On yer bike

After a look at the local traffic and with Lou thousands of miles away

Matt had decided to scrap a 4wd and ride pillion with Marty so we found our way to Tony Bullet centre and signed up or three gurgling Enfield Bullet Machismo 350's - ostensibly because of the disk brakes and familiar left side gear shift but really due to the chrome and tough name.

The over bureaucratic nature of India (damn Brits) makes

renting a bike not quite as simple as in other countries - in this case we were to "buy" the bikes and had the requisite paperwork to save us from the authorities (another company had suggested we would be "borrowing" them from friends) ... more concerning was the list of suggested compensations we should dole out in case of an accident: $500-$800 for a broken bone - apparently best to avoid the lynch mob (a threat in India) and not involve the police!

Improbably "Tony" had a helmet to fit Matt

 - I think it had been prefabricated to be shipped to Aus as another tacky tourist attraction, however, the rest of us had to buy ours and as such put a price on our own heads. Figuring $3 was a bit low we opted for the $10 "imports" - lighter, and probably less safe, than styrofoam 6 pack eskies.

We headed at 6am the next day to avoid the Delhi traffic. The simple plan was to tail Matt's tuk-tuk until we were out of Delhi ... a simple plan slightly beyond Ben. Following an empty tuk-tuk that was not sporting the big purple poster on the back of the original, and, perhaps more critically, was not being followed by either of the other bikes - Ben found himself lost in Delhi.

An hour later with the use of mobiles, locals, and low res maps on hands,

Ben came into sight.  Eager to re-establish contact he turned square across a following bus ... the bus locked up and Ben found himself face to face with a grill exchanging pleasantries in languages not known but understood. I'm not sure if it was the one god Matt prayed to, the 1000 Tony Bullett did when he met us or a damn good Delhi brake technician but somehow Marty was alive. After breakfast and a change of pants we hit the road again through the surging, squeezing, organic traffic and Rajasthan heat to Mandawa for the night.

I'm not sure when exactly, however, it was

somewhere between Mandawa and Jaipur that passing a bus that's overtaking a camel with an oncoming tractor on a 2 lane road became reasonable - perhaps dangerously, riding in India started to feel like a computer game ... albeit one of those annoying ones where, no matter how many tokens you collect, you only have predetermined number of lives and the game always starts on the first level. Cars, beggars (asleep and in action), pigs, dogs (dead and alive), potholes, tuk-tuks, wheelbarrows, overloaded converging trucks (ask Dirk), kids (both kinds), unmarked speedhumps (sponsered by chiropractors), cows, sidesaddled 'gals in beautiful sari's, elephants, Bricks, camels, bikes, buses .... I kind of expected charmers to pop up from trucks throwing cobras but it never eventuated.

We had seen and experienced a fair bit, however, riding dominated the psyche for the

first couple of days. Dropping the bikes of at a Jaipur (if it doesn't break down its not a bullet"), we hoped to engage with India in a different way in the following days. Don't expect to read about it though as Ben is writing the net post - gifted with the cultural sensitivity of a swastika at a bat mitzvah, expect the literary equivalent of his bowel afflictions.