We got up quite early and geared up since we couldn’t sleep much anyway. Even at 5 AM, it was pretty warm. We woke Sachi Uncle, who came down to the parking with us to bid us goodbye. We loaded the bike, confirmed with our uncle about the directions we had to take to get onto the Jaipur road, and headed out from Delhi to Bikaner.
And, the ride had begun!
Getting out of Delhi:
We left the residential area and followed our uncle’s directions until we missed a turn leading us to the Gurgaon Expressway. We had to ride ahead, take a turn and get onto this road. Delhi has so many flyovers and one way that it’s easy to lose your way. Added to that, I kept giving Abhi the wrong directions! We were supposed to take the road to AIIMS and continue on the expressway towards Jaipur, but I made him take a wrong turn, and we ended up on an expressway to Noida… he he!
A couple of cyclists on the road seemed to be attracting quite some curiosity from a couple of cars. As we got closer, passing the other vehicles to see what kind of cycles they were riding, we realized Rahul Gandhi and another guy cycling with RG’s Z security (complete with automatics) following them.
The six-lane is lined on either side with malls and almost every corporate giant from all over the globe. In the next half an hour, we were out of the capital, riding on the expressway wherever possible and getting off it near the toll booths since there were signboards all through the route saying motorcycles were not allowed there. We weren’t sure why that was, but we saw several motorcycles on the six-lane. Riding from Delhi to Bikaner now seemed possible despite the early morning detours!
We stopped after Gurgaon for a breakfast of vegetable sandwiches and chai. We had not slept well the previous night mainly because Abhi kept waking up often (which was every two minutes, and I am not exaggerating!), which in turn woke me up; I found out during breakfast that he had recurring dreams of we getting lost somewhere in the desert, with no water or shade, sweating (with me in that jacket!) 
After breakfast, we returned to the highway we rode on and reached Dharuhera. We stopped at a fork in the highway – one that led to Jaipur and the other to Rewari, towards Bikaner. Decision time! It was still around 8 AM. We hadn’t yet crossed Haryana and had about 400 km to ride, and it was already getting hot inside my jacket. But we also did not want to change the plan. We then thought, ‘What the heck! Let’s stick to the plan and ride to Bikaner!’
Riding through Shekhawati:
We rode through Rewari to Narnaul, the last town in Haryana, before we entered Rajasthan. Across the border, it’s still quite green, and the heat was manageable. As the sun got more robust, we rode through Khetri-Singhada-Chidawa. Some distance after Chidawa, we took a short break under a tree to cool off a little bit. We had stopped next to a tea shop. An old man there tried to speak to us in what sounded like English since the people there thought we were ‘Videshis’ (Foreigners). We managed to convince them that we weren’t and were very much Indians. I had some tea there and got going.
We could now see sand patches and small dunes here and there as we continued riding to Jhunjhunu. About 10 km from Jhunjhunu, we stopped at a place called ‘Vinayak Shudh Bhojanalay’ on our way to Mandawa. Vodka had mentioned these bhojanalays to us before we left Bangalore. All through Rajasthan, these ‘Sudh/Pavitra Bhojanalays’ are small to medium-sized eateries that serve clean and tasty vegetarian food. It’s the best bet when travelling; you don’t want to take chances with food. Moreover, no one bothers you if you sit around and relax for a while longer. If unsure what to order, ask for rotis, dhal fry and lassi. Onions and lemon pieces come with it without asking for it. Simple but yummy! This place even had a Khaitan air cooler,
which was specifically made for the desert heat.
Mandawa is 50 km from Jhunjhunu, and we decided to ride there and take a small break. It was around 1 in the afternoon. By the time we rode around 30 km, we were feeling the heat. We couldn’t see a single soul on the road except for a few people walking (!!) carrying some flags in that hot midday sun. My skin was burning under the jacket already, and I couldn’t wait to stop. Around 5 km to Mandawa, we couldn’t bear it any longer, and we stopped under a huge peepal tree. It seemed like we were sapped out of all the dehydrated water. Thankfully, we had a couple of water bottles and were carrying electoral. The shade from the tree, electricity and cool breeze worked, and we felt much better within minutes. That is how it was for us throughout the ride in Rajasthan. Out in the heat, it’s extreme and burns you, but it’s so cool and breezy under the shade that you wonder whether you were hallucinating about the heat!
A kid on a cycle saw us and the bike and got talking to us. He wondered why we rode from Delhi to Bikaner when we could have driven down in a car. He also mentioned that this was the first time in September that it was this hot. He thought we were crazy to ride in the afternoon when it was around 35 degrees when no one ventured outside. He suggested that we go to Mandawa, where A/C rooms were available. We told him that we liked the peepal tree better, for which he gave a toothy grin and said that everyone in his village did that. 🙂
The walkers with the flags caught up with us and decided to rest under the tree, too. The flags had ‘Jai Mata Di’ written over them, and we figured they must visit a temple somewhere in Mandawa. But why walk? We couldn’t figure that out. Anyway, We decided to wait it out for a couple of hours and took turns to snooze and catch up on last night’s lost sleep.
It was much better when we started to ride out at around 4 in the evening. We had around 200 km to go and rode through Mandawa and Fatehpur. The stretch from Khetri to Jhunjhunu is called the Shekhawati. Both the towns, Mandawa and Fatehpur, are filled with old buildings whose walls have the famous Shekhawati paintings. Most buildings were Havelis or palaces, which now housed residences or shops. We saw quite a few monuments restored and marked protected by the government of India and a few falling apart.
On NH 11, to Bikaner:
As the sun descended, we connected to NH 11, which would take us to Bikaner.
It was still boiling even though the sun had set, a sign that we had entered the Great Thar. Alongside the dunes, we saw quite a few peacocks, sometimes by the highway, sometimes on the fences and sometimes just leisurely crossing the road! We still saw quite a few groups of people walking with ‘Jai Mata Di’ flags.
After a couple of short water breaks en route, we finally reached the outskirts of Bikaner. As I mentioned earlier, Sachi uncle had arranged our stay here at a heritage hotel called Jaswanth Bhavan. We called the owner of this place and took directions. The place was very close to the railway station, so we headed in the general direction towards
the station. Different directions were given by people on the way, and my bad luck with directions on that particular day was making us go in circles! Finally, one of the locals we asked for directions mentioned that he was heading that way and we could follow him. We followed him for a couple of km, where he stopped near an unlit lane and told us that Jaswanth Bhavan was at the end of that lane. We thanked the guy and rode into the lane. We figured that we were next to the railway station. Just like the guy mentioned, we saw Jaswanth Bhavan at the end of this lane. We had made it through the first 500 km of riding! Phew!
Jaswanth Bhavan, Bikaner:
We must have been a terrible sight to Mr and Mrs Hanumanth Singh since we arrived sweaty and tired from the ride. We were shown our room and informed that the dinner would be served at 9.
We could not visit any places in and around Bikaner because of time constraints, but riding in the heat to get here was an experience. It was also an indication of what was yet to come. We thought we had survived 500 km of riding through 35 deg heat on Day 1, and since a large part of Delhi to Bikaner was in the desert, that’s how hot it would get on the following day, too. With these thoughts, we slept like logs that night. But, little did we know what was in store for us on our way to Jaisalmer.