of them. I am offered Thai and they will show round. The dried clay wall bricks are stacked in a particular way, so there is always airspace around them. They also always created some major smoke channels that run the length and breadth, through all the piled-clay brick. The channels are so big so a person can creep in there. Smoke gets in this way led to the large chimney. The entire construction work as a stove.
Top of the stacked clay bricks are then covered with sand. Pulverized straw ignites and comes down in the controlled gaps. I guessed a little of that going on in this way because they understood very little English.
Gasoline / Petrol stop.
Well before my stop at the brickworks, I had several times thought that now I should have filled petrol at MC when the needle was nearing the red zone. But after my visit toat Tegel plant that I forgot all about the needle signals . Then the engine died. I was nowhere, but still somewhere. I was stopped between two houses on an empty lot or road with at least 5 km to the nearest village. What now!
Situation is not entirely new to me. Similar situations have I encountered a few times during my MC's journey so no panic .- The sun shines, it is not more than 1:00 pm and there's nothing I need to achieve. I walk toward the nearest house where a 9-10 year boy is already showing interest in my problem. The father shows up and I try with the body and mouth, putting him in my situation.
He makes it clear he has no petrol and there is a piece into town. The son has now found an empty plastic bottle and offers on his bike, I assume that he would buy petrol for me.
I stopped in the meantime a couple of cars and ask if they can help me with petrol, but they use only diesel. The last driver I ask if he can not drive into the village and filling petrol in the cola bottle. I offer 2 $ for the job and 1$ for 1 liter of petrol (that's today's price). I stopped also a smaller car, I assume, will not run on diesel and he offers me a little petrol.
He clears the floor in his little minivan. Removing the seats and open directly to the gasoline pump, located under the cart. He turns over the thin hose, petrol over the plastic bottle. He had no rubber hose, which he otherwise could have 'used to suck with his mouth and then letting it run further into a plastic bottle. He received instead the same payment for his very valuable work.
I've only traveled 225 km. But is completely finished, it has also been a travel day on 10 hours. In town I can just only find 2 hotels. They're both equally bad. Choose it with a sunroof, in the belief that I get time enjoying a Thai and write a little. But time passes quickly when you just need unpack, enroll at the hotel, which can be a little longer process because you have to fill out a bunch of papers. So I didn’t get the opportunity to sit outside before it got really dark. Then it was 7:00 pm.
29 Jan. NARNAUL - SIKAR 180 km.
9:00 am. / Leaves rapidly Narnaul. It is not a city I want to be in more than one night. Just outside of town I stop and enjoy a Thai and a chappati filled with onions, really good.
A pretty long way, I followed a railroad track. I had a wonderful feeling, like being in a dusty old cowboy movie. The sun hangs like in the mist and warm your soul. I have this wonderful feeling that I'm on the road on the way to new, unexpected sensory input, which will undoubtedly open my picky, biased, more knowledgeable and critical mind. I feel my bodily freedom.
As the lonely cowboy who relies on his horse, I am dependent on MC's forces, giving me this opportunity to move me faster in the countryside, which fits nicely into my little restless mind. You have a sense of horsepower under you as you control with some kicks with the heel, you're on the road to new expanses new dreams.
Reality is a big challenge both spiritually and materially.
The incessant challenges life offers one, is somewhat of a test that requires intimacy and empathy in the present. How do you best take the next step without losing the Headline goal of sight. The overall aim for me at every level, trying to give my best in the given situation. That way, I try to continually develop all of my senses, so I may someday be one with the now and not as now, the searching soul who tries its best, to find the right directions in the present.
I believe in yoga philosophy and therefore also in reincarnation. So I believe in Dharma. It means that I constantly have to act according to the highest ethics. I also believe in Karma. This means that everything you do, you are often accountable for - and if it does not hit someone like a rank booms in the neck in this life, then it will hit a the next. I would like to reduce some of the millions of reincarnations I have to achieve to become one with the now, one with the universe. I therefore try as far as possible to give my utmost, with the abilities I now have to arrive at the target.
I am again on a journey into the millions of gods country and I can not avoid being affected by. Half of you friends who read these thoughts, probably do not belive either in god or in reincarnations.
But I think probably as good democratic people, all one's actions is to create one as a person, then all actions in life have consequences in one way or another.
But the fact that consciously seek the right path is demanding because it requires all the time that you are ready to expand and have intuition and ability to seek knowledge from the proper channels and are always ready to adapt to new situations. It is always important to keep both the new targets and the goal in mind.
Here in my encounter with a new culture, it is probably more human knowledge there is required than technical science to navigate through the best possible way. My targets are getting closer to the Indian culture. On such a trip can hardly avoid, not to come out with new challenges, new unknown hardships.
Back to present the realities, the challenges and ordeals.
First gas controller went out of action, then the speed controller. These events will surely tell me something, all my spiritual friends will say. "Bjarne, step more sensitive on the throttle, take it easy a bit."
On my previous MC.India journey, I was actually out for exactly the same, the speed controller went out. But it was in fact on the first day. So I was somewhat prepared for the situation. No danger signals were switched on in my mind.
After approx. 40 km do I find a workshop. Chain noise has come back. The mechanic is forced to replace the speed cable but can not do anything about tank controller. Again on the move and after 10 km. I hear a noise again but this time a more rumbling sound. Back to the workshop. It turns out that it was now it was the speed counter there were noisy.
Farmer houses that builds on classical ruins.
I stop in a fascinating little village where some of the houses were built on past ruins of finer buildings. It looks like it perhaps for about. 100 years ago was an enclave of a sacred buildings. I went in between some of the houses and is quickly invited to a yoghurt drink, with some green herbs in. Tasted pretty good, but I'm still a little worry, to get any stomach problems. There appear more and more people to greet me.
They offer me food that I find it very hard to escape as they while we converse was doing it to me, so here I sit among foreign as their guest, the curious looking.
They show me up to their temple atop the mountain and I get the opportunity to take some photos.
Euro-Asia map
MC. Rajasthan Journey
I take my little logbook is where I have pasted a small card with Rajasthan and marked my entire route. Moreover, I also have a small atlas with both Denmark and India pictured. In this way, I get a opportunity with a few words to give them an idea where I come from and what I'm doing in their country. But as I said there are many who probably can not read a map.
As on my other journey I asked some of them I have photographed, to write their address down in my logbook preferably their @. In this way, I will send them copies of the photos I took. Some are sure never own a photo of themselves.
There was a young boy in the family who could write and this is the address. Instead of trying to decipher the letters I take a photocopy of the page and pasted it on the envelope.
MC problems with the accelerator.
I had noticed during the day that it was hard to let gas in first gear, it did not really hold. The same thing happened now, when I was up to speed. It was difficult sometimes to speed up to more than 70-80 km.
So when I got to a little bigger town Chaila, I stopped at a MC workshop. They referred me to another workshop who knew more about Honda and probably also had spare parts for it. They have to change the whole accelerator and gear system out with brand new parts. It would take 2 hours.
I used the two hours at an internet cafe. At 5:30 pm MC was ready and washed. It cost me only approx. 15 $. I had to get going because already at 6: 30 pm it would be dark. I still had to drive ca.78 km.
The price of these different things vary here in India. Labor is cheap but not always very serious, so it is quite difficult to say what things cost here compared to Denmark. I would think that things here are 5-10 times cheaper. So, this repair would approx. costing 10x more, but then only be performed by an apprentice.
Unfortunately, the road was being repaired and incredible hole. My speed was not particularly high. The road became worse and worse to drive on. One half was now closed completely to traffic, with rocks placed with one meter apart, so nobody could drive into this part of the roadway.
Both directions had to share a lane that was incredible hole and uneven. Occasionally there were only a fringe of 1-2 meters wide, it was possible to run on. When I was the underdog, I had to constantly give way.
When it was all black / dark and I still had approx. 30 km back, it was first really difficult. For Indians prefer beam so they look even better. It was very few who held onto the beam when I'm with my light signaling. Since many of them while leaving the major responsibility is up to Brahman that all goes well, one must be extremely careful. So most times when an oncoming blinding me, I was forced to stop completely, because there was too big bumps in the road that I just totally blinded, could continue to run without being able to see the ground.
The last 1 hour tense driving in the dark, sat really as tension in my back muscles. Almost exhausted but also very relieved to have arrived, I tried in vain to find a guesthouse that I was recommended along with the city Sikar. I could with the same sense that this was not a city I wanted to be more than overnight. Then I found a fairly good hotel for the night after a travel day at 11 hours.
After two incredibly hard MC travel days, it was incredibly nice to lie down, rest your back and just disappear for the surface of consciousness for a while.
I'm still on the track
Love Bjarne
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