Two Weeks Off

I like Delhi. Almost every other tourist I've met has hated or at least disliked the place, and I can see why. If you're on a tight schedule and you need to, say, organise a new sim card or onward travel in a morning, it can be immensely frustrating, as things tend to happen at their own pace in India, and trying to make things happen rarely works. The levels of attention you get as a tourist can be overwhelming at first, but they are as nothing compared to the attention I draw as a cyclist, so I enjoy the relative anonymity of being a tourist in Delhi. Not to mention that a lot of people seem amused at the tourists wandering in their midst. Unlike Agra, where it felt as though everyone is grasping for the tourist dollar, Delhi has a sense of purpose, of a country testing its muscles. India's the future, and you can see that growth and the push of modernity here.

I like the mix of modern, ancient and British Empire buildings which you get while wandering around, mixed in with typically Indian scenes such as the rows of cycle rickshaws and tiny shops selling only bearings, or fireworks, or chewing tobacco and cigarettes. The contrast between the riches and the poverty of some people is appalling, though. You can see beggars and street kids asking for food and handouts outside shops selling iPads for many more rupees than your average waiter gets in a year.

My sister Anita has flown out to meet me here in Delhi, which has given me some time off the bike, a chance to stay in some pleasant hotels (which she paid for) and do some properly touristy things (which she paid for) and show her around places I'd already been, especially Delhi. She thought I was testing her by taking her to Old Delhi on her first day, and maybe I was, a little, but it's the most typically Indian place you can get to, and despite the scrum of people and the crazy traffic, it's a very safe place. Chandni Chowk even has a Mcdonald's, with handcarts and rickshaws and cows pulling bales of cloth going past. It's hardly downtown Bogota.

I did experience some of the Delhi frustration when I tried to fix my bike, as the mechanic's I took it to actually tightened the bolt, which was the complete opposite of what I'd asked them to do. Having worsened the problem, they then refused to help and sent me up to the cycle market, which I hoped would be a nest of little workshops and spare parts, but instead it was an emporium of kids' bikes, and a couple of rickshaw workshops. One guy said he didn't have the tools, until I pointed out that he had a socket spanner right next to him. The only help I got was one affable chap who said it isn't a part you can get in India. Someone did this in India, said I. He said that they wouldn't have the tools there - he reckoned I'd be best off going to Chandni Chowk or Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi and getting my own tools. To be honest I prefer to do these jobs myself after my experiences of letting other people at my bike, so that's what I did once Anita had left, as I didn't want to waste our time in fixing my bike. I hated the feeling of being in limbo, and I had hoped that the gear Anita brought would fix it, but despite my speaking on the phone to the guy at Halford's, he still contrived to send different parts to the ones I'd asked for. It was a strangely Indian experience, in that I thought I was saying one thing, but he heard another. Still, it's now fixed, even if it's not to my compete satisfaction, and I'll be carrying an extra kilo of tools and spares with me into the mountains when I leave.

Anita enjoyed Delhi, I think. As well as Old Delhi and the Jami Masjid Mosque and Red Fort, we went for a walk around the wide boulevards of New Delhi, which was amazingly quiet on a Sunday, at least until we got to India Gate, the war memorial built by the British to commemorate the Indian dead of World War I. I had been there previously with Jonathan, when the whole area was fenced off for the Republic Day celebrations, and to be honest I thought it was better then, as there were armed soldiers to scare off the scamsters.

Connaught Place has a bad reputation for the amount of hassle you get as a tourist, but at least there you only get people telling you things you already know, such as This Is C! Block C! Saying that, we did get hounded by a few juvenile pen salesmen and there's one guy there who keeps offering to clean my ears.

But at least you don't get people grabbing your hands and painting you there, which happened to Anita at India Gate. I thought she'd agreed to it, so I didn't say anything, but I did snarl a bit when they tried to start on me. Anita had both hands henna'd and they also flogged her an awful bit of jewellery. The family of harridans then tried to charge her 1500 rupees. We argued and gave them 200 in the end. Then a small boy followed me around, trying to sell me some tat, then trying to drop it into my pocket when I was photographing the arch, then feigning injury to get money out of me. Needless to say, he got nowt except a lesson in picking his marks better. It was much better when it was fenced off and lined with soldiers.

It was worse than Old Delhi - I took Anita along Chandni Chowk and through the Spice Bazaar, where we got hardly any hassle, apart from when I stopped to check the map and some mad old bleeder came up and said "this is Lahori Gate", which I knew as it was in big letters above the gate. Later on, he was standing next to one of the spice stalls and said "this is spice market" when we walked past. He probably goes on holiday to Trafalgar Square and stands under Nelson's Column telling people "this is England".



On our last day in India, I took Anita to the Sikh temple, Bangla Sahib, which I've now visited three times. It's quite unlike other temples I'd visited in India, such as Jama Masjid, where entrance is theoretically free, but they charge you 200 rupees for a camera, then another 100 to go up to the minaret, then another fee to wear a shame robe if you're showing too much skin, and where I had Jonathan and I thrown out when I refused to pay the camera fee, or the beautiful Lotus Temple, where it felt as though we were being fed into a factory assembly line. Entrance is free, there's a tourist office where friendly Sikhs explain that you need to cover your hair and not to speak inside the temple, but otherwise you can wander about at will, and the lack of rules and restrictions is not only welcoming, it encourages people to show respect. I really like the place, for the beauty of the temple and the pool, the warm welcome (entry is open to everybody, and food is given out freely to anybody), and the freedom to sit in peace without, for example, having somebody blow a whistle at you for sitting too long (which happened to Jonathan and I at the Taj Mahal). Anita really enjoyed it too. Amongst the bustle of Delhi, it has a remarkable tranquility, atmospheric music pours out of the temple twenty four hours a day, and the Sikhs are keen to give a good impression of their religion, or way of life.

It made a fine ending to Anita's holiday in India. In some ways it had been a hectic week, with some long days of travelling, but we'd planned an itinerary which had enough flexibility to allow for things to go wrong, which can happen in India. The two things she wanted to do were the elephant ride at Amber Fort in Jaipur, and the mountain railway up to Shimla. I think Jonathan and I comprehensively put her off the Taj Mahal and Agra, and I thought that she'd have been doing it because that's what people expect you to do in India, rather than because she really wanted to see it for herself.

The drive down to Jaipur was...challenging. I only agreed to brave my car sickness as I knew that road from having cycled it, so I knew that it was a clear run on a three lane highway for most of the route, but the driver wasn't the best. Anita complained to the hotel about him, as he consistently drove too close to cars in front, had no sense of anticipation, became competitive with other traffic and in one town he actually steered towards a young lad who was trying to cross the road. He collared me in the street afterwards, as Anita's complaint had cost him business, but I simply told him that it was his own fault. We had tried to tell him to back off on umpteen occasions, but at best he didn't listen, and at worst he ignored us and tried to convince us that he was a really good driver, as he sailed between two wagons with a yard's clearance to either side. He wasn't as bad as some of the clowns out here, but he didn't comprehend how uncomfortable his driving made us.

The hotel in Jaipur was lovely, and Anita and I went for a walk around the decaying Pink City, and for sunset we had a beer at Tiger Fort, high above the city with no one else around. It was straight out of the guide books and it was great.



In the morning, the elephant ride up to Amber Fort was another tourist trap, but I felt that it made it more special, to troop through the huge gateways up to the fort with sixty other elephants. We had a very frisky ride - the mahout said that she was only young, and enthusiastic, and full of energy, and we were overtaking other elephants up to the fort.



I liked that mahout - he was surly, and quiet. Unlike our tour guide, who I would have fired if I'd been on my own, but Anita was paying attention so I held my tongue. He didn't like that, though - while he was wittering on about the fine jewelwork or something, I was staring out over the battlements to the other fort on top of the hill and trying to imagine myself back amongst the Maharajahs, and what it would have been like, as I try to do, and he interrupted my reverie to ask "aren't you interested in the fort?" He was deeply offended that I wasn't paying him much attention. He went and spoke to other tour guides as well - I can imagine him complaining about me. "Did you tell him about the textiles? And the painting in plaster? And did you tell your Bollywood joke?" "I've tried everything, man. He's just not interested."

There were some interesting tidbits in there, but mostly it was tedious, and I was looking at the other tour guides, and they were giving the exact same spiel, made them take the exact same photos and so on. I like the sense that I'm discovering a place for myself, which is quite egotistical and probably delusional, but I prefer to wander around and look at stuff rather than be shepherded around, to watch other people and stare out into space, rather than listen to a dull lecture on the riches of the palaces and the beauty of the wives. I said to Anita, it was all built on the blood of the workers. He wouldn't let us stop and take our time, he was always chivvying us along and asking us what we planned to do afterwards - because he was very keen to get us to go to the local jewel factory and the textile works and reap himself a fat profit. I took great delight in going slowly, letting Anita buy tat from the many (many many) tat sellers around the fort and having a leisurely toilet stop. It wasn't even as if he was very enthusiastic about the place - it was so perfunctory.

But these are all the experiences that make up India. It's not like going to Bognor Regis. Can you imagine, if you grabbed a taxi at Heathrow or Newcastle airport and asked to be taken to such-and-such hotel, but they told you they knew a much nicer one, and anyway that hotel's dirty, or it's burnt down. We didn't go to the jewel workshop, or the textile factory with Surinder. Driving back to Delhi was quite enough of an experience.

The other trip we'd organised was by train, and the Indian railways are amazing. They're slow by western standards, but every train we caught was within five minutes of the timetable. The trip up to Shimla wasn't without its quirks, however. I was full of cold and getting up at 4.30 am to catch the train from Sara Rohilla station wouldn't have put me in a good mood at the best of times. Since we weren't able to book the mountain railway from Kalka to Shimla, we had to try and get a bus, but the buses were shonky local buses and I felt ill at the mere thought of spending four hours on one of those up a twisty mountain road. I negotiated a taxi driver, which was much more civilised, even if the driver was a bit weird. He stopped to get fags, and took his hands off the steering wheel each time we passed a temple to put them together and bow his head in prayer. He also stopped halfway up to have lunch, then vanished. But he was a pretty good driver, cautious and slow, and on that road (we passed one accident where a wagon had sideswiped a scooter), safe and slow was fine by me. It took about four hours to get the 90 km to Shimla.

Shimla has a central drag, the Mall, which was laid down by the British when it was the summer capital of the Raj. Indians were banned from it at the time - now, cars and autos and motorised transport are banned from it (ish - you still get official vehicles and those with special permits), so we had to walk. I was knackered and a bit ill. I was falling asleep in the car, but the mad old sod wouldn't let me sleep. I've no idea why - he spoke hardly any English. And I was carrying a huge rucksack with our stuff for three days in Shimla.

We did have a hotel booked, as Anita's partner Ian had found a youth hostel in Shimla on the internet, and as Anita is a member of the YHA, likes youth hostels and was curious to see what an Indian YHA would be like, she'd booked us a family room (with a view) there. It was up on The Ridge. The clue's in the name - off we went tramping uphill. We asked at the tourist information (more on which later), and they'd never heard of it. They told us to check this hotel further up. We got so far, and gave them a ring, and they sent a tall Kashmiri-looking bloke down to guide us back. I only thought he was Kashmiri cos he had blue eyes and the air of mountains about him.

He was alright, but this place wasn't no youth hostel. I'd be amazed if Hostelling International were aware of its existence. It was a seedy ratbag budget hotel masquerading as a youth hostel. The guy at reception looked like an extra from Taxi Driver. We did go to see the room, way up on the top floor, but this weren't no family room and there weren't no view. It was dark and musty with a narrow, filthy double bed, and there wasn't even a shower. I thought Anita was going to have a breakdown there. She said it was the sort of room you only see when the blindfold comes off and Abdul peels back a blanket to reveal his tray of torture implements.

So, we trooped back down the hill. I was knackered and ill and frankly a bit useless. I was complaining a bit. We went back to the tourist information and asked for their advice on a nice hotel, nearby, with a view, for around 2,000 rupees.

No problem. The Holiday Home has all of that. And it's only ten minutes' walk. They booked us in, and Anita paid.

They gave us directions. This place really wasn't ten minutes away. It took us fifteen minutes just to get to the lift down from the Mall, then we had to walk for another fifteen minutes along this narrow road, with traffic, without any clear idea where we were going.

We did eventually get to the Horrible Home, though. The room was musty and carpeted, and you didn't really want to touch anything. It was really small, there wasn't a kettle so I had to break out my stove for coffee, and there was a marvellous view of the car park. If you craned your neck you could see a few mountains, and the sunset. Anita found it quite loud as well - some Indian kids were running out and back, banging doors. Someone turned up to change the sheets...for a different room. In the morning, I went down to reception to try to get some mineral water, but they asked me my room number. I said no, give it to me, cos Anita was asleep and I didn't want to wake her. She'd found the day very trying, shit hotel after shit hotel, Shimla not being what she'd hoped, and being bullshitted all the time. No water, though. I gave up, and went for a walk to try and find some, but this place was in the middle of nowhere, so I came back and got some from the restaurant, where the All Indian Surliness Champion (four years out of five) charged me 40 rupees! I pointed at the side of the bottle, where a maximum retail price of 15 rupees was printed, but he wasn't having it. We had breakfast there later, and the same guy took our order. Or so we thought. I never did get my juice. Wait, I did, but since it arrived ten minutes before anything else, I consider that to be part of a different meal. We had to call him back to the table for everything - he brought hot milk instead of cold milk for the cornflakes, hash browns instead of an omelette, and the tea and coffee only came when we'd finished everything else. At the end, he even refused to take the 500-rupee note cos it had a tear in it. He's going to clear the boards at this year's championships. After the breakfast farrago, they actually clagged somebody else's breakfast bill onto our room. Tried to, anyway.

The place was unbelievably overpriced. I did work out why the tourist information sent us there. Turns out, it's also owned by Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation. Mild conflict of interest there.

We left as soon as we could, and our first port of call was the tourist information, where I registered my complaint, for all the good it'll do. The hotel had the cheek to claim they'd given us the best view in the hotel. I was amused to note that the previous complaint was from someone who went on one of their tours, which was mainly a tour of hotels owned by HPTDC.

We'd checked the guide book, which suggested a couple of places behind the Ridge. The day before, we'd batted off touts, telling them that we had a hotel. Hah. We ended up at Hotel Dreamland, which was basic but clean and pleasant, with generally clued-up staff, and we were much happier once we'd settled in there. There was one woman who was really enthusiastic about Shimla and the walks around there.



I liked Shimla. It had loads of downbeat charm and I really enjoyed seeing British-style buildings in such an odd setting. Anita said it reminded her of Torquay, or Scarborough. It was cleaner and quieter than anywhere else I've been in India. One guy, Anil, said that it wasn't like anywhere else in India. We walked up to the monkey temple, which swarmed with monkeys. They nicked one girl's scarf and the lass had to feed the monkeys peanuts to get it back. We'd been forewarned and had hired sticks. It's the highest point in Shimla at the top of Jakhu Hill, but it was too hazy to see the distant snow-capped high Himalayas. We also had a walk up to Chadwick Falls, a lovely spot apart from the litter.

And the hill railway back from Shimla was incredible. At first, it felt a bit cramped as I was banging knees with the guy opposite and the train was full of kids making a right racket, and the family next to us made such a palaver of taking their seats. But everything changed once the train got going. We got talking to people and it was easy to move around, and it's such an astonishing journey that I forgot about minor discomforts. Mountains everywhere. I loved leaning out of the door and watching the mountains proceed past, and looking at the train taking the curves. Lots of curves, at some points the train was switchbacking on itself down the mountains, and loads of bridges and tunnels. 102 tunnels, I think, and something preposterous like 888 bridges. It's an amazing feat of engineering, and as a World Heritage Site it's about a million times better than the Taj Mahal.




It was like a holiday for me, to have my sister here and take trips which would have been difficult for me, with my bike. And it was interesting to see places through my sister's eyes. Reading this back, it sounds as though I may have become slightly irritated at times, and not having fixed my bike was preying on my mind more than I admitted, but India is like that - infuriating one moment and brilliant the next. Now my bike is fixed, so I've been wandering out and about to do some last minute jobs before I leave, and I've been able to look into all the little shops without wondering if my magic fix lay in there. The holiday's over now, and it's back to cycling. It's like an even better holiday!

Delhi-ing Tactics

I'm camping somewhere near...well, somewhere on the road to Jaipur. I've ridden seventy-some miles today and there's another hundred and some to Jaipur, so that's a day and a half of easy riding if it stays as flat as today. It's quite fun to trounce along at 18 mph all day.

I was a bit nervous about camping - mainly nervous about security, and not security against tigers. This is such a populous place that there's no spare land, and I've been riding along today examining the roadside. Even though the NH8 goes through far more rural places than the roads north of Delhi, which was like riding through one very long town, there still aren't many quiet copses or abandoned houses I could use as shelter. The abandoned house turns out to have three families living inside it...

I have eventually found a quiet place behind some bushes and near a pond. This isn't as peaceful as it may sound - I'm only a hundred metres or so from the road and the traffic isn't letting up. I can hardly hear the calls of the wading birds in the pond, and I'd have no chance of hearing somebody approach in the night.

I'm still pleased to be back camping again. Last night's hotel was a dump. The walls were paper thin and I was awoken by the dawn chorus of the guy next door hawking, hacking and spitting so percussively that I had to go and check we weren't sharing a bathroom. He did it three more times while I was cooking my porridge. Then, at checkout, the guy at the counter tried to wangle 50 extra rupees out of me as a 10% tax. I wasn't rude (even though I'm at my snarly worst in the mornings, especially after being woken by somebody's nasal passage), I just wasn't paying it. Maybe something of my mood came over, as he didn't press the point and went on to ask me where I was going. Hah. Away from this dump, mate.

The ride out of Delhi was easy. I've always found riding and navigation in Delhi pretty easy. I stopped at a wee supermarket to get a couple of bits for the day, and waved at all the bus passengers, armed soldiers, layabouts and street people who stared at me as I passed. And the main road to Jaipur, NH8, is quite usable. I had a late start but I still covered seventy-odd miles before I stopped at about 4.30.

The hiatus has left me I a bit out of practice at camping, though. I nearly set fire to myself with my petrol stove just now, as I forgot to check the seal was in place, and even though I was pouring petrol onto the dry grass, I still tried to light it. The flames have died down now, though, and I've had my tea. I've opened one of the beers I bought in Connaught Place yesterday and which I carried all day. I've only passed about twelve English Wine and Beer shops. Ah well. It's a long time since I sat outside a tent with a beer, looking up at the moon and stars.

A lot of other cyclists I've met only camp on sufferance, when forced to by their budget or the lack of a hotel, but I've always thought of it as a central part of my trip. I like to be independent, I like the sense of my own space, I like the solitude, and I enjoy the rituals of finding a suitable spot, making sure to have enough food, ducking into the tent when it becomes too cold and striking camp as early as I can be bothered in the morning. Maybe I'll take an extra day on the road to Jaipur, and have another night under canvas.

Where I Am And Where I'm Going 03/02/2011

5,500 miles cycled so far.

The route: Darlo-Northallerton-York-Beverley-Hull-ferry-Zeebrugge-Brugges-Antwerp-Maastricht-Verviers-Stadtkyll-Cochem-Rheintal-Bingen-Mainz-Frankfurt-Mains-Tauber-Rothenburg-Altmuhl-Eichstatt-Landshut-Vilshofen-Donau-Passau-Linz-Krems-Vienna-Bratislava-Mosonmagyorovar-Gyor-Komorom-Tatabanya-Budapest-Dunaujvaros-Baja-Backi Breg-Sombor-Novi Sad-Strazilova-Belgrade-Pancevo-Smederovo-Pozerevac-Petrovac-Bor-Pirot-Dimitrovgrad-Sofia-Plovdiv-Edirne-Istanbul-Beykoz-Kayagze-Sile-Karacaköy-Kaynarca-Adapazari-Bolu-Ankara-Cappadocia-Kayseri-Sivas-Zara-Erzincan-Erzurum-Horason-Agri-Dogubayezit-Çaldiran-Van-Ozalp-Khom-Tabriz-Bostan-Abad-Zanjan-[bus]-Esfehan-Yazd-Shiraz-Firuz Abad-Bandar Abbas-Sharjah-Dubai-[aeroplane]-Delhi-Rishikesh-Delhi

So I'm in Delhi for the last time - the last time for six weeks, at least. Jonathan is catching a flight back tonight, and I'm booked into a ratbag hotel for the night. In the morning, I'll be on the road to Jaipur, the fabled pink city.

More importantly, I'll be back cycling, back on my own, and hopefully back in my tent, though this whole region is very populous, making it difficult to camp, and it be Tiger Country between Delhi and Jaipur. I've dealt with Monkey Corner and the Elephant Corridor - how hard can it be?

I also hope to get back to living cheaply. I don't think Jonathan realised how frugally I had been existing, and it wasn't really fair to force Jonathan to live like that for his two week-holiday, so we made a few compromises. Mainly, he paid for stuff. I look forward to trying out the street and roadside eateries - they're everywhere in India.

Being back on my own will be a bit like starting all over again, as I've been in Delhi for two weeks with Jonathan and had a week and a half of drinking in Dubai before that. I felt good on the cycling we have done - in fact, I felt amazingly fit on the hills around Rishikesh - and I'm itching to do more cycling.

Still, I'm glad to be returning to Delhi, as in six weeks my sister comes to visit. Six weeks to ride around Rajasthan, and possibly Gujarat, and I hope to fit in a visit to Varanasi, but that's in completely the opposite direction, even if Uttar Prasand is utterly flat. I'll work it out - India laughs at plans and itineraries, it's much better just to go and see what happens.

(Don't Go Back to) Rishikesh

The last couple of days have had some of the worst and some of the best parts of my trip so far. Seven hours on the most appalling bus journey of my life, then the rip-roaring relief of getting off and blasting into Delhi's unique brand of insanity, and a trip to Agra (short for aggravation) to see the Taj Mahal. We even saw the elephant.

After a few days in Rishikesh, I was ready to leave. Although it was beautiful, I found the people who tended to go there mildly annoying. Dressing in purple robes, never smiling, and probably looking for a good crystal healer to erase their negative thoughts. One English girl had been robbed, groped, mugged and had her laptop stolen during her five months in India, but was still insistent that security wasn't an issue, and had been to every yoga and meditation class going in Rishikesh to restore her inner calm; given how sharply she banged the keyboard while updating her Facebook status, I thought she could do with asking for her money back. We did doss around the campfire with some very interesting people such as Teddy from Chicago whose amusing descriptions of the goings-on at Varanasi convinced me to go there, or Aussie Tim from Newcastle (NSW) who'd been around India in an auto-rickshaw, but there were also some rum 'uns there. A guy I named Mr India said that he'd done South India. In two weeks. He described it as "disappointing", then proceeded to complain about the quality of chicken he'd been given by the poor waiting staff, and the next day he was describing his experience at the Yoga Education Centre, using the word "energy" more often than I'd consider appropriate in somebody who doesn't work at the local power station. Earlier that day I'd seen an enraged monk in saffron robes punch a cow which tried to nick his dinner - that was probably the selfsame yoga instructor after spending a few hours in Mr India's company.

Buying alcohol in Rishikesh, where alcohol and meat are prohibited, was a clandestine affair. The little man who sold it was nervous, twitchy and hilarious. He asked me who'd told me that he sells beer, then pulled beer out of the various alcoves where it was secreted while furtively watching for the authorities. It did put me off going back to buy more, so when Stavros the Greek offered me a beer, I took it, even though he then charged me 150 rupees for it. They do say to beware Greeks bearing gifts. The next night, he started offering a couple of bottles of whisky around and charging people to drink it, and I decided I wasn't that bothered about having a drink after after all, even if it meant leaving Stavros's party early. We were the most interesting people there anyway.

I probably shouldn't be so judgmental, and God knows what they made of us, but some people try so damn hard to be cliches.

Hey, Rishikesh is the place of good vibes and positive energy, (although we didn't manage to do any yoga). It's where the Beatles went to study with the maharishi, and the sound of sitars can occasionally be heard over the car horns. These things cannot penetrate my shield of tranquility. Much. Maybe I should just get permanently stoned like the staff at the hostel.



Visiting Neep Waterfall helped. Well, until the quarry on the other side of the valley set off about 200 pounds of dynamite. If it wasn't for the chance of shell shock, I'd say more people should go up there to seek inner peace, as it was beautiful. But more people would only spoil it, and since it was only 30 rupees maybe you don't get the same quality of enlightenment as you do if you pay 10,000 rupees to one of the city's many gurus. I meant to ask Mr India about that, but I didn't get chance as he was still sleeping off his hangover when we left.

On the whole, I was happy to leave, but we had to negotiate the bus on our return to Delhi. I had mentioned to Aussie Tim the irony that my cycling trip has so far involved seven ferries, two buses, a couple of wagons and a plane, and he was most amused by the fact that I'd cycled across Iran before I'd ever caught a plane.

The bus journey has this to say for it; it made me appreciate my bicycle so, so much. It was seven hours of pure shite. I get travel sick even on UK journeys, and spending seven hours on an Indian bus being driven by a horn-mad maniac who spent most of the time on the wrong side of the road when he wasn't aiming at every pothole, jerking around every obstacle and hitting the accelerator and the brake so frantically that I felt I'd wandered into the Indian astronaut training programme for dealing with extreme g's and heavy manoeuvring in space, was hellish. The bus was stuffy, hot, and loud, even before we were invaded by a half-dozen hawkers selling popcorn and "Man-e man-e man-e" at the tops of their voices, and the incomprehensible in-bus Indian movie, which, as Jonathan kindly pointed out, had nearly as many car crashes as the road outside the bus. I wanted to kill that driver. I wanted to get the loudest airhorn I could find and blast it next to his lughole for a few hours, or the rest of his life. As payback, I left my bag of sick on the bus for him to collect.

But getting off - that was such a joy. Back into the Delhi traffic. Back onto the bikes! I'd thought about getting him to drop us off early (like, about 40 miles early), but as it was we were on the wrong side of the river and about 10 miles from the hotel. 10 miles of unknown roads, an audience of stary Indians, no real idea of where we were, it was getting dark and we weren't wearing sunglasses.



I don't think Jonathan was as pleased as me to get off the bus, but he did say that I looked in my element on the bike. I certainly felt more of a sense of oneness while navigating the traffic and the bridges with one eye on the iPhone in my right hand and another eye on the traffic than I'd felt in any other part of India, even trackstanding up the hills in Rishikesh to show off to the locals. And I enjoyed the bonkersness of it all. We followed Google maps, and as I had it set to Walking, we went along some roads that probably aren't drivable, though you never know in India. Back alleys with washing hanging out, cows and chickens to avoid, kids playing badminton and women chucking water into the gutter. It was very Jackie Chan. You might expect such a poor area to be unwelcoming, but the people looked pleased, or at worst amused and bemused, to see us riding through. We broke out onto the open roads, a seven-lane approach road to the main bridge across the Yamuna. This was where we met Captain Inappropriate Timing on his motorbike, who chose this moment to institute a conversation. I told him that it wasn't the perfect moment, and we touched fists in farewell. I don't think Jonathan even responded, since we had so much traffic to concentrate on. Over the bridge and down to Connaught Place, I wove between the cars, but I had to contain my enthusiasm at being released from the bus, as I was leaving Jonathan behind. Delhi is fabulous to cycle around: flat, with slow-moving traffic and no rules. Like India, just go with the flow and it works. Coming around Connaught Place, we even saw an elephant breasting the traffic on one of the world's busiest roundabouts, which made me stop and whoop and point in delight. While I was stopped, an Indian approached to ask if I needed any help - I told him I'd stopped to see the elephant, and pushed him around to see. He shrugged and turned back - it's probably an everyday thing in Delhi, like seeing a man with his head on fire walking down the road while conversing on his mobile phone, or being overtaken by an auto rickshaw with a couple of pigs laid across the back seats. It topped off a perfectly mad day.



The next day, more reinforcement of the rightness of cycling. We took a car down to Agra (short for Aggravation) and the Taj Mahal, stopping at yet-more bewildering service stations and firing our tour guide about thirty seconds into his spiel. To be honest, we didn't want a tour guide, and when it turned into a quiz which we refused to participate in, he threw a major huff and asked "Look, do you want a tour guide or not?" - I think he was genuinely surprised when we said "Actually, no". So, with the ten-hour car journey, the appalling crapness of Agra and its touts and filth and atmosphere of grubby desperation, with the crowds and the preposterous security precautions at the entrance (no diaries, no books, no food, no... there was a sign, but I didn't recognise half the things on it, apart from the handguns, which I hadn't intended to bring anyway), with the general air of being trooped in and out like characters in the painting of a Soviet-era factory, and despite the astonishing beauty of the Taj itself, I'd describe the Taj Mahal experience as "disappointing". I'd rather be out on my bike.

But whatever. We saw the elephant.



Taj Mahal photos on Flickr

A Sea of Stress: Delhi to Rishikesh

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I may be becoming defensive and building a wall against India. The last seventy miles to Rishikesh have been on a national highway, where it became a single lane road and the game changed from the dual carriageway which we'd ridden along for the first seventy miles from Delhi. The drivers don't seem massively impatient and they usually give plenty of room, but they constantly use their horns to let you know they're coming. Constantly. It's a wall of sound. Coming to India probably gave Phil Spector the idea in the first place.

The noise isn't as intrusive or as loud as Iranian drivers' horns, but there the traffic is much lighter on the open road and the drivers wait until they're right next to you so they can deafen you with one hoot. The Indian approach is an all-out assault on the senses.

The first part of the ride out of Delhi was remarkably simple. Jonathan met me at my hotel and I guided us out of the city through Old Delhi to the Old Iron Bridge with only a couple of wrong turnings. I'd read reports of other cyclists hiring auto rickshaws to guide them out and to act as blockers against the traffic, but we didn't need either. It being Republic Day did mean that we had to navigate to the north of the official parade route, and it may have kept people off the roads. Either way, the rich open-sewer smell told us that we were approaching the holy river Yamuna and our escape.



Or so we thought. We struck lucky in our route, as we found ourselves on the road we wanted, a wide boulevard which led to Meerut, but we'd both expected a lull in traffic inbetween Delhi and Meerut. I still didn't have a sense of the scale of the map or the population. I thought Meerut would be a place about the size of Darlington and there'd be some open countryside. Instead it was curb to curb traffic filling the dual carriageway and the roadside was lined with shops and food stands and petrol pumps. We weaved in and out of the hand carts, water buffalos, rickshaws, sit-up-and-beg cyclists, some of which was coming in the other direction, while motorcyclists and cars weaved around us, and everyone got out of the way for the huge wagons and impatient buses. For forty miles. Then we got to Meerut, where things became even more crowded. I had no idea where one place ended and another began.

We'd decided to look for somewhere to stop at Meerut, and the first place we saw was the horribly expensive - and just plain horrible - Big Bite. It seemed interesting at first, a sort of Indian Butlins, and there was a massive party being held for probably India's richest two-year old. As we walked through it on our way to our rooms, I was offered a bit of food, and I suggested to Jonathan that we should hang around the edge and try to get invited in, as there was food to spare. He vetoed this suggestion, so I hold him responsible for the subsequent meal, where we were bullied into placing our orders nano-seconds after being shown the menu, then the waiter told Jonathan his choice was unsuitable so he had to make a different choice (against the clock) and finally the waiter tried to take my plate away before I'd finished eating. The room was cold and the only heating a health hazard, there was wi fi but it wouldn't work, the toilet stank, the staff held on to our passports until we chased them, and it was six times more expensive than this rather pleasant place in Rishikesh. I knew we should have camped.

I was at first glad to leave in the morning, but after a night's sleep the roads seemed impossibly busy. My stress reaction to the roads followed a bell curve pattern as we rode: in the mornings I'd be extremely sensitive, I'd relax into it as we rode, then in the evenings I'd start to lose my cool again. Nobody seemed to notice as it all gets lost in the blur of noise and colour and events that makes up a day in India.

I was pleased that we were going to Rishikesh, which had been described as a very peaceful place where people go to seek spirituality, and which is sited in a beautiful gorge by the Ganges. When Jonathan read out a line in the guide book describing it as "a cross between Blackpool and Lourdes," I started to have doubts about the extent of the tranquility to be found there.

I felt I could have done with some inner peace after a few days on the road. Even though it was a flat ride, it was rarely dull. We met a pair of professional Indian cyclists, saw a tractor wheelying as it tried to transport two houses' worth of bricks, and manoeuvered around a man transporting ten-metre lengths of pipe on a rickshaw. The landscape did change once we reached Haridwar and the milky waters of the Ganges, when mountains started to appear through the haze. There was still no let-up in the noise and sensory input; Haridwar is a place of pilgrimage for Indians and it was busy. Hotel after hotel along the road, and the canal banks were lined with market stalls and tents and music stages where the pilgrims came to... seek peace? It seemed the opposite of peaceful to me.

Rishikesh is the place Westerners tend to go seeking enlightenment and inner peace. There are billboards everywhere showing the local holy men in attitudes of peace. I doubt they get around Rishikesh by bicycle.

Rishikesh may be marginally more peaceful than the main highway, and it is certainly in a beautiful location and has a superb bridge, but it's incredibly loud and tacky. I wouldn't be surprised to see a sign advertising "Enlightenment now 10% off," and if your taste runs to beads and shell jewellery, you'd be in heaven here. However, our hostel is above most of the noise, and while looking at the views, the monkeys and birds chittering in the trees, or just sitting outside listening to the distant car horns, I can see why people are drawn here, and I'm enjoying the contrasts of the place. Tonight I think we'll have a go at some yoga.



While trying to find this hostel, we accidentally found our way down to the Ganges and probably the most peaceful place yet, where no one bothered us and the only person with whom we shared the beach was a local lad practising his kite flying. That was the first wrong turning we took, but not the best, as when we overshot the hostel an English voice shouted "oh, well done!" at us. We turned back and had a lovely conversation with Lorna, who was in a gang of people litter-picking, which may be the most Quixotic enterprise I've ever seen. As well as being an experienced cycle tourist and exuberant personality, she is an experienced Indian traveller, and I think Jonathan and I came away feeling reassured for having met her. She advised us, when in India, to relax into our stress.

So I am. I swim in a sea of stress, and peace is where you find it. I still wish they'd ease off with those horns, though.

Delhi

Day three in India. Or four, possibly - I'll have to check.



Delhi is a great city. I feel a bit guilty about enjoying a place which has such poverty and squalor (especially coming straight from Dubai) and when Jonathan seems to hate it so much, but I still love it. Every day, every hour, is crammed with minutes and seconds and incidents.

I feel as though I'm still catching up on sleep after the flight, where I got none and had to build my bike outside the terminal at Indira Gandhi International before riding into the city. I had been warned about the amount of hassle and touts and scamsters and pushy taxi drivers at the airport, but they must have taken one look at the enormous, misshapen box I had my bike in, and gone "sod that". The inevitable crowd gathered but it wasn't at all intrusive - they were quiet, attentive and asked a few polite questions while I chased nuts and washers across the marble floor. More like a polite audience at a lecture than a street crowd.

And that's what's pleased me so far about India, at least about the bits of Delhi I've seen so far; I worried that I'd find the predicted levels of hassle and intrusiveness overwhelming, but it's been manageable at worst and hilarious at best. Lots of people smiled and waved at me when I was riding, and it's hard to be bad-tempered when that happens. Once I reached Paharganj, the area around New Delhi Railway Station, any time I stopped to check my notes or guidebook or simply gather my thoughts, someone would immediately approach me to offer a cheap room rate. I quickly realised that I couldn't remember the name of the hotel where Elsa was staying, and I was unlikely to spot it as I wandered, and I decided to follow a gentle old chap whose approach I found much more charming than most, and he has led me to a decent, cheap hotel. I'd already toured the area a bit, so I didn't worry about where he was going.



In that brief wander, I saw so much of what I'd expected and hoped for - cows and dogs and goats in the street, street food everywhere, beggars and touts and market stalls selling tat or valuable statues or cheap knock- offs. Later that day, walking around with Elsa, there were street monkeys and a Sikh temple and gardens and parrots and kites, kites everywhere. The feathered black kind, that is, though there were a few string kites as well.



Seeing the city with others was great as well - Elsa clearly loves the place, and as we were sitting on the balcony above the city watching the sunset way above the hurly-burly of the streets below (I've been using the phrase "hurly-burly" quite a lot) I said that I was looking forward to Jonathan's reaction, as it would tell me whether I'd simply become inured to the amount of attention while out on my bike, where I am the centre of attention in every town, city and village, or whether it's not actually as bad as the guide books make out. Here in Delhi, in Paharganj which is backpacker central, I feel quite anonymous.

I'm masochistically pleased to report that Jonathan does seem overwhelmed. I was surprised and pleased that he accepted my offer to meet me here - since his job had finished after New Year I knew he had the time, but I didn't know whether he had the money or the inclination. He'd had even less sleep than me on the flight from the UK but at least he had a proper hotel to stay at - the same as Elsa, so we met there and went out for drinks. Connaught Place is central and has a fair selection of eateries so we went out for Elsa's last night and Jonathan spent the whole night re-telling the story of his walk around the block when an auto rickshaw driver kept warning him that the place was too dangerous to walk around. In retaliation Elsa and I ordered a load of cocktails, but Jonathan doesn't drink that much so he was jetlagged, stressed and sober in-between two progressively more drunken people.

The next day I thought he'd benefit from seeing Raj Ghat, the memorial to Gandhi set in beautiful parklands and which I'd found to be an oasis of calm in the hurly-burly of Delhi, an escape from the madness of the rest of the city, where even the Indians took a rest, as no one tried to sell me anything while I was there.



Sadly, it was closed for the Republic Day celebrations. Still, Jonathan enjoyed the auto rickshaw ride through the traffic. We did visit the National Gandhi Museum (which is different from the Gandhi Museum and the Gandhi Memorial), but Jonathan didn't get the moment of serenity I'd planned as preparation for the next bit on the itinerary (I might not have mentioned there was an itinerary), the streets and alleys of Old Delhi. We went via Jama Masjid, where I refused to pay the 200 rupees to get in as it's supposed to be free and it's only a tax for taking your camera, which I wasn't going to use as I'd been there yesterday. They chucked us out. This probably did little for Jonathan's serenity.

Back around the corner, I suggested we try one of the other entrances to the mosque, but he didn't seem that bothered about going in any more, especially after seeing and refusing to use the toilets. I'll admit, kneeling to take a piss is new to me.

Maybe it was a bit much. We tried and failed to shake off this cycle rickshaw rider, who followed us around the corner outside the Bearing District just as I was trying to walk Jonathan to the Firework District to see the huge Catherine Wheels. There's a district for everything.

Jonathan seemed keen on having a look around the old streets, and I thought he might enjoy seeing it from the relatively spacious seat, rather than having to dash through the warren like a rat in a maze. I normally hate using animal terms to refer to humans, but no word seems more appropriate than "Warren" for the crush of people and narrow alleys and shops that form Old Delhi. Even though I have a good sense of direction and I kept an eye on the map and I'd been around there yesterday, I felt a bit claustrophobic, and the day was drawing on. I could have done with more cues from Jonathan, but I was really enjoying the ride - the driver put on a bit of a show and gave us loads of information about things we were passing and pointed out things to photograph, and there were nearly fisticuffs in the street along Chandno Chowk. However, Jonathan was not enjoying himself, so we asked the driver to drop us back at the hotel. Since we hadn't agreed a price, the end result was dissatisfaction all around, as Jonathan and I were trying to pay the price for a taxi ride and he was asking the price for a guided tour. He wasn't as knackered as he made out, either, and I'm not sure he really did have a family to support...

So that was the end of that night: when I walked back from Jonathan's hotel to mine I passed a huge wedding party being held in a massive marquee and I nearly went back for him but I couldn't be bothered and I didn't think he'd want to anyway. I wandered back to my hotel, past the Wine and Beer shop where they hand the cheap whisky out of a hole in the wall, and the workshops of handcrafted Hindu idols, and the railway bridge where the homeless people and dogs sleep. A guy appeared, furtively, out of the shadows and said "hey my friend, you buy this?" and waved a 16Gb memory stick at me. I was quite disappointed.

Today, I have finally sorted out an Indian SIM and internet access for my phone, though I hadn't realised (cos the phone shop didn't tell me, though the guy at the Idea shop explained it wonderfully) that my Sim only really works in Delhi.

Yet another weird conincidence in a trip that has been hallmarked by weird coincidences: I had got sick of waiting for Jonathan and wandered down to Connaught Place to organise my phone, and he had texted me when I was there to say that he'd just woken up. I replied and explained that I was at the mobile phone shop which I had taken him to yesterday and that he should meet me at the same coffee shop we'd visited yesterday.

Turns out, he didn't receive that text, but he still decided to brave the Delhi madness and head to the same cafe, which is where he was when I called him. He said later, he was surprised at my reaction as I seemed very matter-of-fact but that was because he was simply where I expected him to be...

So today started late and felt very relaxed.

To me.

Tomorrow, Jonathan and I are cycling to Rishikesh in the Himalayan foothills. That is, assuming he agrees to cycling out of the city.

Link to Delhi photos on Flickr