Lots of tidying up :)

To finish our camel safari....we rode the camels to meet the Ganesh Travel guy at the jeep, took some parting photos, said our goodbyes to Pepsi, Tara and Sarjan (ah, very sad) and we drove off :(. It was a grey afternoon, so I was just assuming that the weather was reflecting our mood, but that night it shelled it down, so it wasn't us :). On the road in the driver stopped to pick up a couple of people that were standing on the side of the road waiting for a lift - it was Sarjan's sister-in-law and another woman! Talk about small world :)

When we got back to Jaisalmer neither of us were in the mood for a curry - we loved the campfire cooking and we didn't think anything we could get at a restaurant could compare - so we decided to try the Italian place and it was a spectacular choice! The food was very different (bruschetta with tomato and veggie pizzas - spinach, olive and mushroom - it had been months since we tasted an olive!!! :) and it was delicious...all washed down with a celebratory beer (as it was A's birthday :)

Another BEST OF item...

The best place we visited, as a complete experience (roads, food, hotel, sights, etc.) was Bijapur. The ride in and out of town was very good. The hotel had the best beds and the food was good. There was a sweet shop nearby :) and the things we saw when we were riding around town and visiting the sights was just amazing! Bijapur is not a tourist town, which is one of the reasons we enjoyed it so much, and our experience there is not something that any tourist can repeat (it's not guidebook material), it just all came together for us....perfectly :) That is not to say that we didn't have other places where it all came together, we did - Mandu and Bundi were both all good, as was Madurai.

There was only one place we agree on that we could have just given it a miss and that is Pune. Yes, we went to the Mark's and Spencer's :) and they have a decent bookstore, but the hotel was dismal and it was just another stop on the road for us, and not even the best place we stopped just because we had to stop somewhere.

We did have our down times - we have both been ill far too often. It has delayed our journey 4 or 5 times. We thought it would be the bikes holding us back, which is why we didn't go with Enfields and we got the Pulsars, but the bikes have been very reliable...so, on to bike news :)

The Pulsars have been an excellent choice, A's bike being a tad bit more reliable than my bike.

Let's start with punctures. A's bike has had no punctures. My bike has now had 3 punctures. The first was on our second day of riding, just outside of Tonk I got a nail in the tire....conveniently puncturing just meters from the tirewallah. The second one was a slow leak that someone pointed out in Hampi when we had been riding around all day. We rode over to the next village over from Hampi and found a tirewallah and he sorted it for us. It was a pinch flat, but not from the rim - the tube that was in my tire was a size too large (for an 18 inch wheel, not a 17 inch) and the tube had gotten folded and it rubbed a pair of holes in itself. The tirewallah replaced the tube with a 17" tube. Yesterday, when we wanted to be at the Chinese Embassy for it's 9am opening, the bike started handling badly (I thought it was not liking the cool weather and being a bit sluggish) and I checked for a puncture - yup, it has gone again! And again....we were just meters from a tirewallah :) If I have to have all these punctures at least there is someone there to sort it out :) This one was due to a small nail in the tire, but the tube, though it was the right size in diameter, was for a much smaller tire, so it was stretched thin. The tirewallah hopped on his bicycle and rode a couple of kms to find the right tube (at an hour of the morning when most shops are not even open yet) and an hour later we were on our way.

The servicing....We have had 2 dealer services each and my bike has been to the local mechanic twice and A's bike once. Two oil changes at the dealer, but when we got to Pushkar A's front brake was needing some attention and when he checked the oil it was foul! I am not certain that they remembered to change the oil at the last dealer service. When we bought the bikes we had the fuel taps replaced with locking fuel taps as it is really easy for someone to steal the petrol (we were warned about this). A's tap was leaking almost from day one (it was a cheap aftermarket part, not a Bajaj part) and we had it replaced with a Bajaj OEM non-locking one in Panaji. My locking fuel tap made it to Munnar before it gave up the ghost - the key just stopped working. That was a mess and I ended up with petrol all over my arm when we were trying to fix it and I ended up at the local mechanic where he sorted a new (cheap part) fuel tap and tensioned and lubed my chain :). The next service was Ahmedabad, many kilometers later, where we got a full service. I got new chain and sprockets and they cleaned my front brake caliper and they replaced A's clutch cable and fixed her choke switch. I know I got new oil but I think they forgot A's oil. On to Pushkar and I was driving A's bike and noticed the front brake was not working as it should so we asked the hotel guy where he got his bike serviced and he took me over there. A's bike got new oil, new chain and sprockets but they couldn't do much about the front brake (it works, it's just not instant on, like she likes it :)

There is still the story to tell about my battery :) When I bought the bike I watched them top up the battery and it was working fine...about until we got to the cold in Munnar or maybe Kodai. Then it started not to hold a charge overnight. That was ok, I can kickstart it, too and when I rode all day the battery charged up just fine (the alternator was working great :). Then the tachometer started misbehaving until the bike got a bit of a charge (it would be wild or it wouldn't show anything) and then it just stopped working all together. I was getting a bit tired of it and I knew we were going to get a service in Ahmedabad so I lived with it. When we got to Ahmedabad I explained the problem and they offered to charge the battery and I explained again :) and then they brought their battery guy out to have a look, and he checked it with the voltmeter and said I needed a new battery...but they didn't have any. It would take a week to get one shipped up from Pune. Hmmm. So we went to the Exide battery guy in the market and he said it would take a month to get a battery for the Pulsar!!!! Yikes. At that point we didn't know A was going to get ill and that we would spend 10 days in Amhedabad so we didn't order a battery. We got on the road again and I asked the hotel guy in Bhopal where the Bajaj dealer was. He said forget the dealer his mechanic would sort it, his mechanic was just up the street. So, not finding the mechanic's number in his mobile phone, he sent the security guard from the hotel down to get the mechanic's number. Then he called the mechanic and the mechanic said he would come over and have a look at my bike...ah, sometimes this country is hilarious :) Anyway, lots of language difficulties in between...the guy would sort my bike in a couple of hours, the battery was available. When it came back it was freshly washed...and the tachometer worked!!!! I was a happy camper - I didn't realize how much it had bothered me. A's bike wouldn't have this battery problem as she has a kick start only bike, as the battery is a lot different. She has to contend with a wicked kickback on the kickstart though :)

All in all the bikes have been pretty trouble free - they have never once, in 12,500 kms, left us stranded on the side of the road. Excellent!

Since we don't have locking fuel taps we don't put a lot of fuel in the bikes. In the beginning we would fill the tanks (you get better mileage with a full tank) and then ride and top them up when they were about half way. After it appeared that some fuel had been pilfered from my bike while it was parked overnight at Karla (this happened on two nights! Cheeky!!!) we only filled up for the day and left a couple of liters max in the tank. This has meant that we rode to reserve on a couple of occasions, and we fill up every day we ride, but it's not a problem.

On to mileage....as I said, we have done 12,500 kms. We have had a few days over 400 kms and we did more kms in the last 20 days that we did in the previous blocks of 20 days (I have 22 lines on a page where I keep track of these things :).

The bikes are now in storage and we miss them, but we are looking forward to the human powered 2 wheelers that are awaiting us in Beijing!!! It has been one of the hardest things to do - not have a bicycle ride for nearly 4 months.

Catch you all later...from Chinese soil!