Monday 11 February 2019

Jodhpur to Udaipur - three days on the bike

Friday February 8th - we leave Jodhpur - 105 km with a lot of road construction including stretches of sand that most of us had to walk the bikes through, so it was a fairly slow day in terms of average speed and a fairly sore day in terms of wear and tear on the bike - and on our bums as well.

Today's terrain was fairly flat. Especially for Rae, birds and animals were the main attraction.
Black-winged Kite

White Eared Bulbul
Indian Roller
female Nilgai antelope
male Nilgai crossing the road behind us

Shikra - also called the little banded goshawk
We think these are Asian Openbills. We saw at least a hundred of them take off out of a field and circle around and then head to the north making lots of noise in the process. There were also three pelicans that got mixed up with them for a short time. We didn't see any water nearby, but there probably was some out of sight of the road.
and as usual, many colourful women in the villages.
Our accommodation that evening was in a small town, a place with much character. Electricity was more off than on in our room. We never had any hot water and much of the time no cold either. That said, we went for longer without showers or even enough water for a decent sponge bath when we did Africa. It was comfortable but temperature dropped to around 3 degrees, so we sure used the blankets since it was unheated. Dinner that night was wild boar cooked in the courtyard. 

Saturday February 9th - just under 100 km, starting on the same extremely rough road as yesterday ended. Fortunately things improved around 20 km. It got tougher just past the 50 km point when we had a fairly long steep climb into a national forest.
We've seen several of these camps just outside villages. We're told they are gypsies, but evidently not the Roma people familiar to us in Europe.
Along the way, several gorgeous houses, today with horses adorning them

Two grown-up camels and two youngsters, or maybe more correctly, babies. Especially the little dark one looked like it had just got onto its feet for the first time, it was so wobbly. They were being driven across the highway (from where we know not) into a field that must have had in excess of 100 camels in it. 
Monkeys by the scores lined the road as soon as we were in the national forest, mostly just sitting at the side of the road, but a couple of riders reported getting snarled at and seeing bared teeth.
Rufous Treepie
Crested Serpent Eagle beside a lake near tonight's hotel 

Nice accommodation tonight. Our legs were aching from the climb so we thought it was worth getting into the swimming pool at the hotel - outdoor pool, not heated. Afternoon temperature was okay and the sun was warm, but overnight temperatures have been single-digit here for months, so it was indeed a cold swim.

Saturday February 10th - 75 km to Udaipur and a rest day. We saw as many changes in landscape today alone than we'd seen to this point in the journey, and the sky was actually blue without all the haze earlier. Road surfaces today were mainly good, the only problem being that they were barely wide enough for a single vehicle and the pavement edge was broken and generally had a lip of six or so inches onto a very uneven rocky surface. Everybody at some point had to make an undesirable dirty dart off the road to avoid an even less desirable encounter with an oncoming car that didn't leave enough room    

Not quite sure what was going on here, but it appear that the woman was moving rock with this crane...
...and this woman had emerged from the well with pots of water
sugar cane





Gateway to a connecting road, again with two horses on the top of the arch
temple at roadside
not sure if this is still in use to extract water from the river
Indian Grey Hornbills
We rather liked the fencing in India's national colours
brick making - our guess is that they are firing the bricks with charcoal
one of many colourful trucks at our lunch stop
From lunch it was a short ride into Udaipur for a rest day day tomorrow. Nice hotel, central enough that we can walk to things in town. Actually, I'm writing this after our rest day here, but too late now to do more blogging. Good night, time to rest up for a bit over 100 km.  

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