http://www.barikumar.com/india Circumnavigating India by Motorbike, Sept-Nov 2005 Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:09:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Wednesday, November 16 Today is going to be another monster ride. Firstly we have to make up the distance, we didn’t cover yesterday. So we headed out by 6:30 am down further south all along the coast. Navroze and I left a little earlier with Joe and Rakesh following in the ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/nagapattanam-kanyakumari Tuesday, November 15 Woke up by 6 am and saw a telugu newspaper under my door. Surprised to see inside a photo of me with my folks from the previous day in Nellore. Got ready and was down by the bike by 7 am. Hardly a surprise, no one else was ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/chennai-nagapattanam Monday, November 14 Today was a very special day for me. Navroze and I were very eager to get started early. We got rolling by 6 am.Navroze had to get to Chennai as early as possible to meet up with a friend of his there. I had wanted to stop on ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/guntur-chennai Sunday, November 13 Having a rest day doesn’t mean we are rested for the next day. Usually it’s one party too many and too late, especially when there are a lot of friends and family around. We had hearty breakfast of more than one choice. It was pretty much everything south indian: ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/visakhapatnam-guntur Friday, November 11 Another early rise. Would have loved to sleep for a couple more hours. Today it’s another 420 km to Our destination. THe highway promises to be good. Could feel the soreness from the fall in my hip and in my neck. Got a better view of the damage ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/bhuvaneshwar-visakhapatnam Thursday, November 10 Yesterday was a rough day for Dinesh. He had a bout of food poisoning in the morning and was throwing up all day. So he got through the ride yesterday as soon as he could and was wiped out by the time we reached the hotel. We decided ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/behrampore-bhuvaneshwar Wednesday, November 9 My alarm went off by 5 am and i loked out the window and it was still dark. Got ready in half hour and it still was kind of dark. no one was ready to roll yet. Navroze made me a cup of his private coffee (which he ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/siliguri-behrampore Tuesday, November 8 I was getting late getting to the bike in the morning as i was still uploading images. Didn’t know whether i would have any connection at the next halt. We started out by 8 am and headed towards Siliguri, West Bengal. The weather was just fine and the ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/coochbehar-siliguri Monday, november 7 The plan was to be out by 6:30 am. Don’t ask how or why, but by the time we were off it was 8 am. The road out of Shillong was very good, though there were a lot of lorries on it. The diesel fumes were back in ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/shillong-coochbehar Sunday, November 6 The road to Shillong promises to be better than the road we took there, so say the locals. We got started by 7 am and it was quite foggy as we were rolling down the mountains. Quite serene. Soon we pulled up to the side so we could ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/haflong-shillong Saturday, November 5 Heading in to southern Assam to a place called Silchar. We had calculated the distance from Dimapur to be a little less than 300 km. We enquired about another route that would cut down about 50 km, but it would mean that we go off the main highway. ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/dimapur-haflong Friday, November 4 Today was going to be an easy day. a short ride of 75 km to Kohima and back to Dimapur by evening. Unlike the other ares of India, here we have to kind of backtrack as we ventured further towards the border towns. The morning was very pleasant and ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/kohima-nagaland Thursday, November 3 We were told that the road from Dibrugarh to Dimapur was “too good” by the BRO. We left the hotel the same time as usual, around 7 am. Barely had we passed the city limits when Navroze’s bike had a mulfunction of all the electricals. it was assumed that ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/dibrugarh-dimapur Wednesday, November 2 The sun was up very early. We had breakfast at the BRO camp, said our thank you and got on our way. We were given excellent directions and status on the road conditions. The road was very good for the initial 55 km and then became a single lane ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/itanagar-dibrugarh Tuesday, November 1 Today is the big Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. I couldn’t be more excited about being far far away from the cities and observe it from an area of India which I never imagined. We had already tanked up the night before and we were all set to get ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/gawhati-itanagar Monday, October 31 Happy Halloween! I’m missing a couple of fun halloween parties back in Los Angeles. Today we are heading to Assam state, famous for tea. I had always wanted to visit this area. We got started by 7:30 am and the road was very decent. We tanked up in town and hit ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/coochbehar-gawhati sunday, October 30 I screwed up on the dates in the previous entry. Also, I noticed that i misspelt the town name “Darbanga” in the title entry: Gorakhpur-Garbanga. I’m sure there are more, and I’ll try to correct. We heard about the tragic bombings in New Delhi, the train derailment in A.P. ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/gangtok-coochbehar Friday, October 29 Very determined this morning to make it to Gangtok, Sikkim by night fall. The night before, Dinesh and Naveen spoke with 2 chaps at the hotel and enquired about the road ahead of us. They having travelled a lot on those roads recently suggested an alternate route to Siliguri, ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/purnia-gangtok Thursday, October 27 Today is my brother Gautam’s birthday. Happy Birthday! We couldn’t leave by the crack of dawn as I had hoped. Instead by 7 am we got started. We kept asking for directions out of town to the next town called Madhepur. Following a bunch of directions, we ended up ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/darbanga-purnia 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 ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/gorakhpur-garbanga Tuesday, October 25. We wanted to get going as soon as possible, to rid us of the grass hoppers. The next big city was Lucknow, which was about 130 km away. The road was pretty good and it took us about 3 hours to get there. We stopped for brunch of the ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/lakhimpur-gorakhpur Monday, October 24. It was very foggy when we got up. The town was waking up to their daily routines,(see photo) vegetable vendors setting up their produce, street cleaners sweeping the roads and sidewalks, kids off to school and such, we tanked up and started to unwind the mountains. Next 100 ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/almora-lakhimpur Sunday, October 23. Sorry for not updating the blog any sooner. It has been difficult to sit down to write some days after an exhausting ride and often not having the internet available. Big THANKS to my dear friend Rahul Bhushan who designed this site for me and made it very easy ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/rishikesh-almora We now have a map showing Bari, Dinesh and Navroz’s trip from Bangalore to Rishikesh. The route shown is close but not exact- if you’re interested in seeing detailed regional and highway maps, go to Maps of India. Look for the clickable highway maps. More links in the “Maps/About” Category. Update: The ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/map-of-the-trip-so-far Saturday, October 22. Lovely to wake up in a clean bed and have cel phone connection to talk and for internet. Joe was picking up a couple of new tyres for the bikes for down the road and he also needed to open my bike up to check the fuel pipe. ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/chandigarh-rishikesh October 20th. what a refreshing break it was to be in Manali. (see photo). Much warmer during the day around 20 c. Manali is a small tourist destination at the foothills of the himalayas. Very picturesque. Noticed a lot of couples who seem to be on their honeymoon. Also lots ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/manali-chandigarh We woke up cold and wanted to get going before it got late. We were told to cover about 240km to a place called Sanchur where we could break if the skies were clear. If overcast, we were advised by the army personnel to carry on through the next ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/leh-manali We all woke up really cold and Col. Rakesh Mishra had asked us to stay for breakfast before we left. we figured it might be best, as the distance to covered today was less than yesterday. But the breakfast took a while to be set up and i was getting ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/kargil-leh How I wish you could see what we see! It’s really hard to describe how insanely beautiful this part of the country is. After we set off from Srinagar, it took us a while to get out of the town, trying to find the way through the narrow gullies. Once we started ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/srinagar-kargil We got started fairly early to head towards Srinagar. we had stayed the previous night a few km before Jammu. We passed through the city, which was quite polluted by the lorries spewing the diesel fumes. Once we got past the town, we started to ascend the hills. Everything was green ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/jammu-srinagar Got up to clear skies and were off by 7 am. The roads out of Amritsar were very good. The previous night’s rain was evident by the puddles on the roads. The smell of the rain soaked soil and the farms next to the highway reminded me of my ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/amritsar-jammu Our day off in Amritsar was refreshing. After we leisurely woke up and did our laundry, posted my blog, it was already late afternoon. We decided to go to the Wagah border which we were told was about 15 km away. So we carted ourselves off in 2 autos. instead ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/amritsar Good morning from Amritsar, Punjab! We did a nice long rode from Bikaner yesterday, covering about 520 km. Left at 7am from Bikaner (see photo). The hotel looks more grand and regal on the outside than it does in side. Trust me! We rode out for about 2 hours covering 160 km ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/bikaner-amritsar Ahh…To be connected again! We went by the fort last evening as the sun set and walked around a bit. The haunting sounds from a folk musician captivated our attention (see photo). He had such a sweet face and the music that he produced from that instrument was so damn good. ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/jaisalmer-bikaner After a rejuvenating break in Kharaghoda, we decided to make a slight adjustment to our itinerary. Our original plan was to ride about 350 km to Barmer in Rajasthan state and halt for the night there. We opted to carry on instead to Jaisalmer which is another 160 km. The ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/kharaghoda-jaisalmer Got out off Bhuj by 7:30am before the heat and traffic kicked in. Had some sandwiches packed at the hotel, so we could save some time. Roads were good and we were out of the town fairly soon. Actually rode out for about 75 km before we stopped for chai, Soon ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/bhuj-kharaghoda Got up by 6 am and got rolling by 7:30 am. Just can’t seem to leave any sooner. It was cool when we left, although, it was already beginning to feel humid. The roads were very good and hardly any traffic. We were riding through the desert of ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/mandvi-bhuj Hi Folks, Back again! sorry, didn’t have any wireless connection yesterday in Mandvi, hence couldn’t blog. We have covered quite a bit of ground in the last 2 days. We left Jamnagar quite early (by our standards) around 7:30 am. The road out of town was quite bad. Just as bad as it ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/jamnagar-mandvi Today was a landmark day. We set off from Chorwad by 7 am. we rode for about 30 km and stopped for a traditional Gujarat breakfast. ( see photo) It was unexpectedly delicious. We saw these 2 guys walking on the road in their traditional white clothes dyed in ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/chorwad-to-jamnagar October 1st, 2005. Good day today! got up by 5am and tried to get riding by 6:30am . Off by an hour, we were out the gates of the palace hotel by 7:30am. Got some chai on the way a couple of hours later and had some sandwiches we had ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/bhavnagar-to-chorwad                             Finally here In Bhavnagar, Gujarat, for a day of much needed rest. Let me update on how we made it here. Unfortunately, there has been no internet connection available in the last 2 places and so I could not post. Let’s go back to where I last posted. We left Panjim ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/goa-to-bhavnagar Managed to get some sleep last night at Kundapur. The food so far has been really awesome even at the roadside cafes. Sure beats Taco Bell! We set out today after a delicious breakfast of idli, vada and fantastic coffee. The south Indian coffee is supreme! Before long we got ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/second-day The first day of our adventure started off with a great turnout of our friends and family members cheering us off from a motorcycle themed cafe, “Road Trip” in Bangalore at about 9am. From Bangalore streets to the open highways (by open, i mean they are open to anyone and ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/first-day Here I am , finally in India. Reached safely on September 20th night to Bangalore. Navroze has settled on an Indian made motorcycle, Bajaj Pulsar 180cc for his ride. Dinesh and I settled for Kawasaki KLE 500 as our choice for the motorcycle. I’ll be riding the silver and Dinesh ... http://www.barikumar.com/india/motorbike-diary/beginning