Period: December 1997

Participants: Ana Zandomeneghi, Axel Kaiser

This was the first trip by Bike of Ana and she was quite worried. The fabulous and magical India mixed with the hardship on the road and the very 'real life' experience biketrips provide.

Training was very limited due to the bad weather we had in Italy at this time so we decided that only me would carry our very limited luggage.

After a day stopover in London, which cost us more than a week in India, we arrive in Bombay, we are too tired to visit the city and spend the night in a Hotel close to the airport waiting for our connection to Udaipur.

Udaipur

Once arrived in this wonderful city, built on the shores of an artificial lake overlooking several temples and palasts we relax for a couple of days.

The day are spent by biking a little around the lake and visiting the Royal Palasts. The night by sitting on some of the many rooftop restaurants enjoying the delicious Rajastani food, beware of non tourist restaurants the spice in the food can easily spoil your holiday if you are not used to it.

The Marajà of Udaipur was among the richest men in the world until independence of India. The transformation into a democratic republic brought a deep change into the social system of feudatory India.

Even if many of the Marajas where quite illuminated rulers they were expropriated of their immense wealth. Quite a few had to restructure their former Palasts into Hotels to earn themselves a living. Much to the delight of the tourists who can feast in extraordinary surroundings for very little money.

The trip

We leave early in the morning as our first day is also the hardest about 90 Km trough the mountains. As we decided to travel light we are obligated to use Hotels for lodging, which in some area are quite far between.

The country we cross is a delight, even in the wintertime the green is intense and lush, the little villages along the road are friendly and show that this area is one of the richer countries of India due mainly to the abundance of water.

The people still work with animals as main source of power, even the wells are animal driven. Fields and rice pads alternate with low growing forests, the temperature is perfect and everywhere we stop we are greeted with  friendly questions.

For lunch we stop along a river strewn with huge boulders and clear water. We are tired we didn't train much and we still have 30 km to go. My main problem is my behind which hurts terribly. At dusk we arrive to the village of ????? were a nice hotel, the only one, and a good dinner raise our spirits.

Next day we climb up to Kumbalghart a kind of chinese wall in India, once a fortress now this huge wall encompasses about 32 square km. Located in a beautiful countryside. This is a great place for chilling out a few days. We spent the christmas eve in a luxury hotel near Kumbhalgart and had a great, peaceful night.

Next day we leave, to make our trip more adventurous I had planned to pass trough a national park west of Kumbhalgart.

Ana was not really convinced but let me have my will. For the first few Km it was very enjoyable with green ricefields and flowers everywhere. Than we had a steep gravelroad descend which I enjoyed Ana not so much.

 Than we entered quite boring woods with dozends of streamcrossings. We are heading also in the wrong direction. After a few hours of anxiety we arrive into the desert.

We stop at a Tourbus hotel in the middle of nowhere. A great buffet meal compensate the hardships of the day.

Next morning we visit Ranakpur, the biggest and richest Jain temple in the world. Hundreds of beautiful carved colums hold a massiv marble structure.

Jodpur and Jaiselmer

We take a bus to reach Jodpur, a dirty overcrowded metropoly, because the 250 km of desert are without special interst for us and our 15 day holiday don't leave us much time.

We stop in Jodpur only for the time necesasary to visit the Maraja palace

Asap we leave, again by bus, for Jaiselmer. This little gem is seems to come out right from an arabian tale book. Situated in the middle of the desert it's streets are too narrow to acomodate cars and so the center is very quite in comparison to other Indian cities. Only sacred cows and threewheelers block the streets. We spend a few days in this city visiting the palast and biking in the countryside which is dotted with  rarely visited temples. By night we feast in some of the very nice and stylie restaurants lavishing in delicious food (cooked in the tourist way).

We go also for the usual turist trip near the Indian-Pakistani border to make a camel ride, This turns out to be quite unispiring, with the bored guide walking in flipflops in the front guiding the camel, which is the oldest and ugliest of the whole herd.

Strangely, as we are in the desert, I start to develop a heavy asthma which I'm not able to resolve with the usual spray I use. So we decide to move to Bikaneer a city in the north of Rajastan.

We arrive at 5 o'clock in the morning, the temperature is around freezing and we spend about two hours biking around the city to find our hotel. As it's the last day of the yeat we wanted to splurge and booked in a good hotel situated in the ex palace of a rich merchant. We supposed, wrongly, that it would be easy to spot a palast from the outside, so we went back and forth in the narrow roads of the old city ion ended up at the city jail. We started to feel a little uncomfortable with a lot of strange people hurrying around us. Only around 7 o'clock we found the hotel which, from the outside was just another dirty building. But the inside was wonderful, we tried to get warm in a huge iron bathtube, but the water supply was to small to reach a comfortable temperature also the room, altough nice, was somewhat cold with marble floors and walls.

During the day we visited the camel farm in the outskirts of the city and took a nap preparing for the new year dinner. Lukily the only other persons in the hotel was a italian tour group. So also Ana, her english is not so good, could converse and enjoy the company.

In the next days we bike around the once rich merchant cities in the area. Before dividing India into India and Pakistan this are was the principal transit route and therefore quite wealthy. Nowadays the cities give a sense of abandon and poverty.

Due to the ongoing Asthma I developed a great pain in the chest and biking is like a torture. Around lunchtime the pain becomes so intense that tears start flowing. Ana is obviously very worried. We stop a three wheeler which bring us to the next city, unfortunately the Guest House is Muslim and as it's Ramadam we don't get any food or drink, when I don't move or breathe heavily the pain is not intense. We don't want to stay in this little city as, if I get worse, I prefer to be in a city where some Medical care is available.

next day we take a bus to Jaipur, we book in a nice Guest house with a quiet garden and delicious food, here we stay for two days realxing and strolling around the city , there is the usual Maraja Palace which, after seeing so many of them, doesn't stir the same emotions as before. I dislike Indias big Cities as they are overcrowded and noisy. For me India is always a country of thousands of little villages with friendly people and rich culture.