Penultimate Day and a slow day

Sun at 0700 hrs

Next morning we woke up leisurely at approximately 0700 hours, yes we have turned into early birds by now. We were well aware the morning would be foggy and it would be risky to try and start out too early. Also the local news agency had contacted us asking for a meeting and the local councillor wanted to flag us off as we started back into the heartland of India.

Battery being jumped 

Zahr Bhai and Raja at work

But before the flag off, we had to figure out the issue with one of the bikes, its battery seemed ready to give up and we just wanted to see if we could get to Gorakhpur before we were forced to purchase a new battery (the border did not seem to have a battery shop open until 1100)

A candy sure gets their attention

We spent sometime with the kids at the local school where we had stayed for the night.

We walked over to the border to exchange our Nepali currency

 that we had left over. It seems with demonetization many Nepali traders suffered as they were left with Indian currency which couldn't be exchanged. 

These traders were not too keen to accept Indian currency. They preferred to accept Nepali currency and there was a general air of wariness against the Indian currency.

Strolling back to India

Back in India

Finally we were back in our country and time to get on with our day. We stuffed our self with freshly made samosa chaat, jalebi and ginger tea, post which we were ready to hit the road.

 Ginger tea is also a laxative sometimes I feel 

Our bikes were well adorned with Flowers by now as we started out from Sonauli, with the local councillor. 

Flagging off our entry into India, the crowded streets and roads were teeming with people who greeted us. We were in Uttar Pradesh, and the state has its own flavor.

A journalist took a short interview of the riders and he asked me why i rode a bike?

My answer to that was ,'' It teaches me respect and patience."

We did not manage to make it to Gorakhpur but had to stop and get a fresh battery by 1600 hours. A little before Gorakhpur we got stuck in traffic and as we entered Gorakhpur the traffic worsened and it was soon a nightmare! It took us 4 hours to cover 2 km of city roads! 

Sorry people of Gorakhpur who live here and have to deal with this situation on a daily basis. So bad was the traffic that a friend from Gorakhpur came to our rescue. He took us through some back roads and ally ways to get out of the city. 

It was already dark as we departed from Gorakhpur and the tummy was beginning to growl but we needed to put a few mile’s behind us and get away from that crazy city before we would stop for a late lunch / dinner.  We planned stop at Buxar in Bihar which  was approximately  200 km away .

It was an interesting ride. The roads were quiet and heavily foggy. 

I had a near miss of running into a Black-buck, as it cantered across the road. 

The roads were good, and we made good speed. It was hard to stop on the way as there was no place that we felt our bikes would be safe for the night. 

Especially since our luggage was on the bikes, we did not want to take it off the bike. 

Other than a stop at a dhaba for a lunch/dinner we rode through. 

We kept going right into the night and soon it was 2350 hours before we were at Buxar, the odometer read 20528.

We had only covered 350 km this day because of all the bike trouble that had happened. We had started the day hoping we would cover 500km on 27th January. 

Well seemed like the next day we would still have 550 km to cover, would be a full day of riding again... 

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