The First Ride
We did it! We rode motorcycles in India. The 267 kilometers from Delhi to Chandigarh, to be exact. For the past year, I’ve been playing through scenarios for how today might go — many of them nightmarish, some of them passable, and a few timidly optimistic. And today it finally happened. We didn’t pass our test with flying colors, but we passed; we’re each in one piece, our bikes still function, and we’ve even had a few laughs today (especially now, after showers). Here’s how it went down.
We woke up at 6am with the goal of leaving by 6:30 to try to beat Delhi’s morning traffic, which really gets going at about 9am. But, as things would have it, we didn’t end up rolling out until about 7am (damn the planning fallacy!). On the bright side, we did finally get our helmet walkie-talkies working, just as we were about to leave; yesterday we couldn’t get them to sync, and our guess was there was interference from all the bluetooth devices around our Airbnb apartment. Anyway, it was a relief to be able to talk to each other over the headsets while riding, and given what we went through, I don’t know how we would have navigated the rest of the day without them.
On the not so bright side, it started to drizzle. As I mentioned in my first post, Delhi traffic is crazy even in normal weather, and the prospect of slick roads made things even worse. While we were heading the highway, Sarah got boxed in with a group of vehicles turning left, and she had to turn with them. I followed, and we diverted onto a smaller road, frantically scanning for somewhere to u-turn so we could get back on track. When an opening in the median finally came, it was a wet, slanted surface with a bit of gravel. I turned too sharply and ended up laying down my bike, and Sarah dropped hers as well when she tried to get off on the slant. What a classy start. A kind passerby helped us stand our motorcycles back up, and we were soon on our way. Unfortunately, Sarah’s gear shift was a bit bent, but it wasn’t bad enough to stop her from riding.
The next challenge was navigating the Delhi highways on our way out of the city. We took the ring road (loop) so that we wouldn’t have to negotiate intersections, but even so there were rough patches. A few detours took us off the highway and near bus stops, which were really scary. Not only did buses force traffic to narrow down to one lane, but there were lots of pedestrians hurriedly weaving between vehicles trying to catch those buses. I hit someone in the arm with my handlebars at one point, and a few times Sarah and I got so separated that we couldn’t hear each other over the walkie-talkies, which have a 100-yard range.
In all the commotion, we somehow missed an important exit. After exchanging a few words over our headsets, we exited the freeway and checked our smartphone map on the side of the increasingly crowded road. Thankfully we’d only overshot by a bit, so after another shaky (but successful!) u-turn, we got back on course.
Eventually we made it out of Delhi, and from there going got easier. We headed north on highway NH1, affectionately known as the Grand Trunk. It has served south Asia for more than two millennia as a trade route, and it served us nicely as a three-lane freeway with relatively little traffic, smooth pavement, and our first stretch of easy cruising. Easy doesn’t mean uninteresting, though. Along the way, we encountered:
- cows lounging in the road (they are sacred in India, so no one dares to hit them)
- toll stations with motorcycle lanes just barely wider than our saddle bags
- a jeep with a manned turret (the gun was big, and the gunner didn’t look happy)
- a few close shaves since no one signals and bigger vehicles just assume smaller ones will dodge
- odd looks, since we were the only motorcyclists actually wearing helmets and protective gear
- lots of beautiful temples along the roadside
- soreness, namely our butts, backs, hands, and helmet-heads
Our faithful walkie-talkies worked through all of this, right up until about 20 km from our destination of Chandigarh. We’d discussed what we would do if this happened, so when the link cut out, Sarah pulled ahead (since she has the mirror on her bike) and eventually pulled over at a convenient spot on the shoulder. We planned our approach so that we could make mostly left turns — which are the easier ones in India, since everyone drives on the left — and we agreed to meet at the hotel in the not unlikely event we got separated.
Navigating a city at 5pm was a bit stressful. There was traffic, especially at the roundabout intersections, and we each stalled out a few times in the series of starts and stops. We made it to the hotel on our first go, though, and pulling into a parking space felt like a huge relief. Google maps estimated a 4hr and 23 minute journey, but our trip with dropped bikes, missed turns, and a few breathers took a whopping 10 hours. Sore but satisfied, we trudged into the hotel, hung up our sweaty gear, and flopped into sleep.