Gorakhpur-Garbanga
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
Wednesday, October 26
We woke up not wanting to ride more of the previous day’s roads. Surprisingly, the roads were alright for most part. The first 100 km or so was fairly decent and as soon as we crossed in to the Bihar state border, the roads were living up to their expectations. The next 10 km took us a very long time and we had to pull over for breakfast.
There we were told that the roads were like that for quite a while. But, the roads did have quite a few decent patches and some really bad ones. I was also fairly taken by the beautiful green landscape. I was expecting much more barren wasteland. The people were nice and hardworking.
Also, the elections were being held that day in some those areas. We were warned of crazy hooligans and whatever else and to be prepared. none of that, we encountered. Instead we were stopped a couple of times at the security check posts and were free to go when we told them of our ride.
After a town called Muzaffarpur, we got on to a smaller highway to Darbanga. Very green and rural. The roads were very decent and there were a lot of kids on buffaloes around in the fields.(see photo). we weren’t too far away and we kept stopping to get off the bikes to relieve our butts. Soon the sun was setting (see photo) and we pushed ahead to Darbanga as it got dark. The few km before the town, the roads were bad again and it took us over an hour to reach our hotel, in the middle of town.
It was very packed in that part of town and we couldn’t keep the local crowds from swarming the bikes. One thing we noticed in our journey so far was that earlier when we asked not to touch the bikes, they would comply. Here, before we could even say anything, the hands are all over the clutch, throttle, pressing any button. Very different personalities.
Here too there were tons of bugs from grasshoppers to some other kind very attracted to light. So to find them in our food, in my hair and in my mouth when i was talking was not uncommon.
We tried to get to bed early enough to wake up early and get the hell out of there to the next state, West Bengal.
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