By Mike Huber
India 2025: Part VI
Waking up the next day was a little bit easier. This was due to the fact there were only three switches on the wall. Much easier than the usual 100+ switches in the previous hotels. In those I wasn’t sure if I was turning on a fan, light, or launching an Apollo mission. I was even able to find the switch for the water heater to have a nice hot shower. After a short walk to obtain some much-needed caffeine and having the Royal Enfield Himalayans loaded, we were ready to head out and kick the day off.
Today was going to be about 250 kilometers of riding to the small town of Bhilwara. Along the way we would visit one of the very few Jain temples in India. Upon arrival, we instantly noticed the amount of detail on everything. The temple was more than one can comprehend in just a short visit.
We enjoyed soaking in the culture both from the temple and the locals taking more selfies of us. After a bit, it was time to start moving as we had one more temple to visit and a 2-hour ride to where we planned to stay for the evening.
The next temple was only about 10 minutes away but Google routed us through a local bazaar. Thankfully we didn’t attempt anything like this on Day 1 in India, as it would have been more than overwhelming. I figured this would start getting interesting as soon as the streets began to narrow and the crowds filled in. I cannot find a comparison other than to imagine driving through the 2004 Red Sox World Series Celebration at Government Center in Boston. Packed doesn’t even begin to describe it. Normally I would have thought motos weren’t supposed to be driving through here but with seeing one or two other motorcycles (other than us) I figured we weren’t doing anything too bad.
The ride was tight. We slowly made our way through the crowd with a constant honking and a light nudge of a pedestrian or three until we finally arrived at the temple. We weren’t quite swarmed by people looking for selfies but there were crowds everywhere around us. As always, they were super friendly so we took our time with each group and chatted with them on where we were from and where we were going.
Once we took a short tour of the temple and were asked for a bunch more selfies, it was time to head back on the road and the path to that road, you guessed it, it was through the same bazaar we squeezed through on the way in. By this time we were familiar with how to negotiate through the crowd and we did so.
As we approached Bhilwara we were more than ready to get off the bikes and get some dinner. Well, India had different plans for us. It turns out Bhilwara (as with other small towns we would learn) requires the hotels to file paperwork with local authorities for foreigners. Normally this isn’t too big a deal, but in this case none of the hotels in this town had the proper paperwork, nor did they seem too motivated to obtain it. This forced us to drive another hour until we were in a more populated area where we could finally rest for the evening. We were cutting it close with time as the bright red sun was just beginning to set as we pulled into the hotel. This was a fine way to wrap up another day motorcycling through India.
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