Aidan's Asian Blog

Aidan's Asian Blog
Easy Riding, Delhi to Agra 16th March 06

After being bogged down in Delhi for the last couple of weeks I decided that today was the day I cut loose. I got up early packed my bags and had a bite to eat and got on the road at 08:30. I’m man enough (don’t laugh) to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to the ride after my experience with the rush hour traffic on Monday, and this showed as I took a wrong turn within about five minutes of setting off. I wouldn’t mind, but it was at India Gate where I’ve spent plenty of time recently. But I realised more or less straight away that I’d taken the wrong turn (I should have been on the road I walked down to get to the fly-over). Once I sorted myself out it was fine, there was lots of traffic, but it wasn’t as heavy as the previous time. I’m glad to say that the traffic thinned out after about an hour when I passed Faridabad, and after that it was nearly all plain sailing.

I passed lots of weird traffic on my trip including (in order of appearance); cows, donkeys, bears (5 of them been walked on leads down the side of the road!), camels (two of them pulling carts) and birds of prey (flying above me, not on the road!). The bike was superb, she just purred along. I’ve got to keep her to a max of 60kph as the rebuilt engine has to be run in, but that was still fast enough to keep up with most of the traffic. I stopped after an hour and a half and got some petrol, I’ve no idea what the fuel consumption is like, but after travelling for over 200 kms I only had to put £3 GBP in to fill the tank. The bike gets loads of attention, it’s a classic bike and has been fully restored and is in immaculate condition and other bikers riding by always wave / make conversation (not easy at 60 kph), and when I pulled in for petrol I was surrounded by six workers from the petrol station; I don’t know where they came from as there was only one person on the forecourt when I stopped. I’ve been asked about the bike so many times, how old? How much you pay? You sell?

I’m always a bit apprehensive starting the bike when I stop, as I always have to start the bike with a crowd of locals around me, and I just know that they are all dying to see me fail to start it. I kicked the bike over (the kick start that is and not the actual bike) on the forecourt and it didn’t start. Damn. Check petrol is on, yep. Check ignition is on, yep. Check kill switch is off, Doh! Flick kill switch and kick, yippee, off we go. I rode for another hour and a half and had to pull over for a leak break, I managed to find a side road off the main road. I stopped and got my water out of my bag and had a couple of gulps, no sooner had I done that than two people appear from no where and approach the bike. The stopped when they were about ten feet from the bike and I called out “Namaste”, they didn’t say anything and just stood there looking at the bike. I wasn’t worried about it, but I did subtely take the keys from the ignition and pocket them. One of the lads walked off after a few minutes and the other one stayed until he flagged down a passing bus five minutes later.

The ride into Agra was fairly straightforward, I knew that if I headed toward the river I could follow it down to Agra Fort, which is fairly close to the Taj Mahal. Sure enough it was and I managed to find a guest house more or less outside the entrance to the Taj. There is a great view of the Taj from the roof of the guest house,so I went up and took a couple of quick photos.

It was about 15:30 by the time I’d had a shower and changed, so I took a quick walk to the Taj, I wasn’t going to go in, as they charge an outrageous £10 GBP entry fee, it’s about £0.30 pence for Indians, and it was only open for another three hours. The Taj is closed tomorrow, so I’m going to go across the river and take some photos from the rear and I’ll spend all day Saturday in the Taj.