Motorbikes and Bhang Lassis

Friday 6^th February 2015

This morning we finally got our shit together I got up about 9am and did some yoga (only about 25mins but it’s  better than the nothing I have been doing) after we were dressed and ready to go we headed out for breakfast down the road where for once the dude understood my request for no sugar in my tea.

With breakfast behind us we found shoes and what not jumped on the bike and drove to the closest hill we could find and parked at the bottom we happened to be at a temple and the men hanging about all thought we had come for a visit. It clearly wasn’t the type of temple foreigners usually visit and they didn’t seem too fazed when we walked past them up the hill.

I didn’t think we were going to make it far as it was pretty steep and the terrain was covered in cacti and prickle bushes but we lucked upon a path that led all the way to the top.  My body kind of just took over being in leggings and trainers it thought it was going for a run and I bounded up but about half way to the top started thinking about leopards and by the time we got to the top I had already come to the conclusion we would be mauled on the mountainside and no one would ever see us again. The fear was made worse by the constant rumbling and movement in the trees but once at the top we could see it was a man cutting down a tree and another guy with a herd of goats.

 Not quite at the top but we stopped for a picture

We made it all the way!

The walk up and down took just less than two hours and considering the lack of movement lately I was pretty impressed! We got back to the bike and headed straight into town for food we parked up and headed up to a rooftop restaurant so we could watch the lake and sit in the sun. We got up there and bumped into a girl who had been staying at the same guesthouse as us in Jaipur and spent the next few hours eating and chatting.

When we finally left we drove out of town and found a flat quiet spot for me to have my first motorbike lesson. The thing I was most concerned about was the weight of the bike (a Royal Enfield Bullet) but I could actually hold it much more easily than I thought I could. As soon as we stopped we drew a crowd which didn’t do a lot to help me learn but the brief instructions clearly went in ok as I managed to drive up and down a few times without stalling or falling over and managed to get between first and second gear without too much difficulty. It was just short lesson but left me excited for another ride.

The Bike i had my first lesson on!

Lesson done we decided we had accomplished a lot for the day and headed back to our tent to chill in the sunshine.

Later in the afternoon feeling pretty productive we decided to climb up a hill to watch the sun go down. By the time this decision was made we were losing daylight and despite gunning it on the bike (in a few circles since we didn’t really know where we were going) we didn’t arrive in time to see much. The hill is lined with stone stairs that we were told take about 30mmins to climb we pushed ourselves and bounded up in about 20mins.

If you look really closely you can see the tiny dot of the sun!

At the top we found a rock and got in about two photos before the bright red sun dipped below the sandy haze of the city. We walked a bit further and bumped into friends and chilled for a bit before clambering down (which was decidedly harder than up)

We got to the bottom and made plans to meet for dinner we ended up eating at the restaurant out the front of our guesthouse and then moved out to the back and had a bonfire wrapped in blankets to fight off the cold that had reappeared.

Saturday 7^th February 2015

This morning was a fairly lazy start after I had done some laundry and what not we toddled into town and got some breakfast then toddled back and chilled in the sun before heading off on a mission to find some river it was a bit of a joke to get to as we just had the place name written in English and Hindi and everyone we asked seemed to point us in a different direction and it was always 5km in whichever direction they were pointing.

Eventually we got there, the river was pretty much dried up and moved in a lazy sludgy trickle full of rubbish we went past there and climbed a hill where we sat in the sunshine and soaked in the peaceful atmosphere until some local goats herds saw us and continued to yell hello and wave at us every five minutes until we left.

The drive back was much quicker knowing where we were actually supposed to go and we stopped and had lunch at this cheap Indian shack with no English menu the food was pretty fantastic (even if the rice didn’t arrive until all the other food was gone) and watching the girl in the kitchen was impressive, the flames were huge and she somehow managed to not burn herself or catch her hair or scarf on fire!

Back in town we decided to have a Bhang Lassi and be fucked for a few hours, as fate would have it we bumped into a friend who pointed to a great time and so we parked up drank (and I ate a peanut butter banana pancake but that’s neither here nor there) and then headed back to our accommodation to settle into our high.

At its peak it was maybe a little bit too strong for me but on the whole the dose was pretty good and I quite enjoyed sitting in a chair silently for an hour or two. Eventually we got our shit together enough to meet people for dinner which seemed to go pretty well but conversation was a lot harder than usual.

We ate much more than was strictly necessary finishing off dinner with a dessert the Indian folk like to call ‘hello to the queen’ I’m under the impression that they believe it to be a typical English dessert I believe it’s not but it’s still fantastic its some sort of mess of ice-cream chocolate sauce, cookies, bananas and whatever other sweet goodness can be found with that in our bellies life was good. Walking down the stairs from the rooftop restaurant however was not so good but I somehow made it without stacking it. (Just to be clear the stairs are ridiculously steep…)

We headed to another café where friends were watching the football (yawn) and settled in for a little bit, I decided I needed more sugar so set off for chocolate and cookies, halfway through my munch I felt nauseous and was defiantly going to hurl so headed pretty quick smart to the loo which as soon as I walked into I felt fine again I hung about for a minute or so (not something one generally likes to do in an Indian toilet) but I felt fine so returned to the party.

Not long after another wave hit me and I decided it was home time. Once there I put on pyjamas got into bed finished eating my stash and fell asleep watching a movie I woke up right at the end and didn’t have the energy to turn it off it started replaying itself and I eventually managed to turn it off towards the end of its second run.