In the Forests of the Night

There I was, in a town I didn't even know the name of, with no bike or luggage, wearing only my VC167 jersey, my 3/4 length shorts with the hole at the crotch which I've already repaired once but which had split again, and carrying only my camera, wallet, phone and passport. And there was no room at the inn. The night was warm, and I was eyeing up the benches as a decent place to sleep. I cracked a beer, lit a fag, and waited to see what the landlord would say.

I'd camped up quite happily in light jungle within sight of the highway, and my biggest concern was keeping the big spiders, beetles, fire ants, enormous moths and crickets out of my tent. I had no appetite so I didn't break out my stove. I had a beer which I'd only bought earlier in the day as the shop couldn't change a 500 rupee note, and after half a day in my pannier it was warm to the touch, and it wasn't going down well.

A local lad came past, and asked for some of my water. It's lucky that I didn't need any for cooking, as he drank a whole litre in one gulp. He warned me against camping, as he said there were tigers around, but they say that sort of thing everywhere. I think he was inviting me back to stay with his family, but I'd already put up my tent and I couldn't be bothered to strike camp when it was getting dark. I told him that I'd just sleep there, which he misinterpreted as a sign that he should take a nap, which he did, laying down in the brush with his back against the tree trunk.

About half an hour after he'd left, another couple of young locals came up the same way, walking towards the road. Again they asked for some water, though only the elder of the two drank any. I gave another bottle to the younger, who seemed grateful for it. He never spoke; only the elder did, in a mix of Nepali and English which I could hardly understand. I did understand the word "tiger" again, and he kept asking if I had any friends with me, even going to the extent of shining his phone light into my tent to confirm there was no one else with me, at which he gleefully said "no friend!" I chased them off, and sat uncomfortably in my tent, sweating gently in the heat and humidity.

I stepped out of my tent to get some fresher air, and to shoo away the wee beasties that were gathering around my tent.

I heard rustling in the trees to the east. I ignored it at first, as it was probably leaves and other debris falling from the trees. Back into the tent to concentrate on drinking and not being so paranoid.

However, the sound was drawing closer, and it was a big sound. I got back out, and shone my head torch in the direction of the noise. It was away from the path, into the heart of the jungle, but I shouted a couple of "hellos" and "namastes", in case it was a local gathering wood or taking a shortcut. It was getting slowly closer, and it was clearly something big. I shone my head torch in that direction again, and half-thought it was a pair of tiger's eyes reflecting the light, but I told myself not to be so daft as it was more likely to be a couple of the glowflies that were flitting about, or a spider in one of the trees.

However, I then heard a low but distinct growl coming from the same direction. I'll never forget that sound. It wasn't loud, but it contained such a promise of danger and menace that I didn't hesitate. It was long past the point where I could have struck camp; I went to grab my phone, realised I'd already put it into my jersey pocket, and retreated to the road, listening carefully for sounds of pursuit.

None came. The road was utterly deserted, though, and the traffic that did come along ignored my increasingly desperate arm signals. I was alert to every sound coming from the undergrowth, every falling leaf and crackle of dead branches.

After what felt like an age but was probably ten minutes, a bus stopped for me. I stood in the doorway and let the night breeze cool me down. The conductor and other passengers said there was a hotel 30 km away, and that was where I'd be getting off. While I was on the bus and my heart rate came down from a whine to a purr, I did wonder if it had been some elaborate hoax by the locals to scare me away and steal all my kit. I'd only find out in the morning. Luckily, I had my most nickable items (camera, phone, iPod, passport and wallet) on my person, and more importantly I'm not especially tied to my possessions. Other cycle tourists have commented on how relaxed I am about leaving my bike unlocked and not bothering to take my panniers off. I had made a conscious decision that I wouldn't be tied to my bike while on this trip, which made it very easy to leave it all behind rather than face the wrath of a tiger in its territory.

Realistically, it seemed that it was too over-elaborate to have been an attempt at theft when they could have just outnumbered me and intimidated me into handing over my possessions. And the approach of whatever it was had been too slow, too stealthy, and too focussed in one place to have been a gang of locals playing tricks. I did worry that the second local who'd come along had been very specific about checking that I was alone, but that's a question I get asked so often that to be paranoid about it as absurd. The other possibility was that it was a wild cow, rustling through the jungle and scavenging for food, but the cows around here are well domesticated, and there was that growl...

The landlord found a room for me, with a mattress about half an inch thick and a hard wooden board underneath. I didn't care, especially for the equivalent of less than two quid. I scrounged some pen and paper to record my thoughts, as I didn't want to waste my phone battery. I'd had the forethought to mark my position on the highway, and I was going to use my phone to find my way back there the next morning. I'd worry about my possessions then.

I slept straight through until 6 am and I was immediately awake, catching the world's slowest bus back. I did find out the name of the town where I slept (Lamki) and I explained - or tried to explain - to the bus driver that I wanted to go to a point about 5 km after Sukhad. They understood Sukhad.

I was too worried and nervous to get travel sick on those journeys, not to mention that it was in the cool parts of the day. Midday on those buses would be deeply unpleasant, but I was starting to think that I might have to catch buses, if my bike and tent and luggage had been stolen. I was preparing myself for the worst.
I had locked my bike, however, and wrapped one of the guy ropes around the lock, which I usually do when I'm camping, if only to give myself some reassurance. I am relaxed about the idea of theft, and most people are deserving of trust, but I'm not daft. I'd looped my locks around both wheels, so stealing the bike would have meant the thief snipping the guy rope, lifting the bike and carrying it away. I was hoping that, at worst, scavengers might have come along and nicked my panniers. I could live with that, and carry on, as long as my bike was still there.

The bus overshot my location, as the GPS function on my phone was struggling to find my location in the poor reception pocket between villages. I spotted a landmark I recognised and shouted at the driver to stop. I didn't really need my phone to find the spot, but it was reassuring to have that backup.

It was with some trepidation that I walked back down that track, my feet crackling over the dead leaves. I jumped at every sound as the leaves and catweasels (local equivalent, anyway: fist-sized stickles dropping from the trees made a frighteningly loud noise) fell to earth.

No tigers, and my tent and bike and all my possessions were there, just as I'd left them. I was so relieved. I'd been imagining that I'd come back to a bare campsite, and have to call the police, explain to them where I was, go through the rigmarole of filling in reports and insurance claims, as well as coming away feeling like a right idiot for having been gulled so easily.

I packed up quickly. I wasn't going to hang about. I rolled to the next town and booked into a cheap guest house to have a day off. Looking at the map, I'm only 20 kilometres from Bardia National Park, where there are wild tigers. Maybe I should have taken those locals seriously.

But was it a tiger? It could have been anything. A cow, or a nervous deer creeping through the undergrowth.
When I had dragged my bike back up to the road, I stopped for a drink, and in the loose sand by the road I saw fresh pawprints, which I recognised from Corbett National Park as being the prints of a tiger.

Another Fine Mess

I spent an evening re-packing my bike so that I could travel light on the road to Darchula. Everything I needed (including warm clothes for the higher altitudes I hoped to reach) went into two front panniers and a dry bag on the front, with my tent on the back.

Distant mountains greeted me at the other side of Dadeldhura, the peaks vanishing amongst the clouds. Naturally I paused to take a few photos, drawing much amusement from the locals.



A quick descent to a small village, then the climb started. I was in the granny ring almost from the first, and relieved that I had left my three biggest bags at the guest house.

The road was getting rougher after Dadeldhura, but it's still an astonishing feat of engineering. It rises as high as 2300 metres, cut into the sides of the valleys and switchbacking up the Shiwaliks. There are two feet-deep ditches along the side of the road, and drainage channels dug into the hillside to divert the monsoon rains. The traffic was light and usually well-behaved, apart from a bus driver who wasn't going to give me any room on a right-hander on a quick descent. I braked to let him pass - likely as not, his brakes weren't up to the job.

But mostly I was on my own. Huge black eagles soared above the trees, and a few goats trotted across the road.



After an eight or nine mile climb over the top to Anarkholi Bazaar (all the villages are suffixed "bazaar"), the road turned to shite. I looked at the surface, and how deep and steep into the valley the road went, and decided to turn back. If it had been a through road, I would probably have carried on, but I would have had to come back the same way, and I didn't fancy riding over that lot twice.

I had a distant view of the high Himalayas, but they were obscured by clouds, and I waited around, snacking on bourbon biscuits, to see if the cloud would lift. A local teacher came along for a chat, and invited me back to his house further up the valley, but his report of the state of the road didn't inspire me to go on, even though he did say that the views were much better after another 50 kilometres. It would have taken me another day just to ride that!

A few other locals passed, navvies with hand tools, donkey herders and one young lad who was transporting a huge roll of wire down the road like a kid with a hoop. This thing was six feet in diameter, and he was struggling to control it. Ever seen the Laurel and Hardy movie where they're trying to shift a piano up that hill in San Francisco? It ran away from him and into the ditch, and when he had manhandled it out, the loops started to unwind. I chased him down and helped him wrap it together with a few cable ties from my toolbag.



The clouds weren't shifting. In fact they were thickening and it was overcast for the rest of the day. I gave it up and rode back to Dadeldhura - and what a ride! Nine and a half of the twelve miles were downhill. My bike was much more manoeuvrable without all the weight on it, and despite the rough surface I was easily the fastest thing on the road. I did draw the line at overtaking other vehicles on such a narrow track, and I couldn't let it go owing to the surface and the bends, but still.

The guest house owner was surprised to see me back, as he'd expected me to be gone for four or five days. He seemed to think I'd given up as it was too hilly, and I don't think he believed me when I said I was riding on to Kathmandu. I shrugged and ordered some chips. I'm sick of dhal bat, which is one of the staples here and in north India. One day in India, I had dhal bat three times. Later on, I cooked myself some macaroni and cheese, to celebrate getting my appetite back.

There was no 6 am wake up for chai the next morning, thankfully, and I had a lie-in until 8.30. I hadn't bothered re-packing the night before - I know where everything belongs on my bike by now. Porridge and coffee, then I was off.

Astonishingly, the clouds had completely lifted overnight, and for the first time I had clear views of the Api range on the horizon. I hadn't realised how much the clouds had been covering the peaks, which were much closer than I had realised, and the expanse of jagged white stabbing at the sky was in my left eye until I crossed over into the valley where Budar nestled.



The ride back to the plains from Dadeldhura took me a day and a half, which is a day less than it took on the way up. I could have covered the distance in a day, but I liked the little guest house in Budar, so I broke the route up there, and had a chat with the other guests, who were a mixed bunch of Nepali tourists and UN aid workers. The food there was good as well, and cheap - an all you can eat platter for about 50p.

I didn't get a 6 am wake up there, either. It was 4.40 am. The people in the flat below had to get moving at that time, which is fair enough, but I did lose my rag a bit when the same phone alarm went off four times, and when they had very loud conversations while stomping up and down the stairs. I got back to sleep after another hour.

Then came the 6 am wake up. I decided to get up.

I haven't really adapted to local breakfasts, which are usually paratha (flat bread stuffed with spicy potato, peas or whatever) or spicy omelettes. The staff were good enough to bring me some hot water which I could use to make coffee and porridge. I've tried and failed to get milk here in Nepal, and eventually I gave up and bought some dried milk, which is better than nothing, and at least doesn't go off in the heat, as fresh milk tends to do.

The sunlit ride along the pine valley felt very different to the ride in the other direction, when low mists curled between the branches and it reminded me of cycling in Scotland. The landscape of the Shiwaliks is like nowhere else I've ridden. It's steep, and rich, and green, unlike barren Turkey or rocky, dry Iran, and the treeline goes further up than I would have believed. I paused to look up at the slopes, and tried to imagine the route the road was going to take up there. It seemed impossible.

It swept up somehow, and again the descent at the other side was a very different experience to the cloudy, moody landscape I'd ridden up. I stopped for provisions at a little village store and sat there for about an hour, chatting with the locals, one of whom insisted on buying me a beer. I refused at first, as it was only 11 in the morning and the climbing wasn't done yet. It went down well, though.

The massive descent down to the plains was tough. Not that I had to pedal, but it was getting hot in the midday sun, even at 30 mph I could feel the heat, and the tarmac was melting on the sharp corners. Again I thought how lucky I'd been that it was overcast and cool when I'd been going up.

Back at Ataria and on the Mahendra Highway (the main east-west road in Nepal) again, I took a break for a couple of hours to escape the heat. A succession of Nepali cyclists stopped to chat, and to drink my water. I didn't mind at first, but none of them were carrying even water bottles; if you're out in temperatures of 30+ degrees, why can't you carry your own water?

A westerly wind was picking up while I scoffed some biscuits and cheese puffs (actual crisps are quite hard to come by out here, except in nasty flavours like tomato and masala). A teenage girl and her sister had stopped to beg for some water, and they gave me a little race as I set off, the younger sitting sidesaddle on the rear rack. This sort of thing has happened all the time in Nepal and India, which annoyed me a lot when I was trying to ride 100 mile days on the plains, and wanted to find a rhythm that I could maintain all day. I'd overtake a cyclist, he'd (it's usually a he) take umbrage and race to overtake, then slow down immediately. It was easy enough to overhaul them, especially in India, and when I had the energy I'd play a cruel game by setting a pace which they struggled to maintain, then just as they were thinking they had the legs on me, I'd wave bye-bye, click it into the big ring and scarper over the horizon at 23 mph.

Nepali cyclists seem to have a bit more stamina than their Indian counterparts, though. I stayed behind these two lasses until I decided that I should make the most of the tailwind, and overtook them to admiring whoops from them, and with a quick wave from me.

I quickly rode twenty five miles, and stopped in a village for provisions for camping. Plenty of water, some beer and some snacks. I did ask about a guesthouse, which the guys at the beer shop assured me was just up the road, but I couldn't see it. I rode on until I'd cleared the village and the outlying houses, nipped down a footpath into the jungle, and pitched my tent. Only my second night of camping in Nepal.

Three Days in Rajasthan: Amer to Ajmer

Before he left to go back to England, Jonathan said to me that he hoped I wouldn't have too nice a time without him, otherwise he'd be jealous.

I was still in the Golden Triangle, which is often the only bit of India tourists see (those without a luxurious three months here, anyway), so I didn't expect a great deal of change from the atmosphere around Delhi. I'd always planned to go to Jaipur; it was one of the few definite ideas I had about India before I came. Other than that, I simply wanted to see the place, to wander into it and let it happen to me. But with me on a bike, obviously. Going around Rajasthan simply fitted in with that vague intention.

Jaipur is famous for the Pink City, the city palace at its centre, and for the forts that stand at the top of the surrounding hills. I was pleased to see the troops of elephants going up the road to Amer Fort when I rode past, though I didn't get very close as I was on the other side of the lake and I didn't want to pay to get in. I had a great view, and an amusing conversation with a load of tuk-tuk drivers about the gears on my bike.

I quickly decided that I'd only spend one night in Jaipur. I found a decent cheap hotel and wandered back to the pink city. This was a bit like that event in the TV show Gladiators where the contestant runs a gauntlet of gladiators who assault her with pads and sticks. I dodged the beardy rickshawman, shook off the "student" who wanted to practice his English, then encountered a very persistent little beggar girl who kept trying to take my hand. While I was trying to fend her off, the "student" made his second move but he seemed disappointed by my lack of response "hey, don't you like talking to people?" he asked. I continued to ignore him, bent down, turned the little girl round and told her to go home as gently as I could.

Tourist India (as I think of it) wasn't done with me yet, though. I wandered around the pink city, which is tumbledown and decaying, and atmospheric with it. I thought I'd check out the city palace while I was there - it's much better kept, and the armoury is as terrifying a collection of pointy, stabby, shooty, creative death as I've ever seen. They even had a camel gun, which, as I overheard a tour guide point out, wasn't for shooting camels, but was a 50 lb beastie to be used from the back of a camel in battle. I do enjoy overhearing snippets of other people's tours, though I don't feel I got the best out of the Hindi tour guide.

The lowlight of the City Palace was when I asked about going to the Chandra Mahal, the highest point of the palace, and the guy said it cost 2,500 rupees. For a second I thought I was back in Iran and he'd got his zeros mixed up, but no, that was the price. Per person. I suddenly felt proud of myself for having used my Stockton Borough Council library card to pass myself off as a student and get a discount on the entry. Sticking it to The Man.

There were a different set of beggars on MI Road when I walked back. They sprinted past me to pose pathetically in front of the Lassi shop, so my heartstrings remained unplucked that time. The same "student" didn't recognise me and started his patter until I said "oh no, not you again!"

I left Jaipur the next morning. I had an easy day's riding and I've had two nights of camping, two days of cycling around Rajasthan. I've had a perfect moment when I wandered out of my tent in time to see the full moon rise, I've tried to negotiate a vehicle swap with a Rajasthani camel driver, I've eaten roadside dahl and roadside macaroons and had a shave/face clean/head message (which was an amazing experience), I've left my bike with maps and iPhone on show in the care of street kids while I ate an omelette, and most unusually I've had some quiet roads and blissful camping.

Jonathan and I were taking the piss out of a group of Spaniards at the Ajanta Hotel who had wildly ambitious plans for their brief time in India; they were going to visit Delhi in a morning, then get a bus to the Taj Mahal in time for sunset, leave Agra the next day for Jaipur... As Jonathan said, they'd be lucky to get out of Delhi by then. It took me the best part of half a day to get a sim card, and in a car it was at least five hours to Agra. I hope it all worked out, but I don't think you can force India to fit your plan - I'm pleased to have the leisure to wander and let it happen to me, and especially pleased to get away from the tourist trail. I overpaid the macaroon seller this morning, and he insisted on giving me a cup of chai in return.

I think Jonathan would like this bit of India, which seems to be full of... well, people. People who stare at me and wave and smile and though they may see me as an object of curiosity, they don't look at me like a target. Also, the shave was hilarious. I've never been buffed before (it's quite like being hammered with very delicate hammers), especially not when the barber has to push the wires directly into the mains. I'm not sure Jonathan would have liked that bit, but we'd have laughed about it afterwards.

Rajasthan photos on Flickr

A Day in the Life of a Cycle Tourist in India

[journal entry 05/02/2012]

Got up, got out of my sleeping bag.

Breakfast: coffee, porridge, a granola bar. I slept well and it was 9:30 by the time I'd struck camp and got on the road. That was some of the gnarliest undergrowth I've ever camped in - I had burrs and scratches all over me and my clothes. There were some big loud birds making a racket in the trees above me, about the size of crows but grey and with heads shaped like jays. I might look for a Guide to Indian Birds in Jaipur. It would be nice to know.

I overtook a few camels which were pulling carts along National Highway 8. A day or two ago that was still an unusual sight but now it's commonplace and out here they seem to be the commonest beasts of burden. Rajasthan is a desert state, I suppose.

I did enter Rajasthan this morning, and ran the gauntlet of traffic to get a photo of the sign, which was in the central reservation. I haven't taken many photos these last couple of days so I was pleased to get that one.

It was still flat as anything and I was merrily rolling along. I'm the focus of all eyes out here, and sometimes the approach of the locals is a bit weird. Alright, it's always weird. When I was sat scoffing my dinner a guy on his bike stopped, staring at me, then walked to within fifty yards and pretended to look out at the fields, but he kept looking askance at me. A guy in a car pulled up next to me, blared his horn in my lughole, then turned in front of me and stopped. He looked surprised when I rode on. Another guy on a bike overtook me v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y but still couldn't maintain the pace, so I went past him again, smiling and saying "namaste" as I did. He stared straight ahead. I shrugged. A few seconds later he came past again, still staring ahead, but this time he growled just like Lee Perry does at the start of Jungle Lion. He cut across me and towards a roadside restaurant, gesturing at me to join him. I had to laugh.

India is full of incidents like this. A day here is worth a week anywhere else.

I tried to buy some butter to put in my cheese sarnies. Yeah, I'm getting right into the cuisine. I asked at a roadside stall/restaurant which looked likely. I got some Pepsi and pineapple juice and asked if he did butter. He didn't understand. I repeated it, rolling the "r", but still no recognition. I tried more of an RP accent, in case he was confused by my flat vowels, I did it with and without the glottal stop. Eventually I threw my hands up in disgust and left, but I remembered that I had the butter packaging in my bag of rubbish, so I gestured him over and showed him the packaging. "Ah, butter!" says he, and rattles off a load of Hindi to the guy in the kitchen, in which the word "butter" is clearly distinguishable. Crazy country. It turned out to be margarine, too. I had the same issue later when I asked for some water, the guy shook his head and said "Mountain Dew?" but I repeated myself and he nodded. "Water, yes." I don't know what's happening any more. I'm not sure I dare trying to learn Hindi as that would give us an extra language in which to misunderstand one another.

I can't help liking the people, though. After my dinner I took a speed bump a bit too fast and came off with a rear wheel puncture. There didn't seem to be anyone around - I thought I might get away without the usual audience. No such luck. I don't know where they came from but there were soon half a dozen people around me. I felt the need to be a little bad-tempered as the last thing I wanted was an audience. Someone asked me a question and I replied "piss off." As he repeated it, "Piss-off-a," I guess they'd asked where I was from. I gestured and waved and told them to go and fix the road but they weren't going anywhere. Becoming more amused than exasperated, I asked about chai and one of them pointed to the tea stand over the road. I waved that one of them should go and get me a cup but I wasn't sure I'd been understood, or that they'd bother. Turns out, the subsequent babbled argument was about who had to go and get the tea - the youngest went and got me a cup of sweet milky cha which he handed to me just as I was fitting a spare innertube, and refused payment. I took a couple of photos of the gang and relaxed into the moment.

It was lucky they were there, really, as one of them pointed out the huge tear in the tyre sidewall. I deftly took it off and fitted my spare tyre. I think I'll have to get my sister to bring some new tyres when she comes to visit in March - those Marathon XR tyres have been rubbish. In the bin with it.

When I'd pumped the tyre back up and re-fitted the wheel, the lads were all admiring the bike and the pump and my Dennis the Menace doll. I gestured that the main guy should have a go on my bike, and as he was a bit stand-offish, one of his mates elbowed him out of the way to dive on and go wobbling up the road. He went so far that I half-thought he wasn't coming back. I think he was just having trouble making it turn. A couple of them rode it up and down the service road: grins all around. It was another weird encounter, not least the fact that I'd got my point across far more easily to people who spoke not a word of English.

I did manage to get milk. No beer though. Yesterday the road was lined with English Wine and Beer shops, but today none except one with its shutters up. Maybe it's a dry day in Rajasthan? Mind you, I prefer having no beer to having no milk: finding milk was hard. A random shop on a row of identical shops happened to have a few packets of milk in the fridge (packets of milk take me right back to being a kid). I still haven't picked up the cues when it comes to shops. Maybe there are none.

I started to look for somewhere to camp at about 4.30 - I didn't want to get too close to Jaipur. I could have made it there tonight, but I'd rather have a night in a tent followed by an afternoon and a morning in Jaipur than have a full day and have to stump up for an extra night in a hotel.

Rajasthan is much less populous than Utter Pradesh and the area around Delhi, but it was still a pain trying to find somewhere quiet to camp. I thought I'd found a decent spot behind a hill but one of the locals thought I was lost and tried to guide me out. I shook him off, then another local took a quarter-mile detour to stand next to me and stare, saying not a word. Maybe he was just engaging in that famous Indian pastime of staring at stuff, or maybe he was hinting that I should scarper. Either way, I wasn't lingering.

I rolled up the road a little ways and found a gap in a wall, so I'm camping within thirty yards of the road. It's quieter here within the Jaipur Ring Road (which may also explain the difficulty with finding a campsite), even with the buzzing of the power lines above me. I didn't set fire to myself when I made my tea tonight, which was pasta and cheese sauce again. I've come up with a very simple plan of where to go after Jaipur - I'll tour the J-towns of Rajasthan, so I'll go across the desert to Jaisalmer, which sounds beautiful and which fits in with my plan of getting into the desert, back to Jodhpur (I like the name) then I'll follow the line of hills down towards Gujarat. I'd like to get down to the Indian Ocean but not if it takes too long.

So: from near Bawal, NH8, Kotputli, here - 78.98 miles/ 392:41/ 12.07 mph average/ 23.5 mph max/ 5714 miles total

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.