In Jaisalmer

Diu Prison from near the fort

Diu Fort

The moat, notice the square cut on some of the stone, they must have cut it up slab by slab and used it to build the place.

Portal view

Fort chapel

The Indian invaders are coming.

The entrance

Fishing boats, prisons, and South Africans things you see everywhere in the world, this beach was also the local fishing village toilet, at least 3 people come down for a poo while we where there.

An old church now museum/backpackers.
I hadn't loaded any of these photos to the laptop when I did the last post.

22/1/12

   It was tuff but managed to leave to day heading north through some back roads between Una and Gondal, although I did take one wrong turn so ended up taking a bit longer than I hoped. It did involve riding through a wild live sanctuary with lots of deer and peacocks, that I saw. Ended up staying in a town called Morbi (on my map it is Morvi). It is a very dusty town as it is the ceramic tile capital of India, the 22km from Wankaner to Morbi is basically a chain of tile factories spitting out a shit load of dust and it covers the whole town. Will be interesting to see how dirty my bike is after one night outside. 

23/1/12

   The bike had a reasonable layer on it in the morning as expected. Headed out early thing of trying for Jiasalmer, it's bloody cold here in the morning though, I had to put the Rugby jersey on top of my long sleeved shirt. Lucky I bought a scarf for the dusty road works near Hampi as it has come in handy up here for dust and also for the cold. Got about 70km from Morbi to see a sign saying 500km to Jiasalmer, so thought that was a no go.

   Found a place about 150km from Jaisalmer but the hotel was too posh so as it was 16:30 decided to carry on knowing I would arrive in the dark. Got to Jaisalmer about 18:30 and froze for a while before the sun set, mainly because of the light on cars here I wanted to make it as far as I could before dark. Stopped and put gear on changed to non tinted visor and prepared for the worst. The Indian drivers seem to think that everyone becomes deaf at night and so they use the high beam to tell people what they are doing, great for seeing at night on a bike....i did know this.

24/1/12

   Found a nice place on wiki travel, Hotel Surja. The fort here is the first still lived in one I've seen in India which makes it quite special. Instead of being a ruin or unkeeped it is looked after because it is home to many. Great view of sunrise and sunset, and the fort from the lake is cool too.

View from the hotel

Yes it is bloody cold, i would say under 10C, yes I know that isn't actually that cold but i have been in the tropics for a long time, and yes i forgot to rotate the photo before photo shopping it.

  Took the bike into the Hero shop as there was a bit of a noise, think I pushed a bit hard doing almost 600km in a 12 hour ride yesterday. It wasn't the tappets like I hope so had to pull the engine out (INR900/$18US labour), so have decided to change a few things well here, new timing set, piston set barrel, gasket, valves done, also new battery, fuel filter, air filter, plug, etc. It has been almost 10,000km so far on this bike so some of those things I was doing anyway. It should take about 4 days for the parts to arrive, so just walking around and relaxing, enjoying free wifi in the hotel finally.

From entrance to fort

From hotel roof

From the lake

The lake near sunset

It's very difficult to look like you don't know someone is taking the photo when you are the one taking the photo, I'll have to work on that one lol.
 Anyway hope all is well in the world outside, of my little bubble.\
  Enjoy your life.

In Diu

12/1/12

   Road out north nice and late, if you pay that much for a room you check out with 5 min to spare, well I do anyway. The road got much more interesting a little way out of town as it travels through the Ghats again, very different scene up here in the north though.

  I remember some one saying in Chennai that the southern states decided that your first language is your state language and second language is English, Maharashtra and north decided your first language is state, second is Hindi. This means I'm finding less and less people who can say more than hello in English which is making it difficult in some of the little towns.

   Was a short day because of leaving late I only made it to Sangamner, but still arrived early enough to take the bike for an oil change and service. 

 I love some of the road signs here "speed is a momentary romance, Life is an endless romance". Not strickly speaking true as life is only a life long romance but that would be to long for the sign.

13/1/12

   Found some number 8 wire in a scape pile out the back of the hotel so decided to make some new flag stands, I am a farmers son after all and a kiwi so no. 8 wire is always the best for fixing things lol. 

  The ride down to Nashik was nice with loads of pilgrim's walking toward there, but I didn't stay as I got there at about 9am. I did however really enjoy the back roads down through Jawhar to Silvassa.

  Was hopeing to find somewhere on the coast to just south of Silvassa unfortunately i did see anywhere to stay, i did how ever get to watch some local cricket. Got to see 2 4's, and 4 outs on a very interesting wicket which had a road through the side, it can be fun getting lost some times. I also had to remove the home made india flag as the lamenate didn't hold up to 80km an hour and tore off a chunk from the bottom, boo hoo.

14/1/12

   Took the main road from Mumbi to Ahmadabad for a few hundred km so was lots of traffic, but also lovely duel carriage way so able to keep up a good pace. From Vaddara I took more back roads round and back down to Bhavanagar, bit ruffer but not so much traffic.

   It seems like Wiki travel is right about Gujarat and it is the kite state, every village/ house had someone flying a kite also even the motorway had people all around it flying them, meaning you see a lot of trucks with kites dragging off the back and cotton thread everywhere, also most power lines have a few hanging off them. It was Saturday so some of the villages had big sound systems up on the roof blasting out music so everyone could hear, almost every house had multiple people of all ages on the roof flying kites, was really cool to see.

   Today I saw the most road kill I have seen in the whole trip, probably more that I've seen total of the rest of the trip, sadly most was dog but a couple of chickens in there for a change, even a pig which wasn't dead yet and for some reason instead of killing it they where tipping water on it???

A new built temple i would have like to see but was on the wrong side of the motorway.

15/1/12

   Unfortunately I was not able to make it to the International kite festival which was on today in Bhavnagar. I did have a interesting ride down to Diu though, I saw a RC Drill rig on the side of the road at one point so I stopped to check it out, I even had my old Peak drilling shirt on so they showed me around the rig which was similar to Rig 2 that I worked on in the Australia. They are a water bore crew.

 Diu is another ex Portuguese en clove so has cheap booze, in fact if you want to drink in India I would say head to any of them, saying that Goa is the more expensive one, then Daman, then Diu.

16/1/12

Well lots of washing to do, the bike gear is a bit dirty, also have to do my blog and sort out photos extra.

 Some Koreans where i had breakfast and they all had these huge pots of prawns and crawfish, mmm wish i had some.

 The country that makes you go Huh stricks again, yes that is the top of the door in the bottom of the picture and up near the roof is the soup dish, I'm just able to reach into it. mmmm.

  Enjoy your life.

In Pune Heading North tomorrow

Sorry for the delay, Internet has been shit for a long time.

21/12/11 to 6/1/12

   Well lots more sitting on the beach doing bugger all most of the time, saying that tho I did go up to a country fair thing which was brilliant. When I entered there where some boys playing an interesting refereed game of bull rush, sort of bit different than when I was young, better in some ways. Then there was a stage where they had different shows and quiz etc, also probably one of my favourite areas where some school kids was showing their projects. Most where about environment like catching rain water and filtering it for use, or putting excess into the local well. Then there where food charts and apparently cow poo can be used as a mozzie repellent, the 2 girls with that one had made incense stick from cow poo and coconut fibre, which I had learnt in Vietnam is a good repellent. My favourite project tho was 2 boys who had made a spy plane from some plastic, mounting a camera on it and remote control ability. 

 Why do the Americans spend millions on these when 2 Indian boys can make on for about $5

 

  As this was a very Indian fair, only 3 other foreigners there, the couple who told me about it and some guy with a guide, I made sure I ask each group of kids a question in English just to make them answer questions in multi language. Actually the teacher at the first one told one of the boys to talk to me and tel me about his so I thought I would do the same for all the others.

  There was also a room full of these art pieces made out of rice, leaf, stones,etc

   There was also an adventure play ground sort of thing with rope climbs and balancing logs/ropes over the river. Lots of different stages had women doing the chanting, clapping, dancing thing, and a stage doing full costume dances of myth etc.

 The women doing the chanting, clapping, dance

   Then more sleeping, drinking, eating swimming and walking. Although I did go for some rides one a couple of days before leaving to check the road I intended to go through on the way to Hampi. Although after riding up it I had to change that plan as it has mines along that route meaning the road is shit and there are miles of trucks rowed up parked on the side of the road waiting to be filled/emptied meaning it is basically a one lane road for 2 lanes of traffic.

7/1/12

  Finally made it out of Palolem but without my new IDP, oh well I'm sick of waiting, have to get on if I want to make it to Varanassi before I go to Nepal. The road to the mountains was pretty busy although not as bad as the one I test road yesterday.

   Once in the mountains the roads became a lot more fun and as I could corner faster than most/all the other traffic the only problem was getting around the slow stuff in the twisty sections, definitely nice to have the armour on again although having the bike loaded doesn't lead to to much fun. 

 After the police in Vagator forced me to remove the India flag i had i the bike i decided to make a replacement using as laminated sheet of A4. Unfortunately it did was a bit big and got blown around a lot breaking the stand for the silver fern.

Notice anything different, yes I've lost another silver fern flag. Bugger.

   I made it to Hampi in the dark as the road works after the hills was bad and slow, also the fact that I had been told everything from 300km to 750km for the distance from Palolem to Hampi. It turned out it was about 450km, one of my longest drives so far.

8/1/12

Road off in the morning for the further temples marked on the map, and discovered that the Indians are just as bad at making maps as they are at reading them, or knowing where anything is. So after being lost for a while and ending up at a library, where the security guard said “yes” when asked if this was where the stone Chariot was, it wasn't. I eventually found some temples using the old and reliable method of following a tuk tuk that had a tourist in it lol.

The temples and ruins are pretty good here definitely worth a look.

There was something picking at the back of my brain saying this was the wrong place lol.

This road sign is part of the reason things can be hard to find lol. Can you tell which way which temple is?

Yes i know not much explanation with these but hey it's one in the morning and for the first time in ages the Internet is working well on my phone

9/1/12

Went up the hill to watch the sunrise which was great, even though there where a lot of people there, and a heap of monkeys showed up for there morning feed from the tourists. Then spent the day walking around all the closer temples which where amazing.

Kwality

10/1/12

   Road out toward Pune mainly on the being constructed 4 lane, 2 each way, NH50 towards SolapurPune and found a place eventually north of Mohol, 190km from Pune.

   Had a whiskey while watching the sunset from the roof of the Hotel, then after dinner got invited to join a group of locals. They where all rich ish for the area and one guy had a vineyard, so when he found out my parents have an Avocado orchid he want to show me his place and made me agree to meet him at 930am.

11/1/12

   Waited around till 10 for the grape man to turn up, but he didn't, so headed out through lots more road construction. Once in Pune I found that the place is very full, peak season and all means high prices as well. After a lot of hotel visits all saying that they are full I found one that had a room. It is the most expensive room I have stayed in in years ($40US), and isn't as good as the most expensive of India up to tonight ($13).

   Then while riding around I went over a bridge that apparently you cannot go over between 0700 and 2100, so after the Police checked my Aussie licence and I argued a bit , I was told to go in the office where the boss ish man said I was a bad boy and that there was a fine for riding over the bridge out of hours, yes I knew where this was leading. After looking at 4 other officers in the room he said the fine was INR500, to which I laughed at him and said “show me how much the other bikers had paid?”. I told him that looking at the other officers for confirmation of the fine amount gave away the fact that it was just a bribe, so he said “well how much have you got as you have to pay?”. So I pulled about INR60 in 10's out of my small change pocket and put it on the table, to which he laughed. I said “that's all I had, that's why I was heading into town, to get money”. So after an apology's to all the offices I gave them my business card to help explain what I am doing in India, they didn't understand when I said I was in the country to go for a ride, and we talked about cricket for a bit then I was allowed to go. A bit lucky really, I think, as there was a reasonable number of bikes there with no riders so I guess locals have to leave the bike there till 9pm, tourist just pay.

   Oh and on the way back to the hotel I went to see my other brother Ronald and had a fillet o' fish, hehe, and saw my first ever orderly cue of Indians, I really didn't think it was possible but they can cue, once in a life time anyway.

  Well the plan from here is north through Raj, Agra, Varanasi to Nepal. and this part is definite, fly to London in early May,

 Enjoy your life i am