From Katmandu with the millennium approaching we bused down to Varanasi, the sacred Hindu city on the banks of the enormous Ganges river. Here we spent a few days getting lost in the tiny lanes that criss cross the city completely reliant on the street children that show you the way back to your guesthouse for a 5 rupee fee. For a full on experience of this city just follow the locals who offer to take you to see music concerts, have your palm read, horoscope, gurus, buy opium, silk etc. You never know where you’ll get to the only thing thats for sure is it’ll cost you money and you’lldo something you have never done before. We followed several of these unofficial city tours and the adventures we had saw my wallet empty but now I know I’ll live till 93 and I’ll never be short of silk underware.
Of course as in Hindu religion dying in Varanasi is a sure way to reach heaven we went to the burning Ghat(temple) to have a look a the cremation of the dead which runs twenty four hours. Next to the ghat there are a collection of hospices and a tour of these left us paying for a few kilos of wood for a old lady awaiting her departiure to the next world. She seemed much further from deaths door after we parted with fifty ruppees ($1us) than while her ailments were being described to us.
From Varanasi we popped our bikes into their bags, with an audience ten deep, and got a train to Jabalpur in Madya Pradesh. From here we biked first to the Marble rocks, a marble gorge along a river not all that impresive but a relaxing place to stay none the less.Then from here biked down to Khana National Park.200 km of biking through forested hills on a peaceful if delapidated road was the first time in India we were able to get away from it all, although every time you pass a bicycle or motor bikes pass you you must chat to the rider for a least five minutes before they leave you to ride on in peace. We were lucky to arrive in Mandla, an ugly town halfway, in time for a travelling fair. The fairground complete with rusty rides that clank and creak as they pump them up to top speed. Spinning around on the big ferris wheel at high speed is perhaps more exciting because of the percived risk of death each time we went round the rusty bolt gave a lound clanging noise.
Once down in the park we went biking around the surrounding forest along great single track routes passing by mud hut villages tending their elephants and trees full of monkeys. In the park itself they don’t permit cyclists only jeeps. We did a jeep safari which ferried us around the park until a tiger was spotted by a tracker then we tranfered onto a elephant to approach the sleeping mum and her two babies. It is a beautiful experience but not what I would call adventure. The park rangers go about the park alone on bikes so maybe a bicycle safari could be organised to give more active tourists a chance to see the park.
We biked back to Jabalpur then boarded a train for Bombay where we picked up a train to Goa. Goa is a lovely place to relax and the evenings we sometinmesbike the twenty km from Arambol beach a quiet unspoilt beach resort in the far north of the state into Anjuna where the infamous Goa trance
parties take place three or four a night.
The millennium bash went on for three days unchecked the colorful parade of young want to be hippies jumped up and down to that loud fast and repetative beat. Give me a bit of house music any day! We joined in for a few hours waiting for the dawn. The sun shine revealed the palmfringed beach full of lovers looking out to sea while the party raged on behimnd us. I chose this moment to propose to my girlfriend Ping.
So I am off to Taiwan to be with her but Inorbitt keeps on going with Roland Kath and Filipe offering their unproffessional services as guides to the free and environmentally friendly way to travel. Start the new millennium by biking to work, leave the car behind! Its more fun and if you dont believe us join us and see!
