Delhi to Bareilly

Wow, what a day!
From today on I travel with a new companion. Her name is Blacky. It makes traveling much more exciting with her but sometimes it is very demanding. Blacky is something special: she is born in India in 2005. So she has some experience on the road.
At 6:30 in the morning we meet to get out of Delhi before the big crazy traffic starts. That is a good plan especially considering that we have to go over Connaught Place. Nearly as expected this is the place where we first time loose track of the state highway 24. We ask our way around, and finally find back. After only half an hour it feels first time like we are out of Delhi. However there is a dispersion and again we loose track. We just follow the crowd and out way leads us over a steel bridge. Water is dripping from the top.where is it coming from? No, please, not what I think! The bridge has 2 level and on top of us through the holes I can see there is a train moving. So the water must be from its toilet!!! That explains also the awkward smell on the bridge. Carefully I steer around the dripping “au de toilet” and at the end of the bridge turn left with the crowd. A while later I ask for my way and get told to turn next left again. So that makes3 left turns in total: I drove a circle. Now it goes basically strait all the time. But if I expected the traffic becomes more easy after leaving the big city I was wrong. I was totally wrong! Quickly I discover a new traffic rule:: Public buses can drive whenever and wherever they want. They can also drive on the right side of the street. All motorbikes or bicycles which were on that side have to leave the paved road and go off road. In this way on my first day I am forced 2 times to leave the street. This is not so easy because the place next to the street is only mud and usually used by cows, horses, pedestrians, goats and whatever walks around. Due to this and the monsoon time which is still ongoing the road is sometimes 30 cm higher than the “sideway”. On my first day I see only a few trucks and 1 bus which had serious accident. Main reasons are that they crushed into each other or one tried to give way and fell off the road into the river. This roads are crazy. Or is it the drivers who are crazy?
There are seldom conditions which allow driving faster than 50 km/h. On the national highway there are bicycles, children, motorbikes, trucks, buses, cows, horses, goats, water buffaloes, birds. The trucks are often so overloaded that they need more than one side of the road. Two times it happened that a truck overtook us and touched Blacky during this. Not always easy to keep balance and also patience. I think that in my whole life I swore less than today. Still I enjoy cruising around in between all the annoyances of other drivers. The camera has to stay in the backpack because a few times the rain catching us.
At about 3 in the afternoon I start looking for guesthouses. There are no guesthouses. There are only those truckstops where they have bedframes outside and the drivers just lay down and have a nap. Blacky and I as a couple cause already a lot of suspicion and curiosity I don’t want to sleep in a truckstop. At 4 we arrive in Rampur. There are a few hotels. But all of them are fully booked. Rampur is a strange city: The street is packed with “institutes for management, business or electronics”, universities and education centers. I find a Bajaj-Servicecenter and use the chance to ask them for my leaking filling tank and for the clutch. “no problem” they say and ask a mechanic to look for it. To make a long story short after that Blacky was in worse condition than before.
Because there are no hotels available I have to drive to Bareilly. At sunset we arrive. The city is extremely dusty because of the poor roads. The first 2 hotels are full. I try to find the trainstation. There are always hotels at a trainstation, isn’t it? There are no streetlights because of a power shut down. Driving around we seem to be lost in the city. The police stops us and wants to see Blacky’s papers. Finally at 8 we find a room to stay. It is much too expensive for its quality but after this day I am just glad to have any room. My face is black from all the dirt and the shower feels as good as after a week of trekking. When having my favorite dinner – palak paneer – I call back all the beautiful impressions of the day. After all I saw so many new things today: meadows with buffaloes, colorful flowers, ancient tools on the villages, a lot of smiles, houses made out of straw, children which were roasting potatoes in a fire, huge trees, …