Smog obscuring the Victoria Memorial in early morning Calcutta.

40kilometers of this on the border of Bihar and 20km more on the other side.


Weaving a path between the parked Tata trucks waiting to pay taxes.

Cleaning the glass and debris over the fresh blood stains of the bus wreck.

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2003-12-07 / 12-09 - Calcutta - Varanasi (Day 234-236)

7:00am comes and I am out on the road, my body anxious to go and awake at 6:00am. As I set off the smog seems to be a dense fog, with one barely able to see a few hundred meters, but I know it is dirt and pollution - the worst I have ever seen. Amazingly one of the first sights I see is a foot race with a couple of hundred joggers running through the streets of Kolkota, which just seems masochistic in this smog.

My plan is to make good time for this part of the trip and stick to National Highway 2 - "The Grand Trunk Road" which I assume to be the fastest way to Varanasi as it is straight there and one of the countries most important roads. However, surprise is the norm in India and as I start out the first 60km is urban sprawl from Kolkota (Calcutta), which is slow going, and then the construction begins. The worst thing about road construction is you can never tell how long it is; in this case, it stretched 790 kilometers all the way to Varanasi. The ride I had expected to take two hard days of riding, or three easy slow days ended up taking three hard days where I was acting as if I had a death wish by riding at night, just to get the days' distance done.

I simply cannot describe the incremental levels of insanity driving in India is. First level would be normal driving which is like adult dodge ball with everything in the world coming at you, and most things having steel reinforced sides. The Tata trucks which dominate the roadways are usually overloaded (the Indian government licenses and charges based on loading 25% above the manufacturer's maximum load limit) and just assume you will get out of their way. They are also overly thick so that two passing will consume the entire roadway, or perhaps more so woe be it to anything that is on the sides. Of course there are the other sundry nightmares like Marruti sub-compacts who believe that by adding Bherrat Petroleum's "Speed" gas, they will be transformed into sports cars and trained drivers, the oblivious bike riders and the various cows and goats added in for fun.

The second level of insanity is to add in India construction methods, which simply leave huge craters in the road, which can swallow an Enfield with one gulp, have deep dust, sand and stones, which will drop a bike in a heartbeat and of course best of all stretch for hundreds of kilometers at a pop.

Lastly, we have a third level, which is to take the first two and then turn out the lights. About half of all Indian vehicles do not have rear lights or reflectors, and front lights are optional. If front lights are on, they of course on bright and with Tata trucks being high that means right at eye level on bright. On the road to Varanasi, I had many opportunities to ask myself why in the heck I am doing this crazy trip, as it seems to only be a desire to want to shorten my life.

Just to add one more bit of fun, India has the additional headache of an unbelievably inefficient method of dealing with interstate taxes on goods. Crossing into Bihar I met a 40km (yup, 40 kilometers!) traffic jam of Tata trucks parked nose to tail pipe waiting to pay their taxes. On the other end leaving Bihar, I found an 18-kilometer jam on the other side. The only good thing is that being on a bike I was able to weave but as you can see from the pictures, the situation was ridiculous. It took me almost two hours to navigate the smaller jam and I am sure that for the trucks much more time was spent waiting to enter and leave the state then actually crossing it.

To make things even better, I was warned before beginning this trip to be weary of only one place - the state of Bihar, which is just where I am going. This advice seems to be well placed in that just over the border I was taking pictures of a Tata truck and get a rock thrown at me. I go over to the guy who threw it asking what his problem was and he says through one of the other five guys that circle around me that I shouldn't take pictures of the women. I was asking what the hell was he talking about, all through translation and things started to steam. To add more fun, there are now about 15 guys around to watch the fun. Remembering that my camera has a screen, I pull it out, and show him my last few pictures of the truck, a cow and some rickshaw photos, which fortunately shuts him up, though still steaming and leaves me thinking what a pleasant place I am to have rocks thrown at me.

Entering my hotel on the 8th, the manager asks if I haven't encountered any problems on the trip? I find this a strand question in that nine months into the trip without this question coming up, I'm suddenly asked twice in just a couple of weeks on reaching the Eastern side of the country. Both times the people referred to it being a very dangerous place and with Bihar, I get the feeling it is a deserved reputation. Even the dhaba owners managed to snarl at me with one of them just yelling, "Go! Go!"

The words of Bob Segar's song, "Turn the Page" where the singer can't sit down anywhere without the stares and remarks of people and groups surrounding him really hit home on this part of the trip.

Finally, after 780 of the roughest highway imaginable, I pull into Varanasi only to face a bus on its side. Several hundred people were gathered around and it was obvious this had been a particularly bad wreck and had just happened. The busses I had seen in Bihar had always had the roof overflowing with people and people hanging on the side, one foot in the door and off the back. In this case, people probably did not find it easy to get out of the overloaded buss and there was fresh blood on the pavement all around the bus.

I finally check into a hotel, more up market then normal as I am just caked with road dirt and haven't had hot water since Bangladesh. This hotel has of all things a bathtub, my first in nine-months, clean white sheets and even dry-cleaning to get some of the dust out. After scrubbing myself twice and a full meal with room service, I finally feel like a human again.

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