Circumnavigating India by Motorbike, Sept-Nov 2005

Siliguri-Behrampore

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 brews every morrning. thank you Navroze!) Sanjeev was bidding us adieu as he was catching a flight out of Siliguri in the afternoon. We hope to see him again. By 6 am or a little past, we were rolling.
The air was very cool and felt quite refreshing. The sun was rising to our left as we headed south. Warm light cast ling shadows to the right of us on the road. Riding past many more tea estates, the sun light looked very romantic seeping through the trees and he smoke from the villages was tinting the light in amber tones.
The road was fine for about 25 km and then the potholes made their presence be known. Off and on the road was fine and the distressed road would slow us down quite a bit. The shadows from the trees on the road also disguised the potholes and even within 10 ft of us, it was difficult to identify the craters. We hit a few of them quite hard and would hope that the bike was alright to go on.
By 8 am, after 80 km, we stopped off at a dhaba for some breakfast of roti and a curry of soy and potatoes which was pretty good. But he scrambled egg made with mustard oil was not right for me. Just didn’t taste right. Passed on it.
The road would alternate between looking like swiss cheese to a four lane super highway. On the good stretches we could easily cruise at about 120 kmph, but on the other crawl at abot 20 kmph.
This went on all day for the 12 hours it took to reach Behrampore and we covered a little over 400 kms today. Tomorrow’s destination is Bhuvaneshwar in Orissa state. We realized that there was a small mistake when the original mileage was calculated. It’s actually close to 650 km and not around 400 km as we had initially planned for. Planning on waking up real early and see how much we can cover. Who knows what the road conditions are? We’ll know tomorrow. Till then, good night!