Crossing Madhya Pradesh does not improve our opinion of Indian infrastructure.
22th March 2006

When is a dual carriageway not a dual carriageway?
Saucy sculpture
More bemoaning the crappy roads of Madhya Pradesh

The Great Truck Road

There were two possible outcomes from the bombs in Varanasi; peace would reign and all the religious groups would band together to voice their abhorrence of terrorists or the town would go pear shaped. There was no harm in either event in making a twilight flit so we planned to get out of town at the crack of dawn. My experience of the lack of traffic first thing in the morning was promising, too.

I asked at reception which road to take and I got the familiar vague hand wave suggesting that I leave the hotel and turn right. We did .... and ended up in front of a shirty soldier on duty at the gate of his barracks. It was obvious that we had taken a wrong turn and we were making a turn in the road but not quick enough for squaddy Singh. He lunged at us barking instructions. I guess everyone was a bit jumpy because of the bombs. We were little better off when we followed our noses back towards the national highway. It seemed that we’d wandered into an Indian Aldershot, every property was a military installation of some sort and everyone viewed us with suspicion. We were not inclined to stop and ask directions with such a lot of hostility and, there being no road signs like usual, it was a complete miracle that we ended up on the right road out of town.

Sure, there was less in the way of buses and cars at this time of the morning and that may be the very reason why there were hundreds of trucks. Truck drivers are generally good guys and the only real hassle of driving in a convoy of them is the carbon-choked atmosphere. There have been a few days in other countries where our faces have been a tad grimy at the end of a day but in India whenever we stop after a couple of hours, we are filthy-black. The traffic was moving reasonably smoothly until we reached the dual carriageway, The Grand Trunk Road. It was amazing and frustrating. This is one of the most perfectly constructed roads I have ridden on - the surface was smooth, the curves very gentle, absolutely perfect for making some distance in this huge country. But there is the problem, simply because it is in India means that you cannot crack on and cover a lot of ground. Simply coming up the slip road showed us what was to lie ahead. Emerging onto the carriageway, it was clear that the eastbound lanes were completely blocked with parked trucks and so we came out onto the westbound lane to be faced with trucks that had crossed over the central reservation to get ahead. Then there were oxcarts, cows, herds of goats, cyclists, people three abreast all of whom were proceeding eastwards, westwards or randomly crossing our lanes. From a thoroughfare with a safe maximum of 70 m.p.h. this was reduced to a dangerous 50 or a practical 30, but even then we had to really focus on everything that was going on. I rode along trying to find the perfect rephrasing of “You can take a horse to water ...” but replaced with “You can put a perfect dual carriageway in India but....”

We had to take a turn off to get to National Highway 7. There were no signs. OK, I’ll stop pointing that out as it is getting boring. We pulled over at a junction and approached an officer of the law. “Marzipur, Marzipur?” we asked. Blank looks. He called over someone else. “Marzipur, Marzipur?” No response. Eventually someone enthusiastically pointed down the road and ejaculated, “Mirzapur!” When we get back to England, I must try to remember to pull up at a junction approximately 15 miles from Bolton and ask for, “Baltan, Baltan?” in a foreign sounding voice and see if someone points me in the right direction. We are absolutely convinced that in some countries people are deliberately obstructive. OK, in this case it was our fault for reading the map wrongly and so we were simply grateful and left with out tails between our legs.

NH7 proved to be a pretty crap road. We never learn. Our assumption is that because a road has a national designation and a low number, it must be a major through route and so be well maintained. Route 6 in Cambodia should have taught us something. Without too much traffic it would be OK but there was plenty. I have been pointing out to Hippy my philosophy with regards to priority of road use. The accepted norm in India is that ‘might gives right’. (This is possibly an erroneous translation that would be better phrased as ‘stupid is as stupid does’) I am determined to find out whether this is in the highway code, assuming there is a highway code. I don’t have a problem with allowing vehicles space to overtake, in general the roads are wide enough to take a couple of trucks and a motorbike, maybe even a car. When faced with a truck coming towards me that leaves no room on the tar, I will do everything I can to avoid riding of the questionable gravel margin. I tend to hold my line for as long as I can while busily giving a good flashing of my high beam and then moving towards the edge if there has been no concession.

Today we had a new version of bullying behaviour. Seeing that there was an oncoming vehicle approaching and so not being able to overtake safely, I pulled in between two trucks. The trucks carried on at their steady 35 m.p.h. without the trailing one slowing at all to create any more space between them but this was to be expected. A bus that had also been overtaking this line of trucks appeared along side us and obviously realised that he could not get past the one in front either so started barging his way between the same pair of trucks. The rearward truck did allow a bit of space this time but only just enough for the length of the bus. I couldn’t pull of the side of the road as the truck was so close in front of me that I couldn’t see if I were likely to ride into a group of pedestrians so I just road as close to the edge of the tar as I could. This wasn’t enough for the bus driver from Hell and he pulled in far enough to give us a nudge on the side. Very dangerous thing to do to a motorcycle. We managed to hold on and pulled up close under the back of the truck in front. Oooh I was pissed off. I was in the mood for ripping the head off the bus driver. I slowed down in front of him and rather than running me over he pulled up as I came to a stop. I was all for leaping off and doing all manner of violent things but Hippy screamed at me to let it go. She was right but I was not really in the mood for thanking her. I’m sorry.

I tend to believe in the cowardice approach to dealing with crazy driving behaviour. If someone is clearly a reckless driver, happy to endanger the lives of himself and his passengers, then I prefer to let it lie and stay well away from them. I tend to assume that they are not rational people and won’t care that they’ve potentially knocked someone off their bike.

Porn on the temple walls

Our destination was Khajuraho, famous for its temples, around 1000 years old, with a bunch of erotic carvings. In India there are state-owned tourist hotels and we rocked up our first such place. The place had a once flash, now slightly used, feeling about it. Things were clean, but the furnishings dated. The power cuts, meant that we were glad that we had not wasted money on A/C. Our timing had been bang on, it had been overcast all day and we’d caught maybe 10 drops of drizzle. We parked up, moved in and took a stroll into town. Wanting to see as much as possible, we took a longer way back to base and only just managed to beat a huge rainstorm.

As we looked out the window and watched a local trying to hook up to the buildings electricity, it was like watching a farce. They were using a forked branch akin to a washing line prop to repeatedly try and hold up the middle of a 50 metre free length of saggy cable, each time they let go of the prop it fell to the ground with the cable. They didn’t seem to learn that maybe another technique may be necessary. Whether the hook up was authorised by the hotel or just an opportunist neighbour scrumping, I’m not sure. A few things have surprised me by India. It is all over the media how hi-tech India is becoming, but it just doesn’t equate with what we see. Power cuts seem to be the norm, and we are struggling to find internet caffs.

We started our cultural education with a few Jain temples. Jain was a prophet, like Buddha. Likewise started life as a Hindu, renounced the caste system and have even stricter food laws that the Buddhists, with no onion or garlic allowed in the their food, and of course completely vegetarian. For the ignorant like me, the quick guide to telling a Jain temple from a Buddhist one, is that Jain is always naked and Buddha isn’t and Jain is often depicted blue (maybe due to his nakedness). Generally Jainists like Buddhists are good guys complete passivists, even sweeping the ground in front of them for fear of killing insects in their path. It’s all about purity of the soul. They were a nice introduction to the ruins, the carving was superb and the temples had a quiet elegance to them.

We started the day accompanied by a delightful couple of school girls, but as the day wore on the children all sang the same chorus, asking for rupees, pens, bonbons. One lad even wanted our finished water bottle. Wasn’t sure whether there was some kind of status in drinking from a mineral water drinking, if he needed it for a science project or plant pot, or he planned to refill it and sell it on to another tourist. Whatever, he was happy with the bottle and it saved us carrying it back to the hotel.

As we walked through the village there were stacks of dried cow dung. Cooking fuel. I recall our own feeble attempts an dung cooking in the Andes, left the pans pretty nasty. Guess that’ll be women’s work. Only because the blokes are busy with hard work, honest.

The Hindu temples really did have fair fest of fornicating folk carved into the outer surfaces. If I were to take the cynical line (as if Pat could do anything else) and suggest that these things were put there as a way of attracting folk into the temple, it would have been much more effective to carve them on the inside walls. There is plenty of debate about the real reason for the presence of the raunchy stuff which is mixed in with all manner of other scenes; processions, tales from the vedas and what have you. One theory is that they are instructional - rather more informative than, ‘the chap has a willy and that goes in the lady to transfer sperm’, as we were informed at Bolton School (Boys Division). If it is instructional, why are there examples dotted about all over the place rather than a single panel showing everything you need to know and maybe some stuff you don’t? No, I’m happy with my interpretation of ‘Be a Hindu and have a top time.’ It had puzzled me that Buddhism arose out of Hinduism and for a period became more popular only to decline and Hinduism take the fore again. Could it have been Buddhism rather frowning on the frivolous enjoymment of sex. Not a policy to endear you with the masses, I’m afraid. Possibly I am a complete pervert but I really couldn’t see that the scenes depicted were saucy enough to make a British infantryman blush, as was claimed. Hippy seemed pleased that the prefered morph of the ancient Hindus was the rather more curvaceous figure. Busts and thighs were definitely in. No doubt they will will come back in in a century or two in the UK, but by then I will be long gone.

There was another huge downpour just as we were completing our sightseeing and this we welcomed, not just for the cooling effect but the apparent sign that the weather is fairly predictable; rain arriving in the late afternoon. I have no problem with rain and rainy seasons so long as the situation can be managed to a degree. This kind of regularity is strangely reassuring. The next day it rained pretty much incessantly so all our theories were knocked on the head and we decided to stick with the traditional plan of gazing at the clouds and reading the weather reports before completing our travel plans. It is really extraordinary that after four and a half years I can really only remember being drenched a handful of times. Mustn’t grumble.

We had plenty to do to occupy a wet day. Odd little bits of clothes maintenance for Hips and a load of journal to get up to date and web formatted for me. Frustratingly, the wet weather further increased the randomness with which electricity arrived in the sockets. This is most worrying in a country that has monsoon rain. During those months we must plan to be somewhere more settled. Anyway, we got a huge chunk of web material ready only to be completely stymied in the internet cafe. Indian internet cafe seem to run very strange networks which cannot cope with a new computer being attached. Often it seems to be that there is just a network server which has a hard drive and the other computers are nothing more than terminals. They don’t like the addition of a free-thinking laptop. The alternative is to use an ftp uploading program on their computer and transfer the files necessary off our jump drive. Buuuut, not only do they not have an ftp program available, there is generally not even a USB port to connect the memory stick to. We haven’t had this problem any where else in the world since we’ve had the laptop. All most frustrating. What bothers me is that India is proffering itself as the emerging high-tech country. So far, I’m not convinced.

Blue skies and highway blues

The rain cleared the air and next morning was gorgeous. Just what we needed for a nice ride down to Sanchi. Everything was going fine until we got to Sagar. There were no signs (God, why do I bother even writing that any more?) and the directions folk gave us seemed unconvincing. We were pointed down town centre roads that were filled with a black soup and had no evidence of a layer of asphalt underneath. It really was very nasty stuff and the only thing in its favour was the surprising lack of stench; it looked like the kind of nasty black slime that goes smelly in blocked drains but must have been just another kind of nastiness. Again, we pondered what this place must be like in the monsoon proper. Dirt roads covered in decaying material, lots of rain, random unrelenting traffic and no drainage, is a recipe for very unpleasant motorcycling. Maybe after a couple of days it all gets washed clean but I doubt it. Leaving Sagar behind, the roads dried out again but we still bumped our way along rather unpleasantly. I’ve never seen the like of it elsewhere but it seems that a common practice for repairing roads in India is to use bitumen-bound rubble. Bituminous paving material is usually mixed in a similar way to concrete; fine stone (sand), large stone and binder (bitumen/cement). Here the fine material seems to be missing and so there is nothing to fill the voids between what seens to be half-brick sized stones. This makes for a rough ride. Maydha Pradesh has a reputation for being the worst potholed roads in India, unfortunately our route was taking us through a long diagonal over the state. In fairness to the state we saw a lot of evidence of road building, but watching women mostly individually levelling stones and carrying gravel in baskets on their heads, it seemed unlikely that the roads would be sealed by the monsson and all their hard work will be washed away. On a 40 mile stretch that was being revamped, there was a total plant allotment of 3 JCB’s. With such a dearth of equipment, I can imagine this section being in need for its next repair just at they complete the current works. Shades of the Forth Bridge.

There was a junction where two almost parallel roads continued towards Bhopal. The two roads were indicated as the same colour on our map but the right hand road promised to be shorter to Sanchi. If you ask a pedestrian which road to take, they will point in the direction that their bus takes. Clearly the buses still use this knackered road that is in the process of being revamped. It was a hellish stretch to ride with a few water dips, dirt sections and very little rest of the increasingly pot-holed black top. Vehicles were being pretty decent to each other though and we didn’t get in any passing scrapes. I was less than chuffed when we arrived at Sanchi and the hotelier told me that the other road, though longer, is much smoother and quicker. The shock absorber has now got to the point of not doing so. I can’t even recall if I’ve pointed out yet that the ‘repair’ effected in Bangkok didn’t work at all, in fact the oil leaks out faster now. We’re pogoing our way to Goa where we meet Trish and JP who, poor souls, are acting as mules, bringing another old shock absorber out from England. Anyway, if we hit a big pothole at the moment the suspension hits the bump stop with a spine jarring whollop. Poor Hippy gets it worse on the backseat than I do. Really, I do try to avoid those holes. I knew that Pat was doing his best, and looking ahead at the road, I knew there would be no respite. I bounced around, like I was on a solid space hopper, only I didn’t have the reassurance of being able to get my feet on the floor.

Sanchi was a delight. We’d really picked it for its location, conveniently splitting the journey from Khajuraho to Mandu. There really seems to be doodly squat in the way of accomodation or sights in the small towns that we pass and so we’re tending to break our journey at ‘Lonely Planet highlights’ where we at least have some knowledge of hotel options. Although a highlight, the description of the Buddhist stupas and ruined monasteries didn’t seem very exciting. Since Malaysia we’ve been seeing Buddhist stupas and there’s not a huge amount of difference between one domed pile of bricks/rock that gets my heart fluttering in excitement. These were nice, though. Very nice. It’s so hard to put my finger on exactly why these ruins were so attractive. On the face of it, a site having about four stone domes atop a knoll and the foundations of some monasteries wasn’t so interesting and I was prepared to be disappointed. But it was wonderful.

They had been built by Ashoka an old emperor of India. So he had loads of cash, that since his conversion to Buddhism he couldn’t spend on himself. As Pat says a stupa is not that exciting a shape to do anything interesting with. So Ashoka back in 3BC decided to put his money into the entrance gates, on the 4 cardinal points.
The Toranas, the technical name for elaborate gateways, which were fantastic 7m high, with triple lintels, showing enough of the life and time of Buddha to enter Mastermind as Ashoka’s specialist subject. A lot of renovation had occured so it was hard to tell how much was original, but, come on, they are over 2 millennia old. Typically for us, we were rather taken with a less prestigious and so less visited stupa down the hill which had the a delicately carved walkway around the stupa but none of the austentatious gateways.

Following the neatly paved path down towards the entrance from this stupa led to a dead end, blocked by a mesh wire fence. Typical - Indians spend the money of a good pathway that leads nowhere. Clearly those in the know use it as a freeby entrance to ruins, which for foreigners is a whacking 250 rupees compared to local rate of 10. We decided to follow a wee footpath in the hope that it may save us looking like escapees. We failed and ended up shimmying under another bit of fence. I went first and became quickly acquainted with some orange shit that had been hidden under some leaves. Nice...... I walk back to the hotel smelling like a pig farm. Next time Patrick goes first.