Enfield motorcycles were everywhere, chugging 350 ccs mostly, piloted by locals running around town or cops. I had returned to India and my Enfield was no longer a stranger on the road like it had been in neighboring Bangladesh.

It was wrong to assume there would be a Royal Enfield motorcycle repair shop on every corner in India. Before arriving in India I had been told that was one of the benefits of using an Enfield that they could be repaired anywhere because repair shops were everywhere. Not so. Actually, finding an authorized repair shop took a little doing. There were plenty of small motorbike repair places, but only an authorized Enfield shop can do warranty work, and generally they are the only places to find spares. I needed my clutch adjusted from inside the transmission and a leak out of the kick-starter/shifter shaft sealed, so I hunted down an Enfield shop in Varanasi where the work was done in less than two hours, along with a free oil change and wash, all under my warranty. I did have to pay for the oil, but that was less than $5.00. My chain was stretched a bit, so I put on a new one, for $9.00. Multiply that $9.00 by 10-20 and you know what a standard chain can cost in Germany or the USA. For $9.00 I got a deal in India.

On a major highway I passed another motorcycle traveller going the opposite direction. He and I both slowed and turned around to exchange road tips and names. It had been weeks since I seen another traveller and he was as surprised as was I by seeing each other on Enfields. I asked him if he had experienced any problems with his Bullet, which he had purchased, second or tenth-hand. He said, "Yes, lots." I looked closer at his bike, recognized the mirrors, which were most distinctive, being mounted on curlicue stems. I asked if he bought the bike in Kathmandu, and he said "Yes, for $800.00." I asked if he got it from a Brit and he said he had. I remembered the Brit, a young guy, who had told me he bought the bike from a local and was going to ride it back to England if he could cash in his plane ticket. The new owner told me the Brit spent one day traveling on the bike in Nepal, turned around and took the bike back to Kathmandu. The Nepal drivers and roads scared him so badly he sold it to my new acquaintance and used the cash to fly back to England. The new owner, from Brazil, at first thought he had gotten a good deal, but after several weeks of electrical (electric's by Lucas) and mechanical problems he was cursing the Enfield. Still, he told me he was determined to ride it for the rest of his trip, primarily because he too had cashed in his airline ticket to pay for the motorcycle. We traded names, some stories, and agreed to meet in six months when we both plan on being in New York City, USA. I am looking forward to the rest of his saga.

In Varanasi I ran into fellow globetrotter Matthew Newland. I had bumped into Mathew several times a year ago as we both rode our BMW GS motorcycles through Africa, me on my second ride around the world, he on his first. In Varanasi he could almost smell the Thames of his native London and he was beginning to feel the miles of 1-½ years on the road. We had been in touch continuously since meeting at Victoria Falls in South Africa, but only short notes via email. We spent several evenings filling in the blanks and comparing stories about BMW GS woes on the road. Finding some beer to wash down the tales was much simpler than in Bangladesh (where the Muslims tend to hide their drink suppliers). In India the supply lines were better, as was the price, at $1.00 a bottle, and the zymurgy seems to be better understood as the chilled swill tasted like beer and not the Begal Tiger pee of Bangladesh.

Matthew was traveling with fellow road warrior Rob Arnell on a Suzuki DR650. Arnell had been bouncing around Asia for six months, going where he had been told he could not, without the benefit of a Carnet de Passage. A true adventurer, Rob had managed to get into India, Burma, Thailand, Nepal and Indonesia without this expensive travel document. We traded "Carnetless" travel tips for hours and I was gladdened to find that I have not been alone in my pursuits around the globe. I would never have tried to enter India without a Carnet de Passage, believing it to be impossible. Rob told me how he did it, taking three weeks to clear customs. For me the three weeks means "not possible," but I learned how it can be possible.

Varanasi moved to the top of my list of "dirtiest cities in the world." It is to Varanasi that thousands of Hindus come to be cremated, a cooking that consumes 150 plus each day. After they are cremated their ashes are pushed into the river, the Ganges. Those with diseases like TB or leprosy are not cremated. Instead, they are just slid into the water. Twenty feet from where bodies were floating and ashes blackened the water my hired boatman took a drink straight from the Ganges. I asked him how it tasted and he said, "Great." I passed on even getting my feet wet in the Ganges, knowing that some world health group sample the river and found it to be 250,000 dirtier than acceptable for minimum health standards.

Allahabad was a few days further up the road and promised to be a great party, so I decided to join the estimated 10-30 million people who hoped to bathe in the Ganges during the Kumbh Mela. Every 30 years, on the night of a full moon in February, some vortex sucks the entire bather's sins out of them if they take a dip in the river, which sounded like what I needed to cleanse my capitalist soul, so I wandered into Allahabad.

Upon inspecting the water in the Ganges, a hundred miles upstream from Varanasi, I decided it was still too dirty to put on my skin. While millions washed their sins away, I decided my shoe was all I could risk in the ritual. The rubber did not melt. I was told a true believer must not only bathe in the Ganges but also pee. I did neither, but suspect the millions who did felt better afterwards.

The day after the Kumbh Mela I rode past 100's of thousands of bathers who were returning to where ever they came from and noticed not serenity on their faces but more a resolution to their lives. I had expected to see them jumping like Baptists after a southern style holy-roller sermon, but was struck with how unexcited they looked. My guess is that if your sin in life was to be born and you washed that sin away during Cumber Meal you have not much left to be happy about.

From the depression of the Ganges I moved to the higgledypiggledy art of Khajaraho. Some call the temples of this area "Love Temples," because they depict various forms of intercourse in the stone sculpture.

One of the "Love Temples", with the thousands of sculptures, both inside and out, depicting various acts of love and intercourse. A massive undertaking, these temples are set in one of the cleanest environments in India I had seen in weeks. A breath of fresh air, especially after the dirt of Varanasi and the smell of burning bodies.

In Khajaraho I again ran into fellow motorcycle travellers Matthew and Rob. I found them gazing at the scene above carved numerous times into the stone on one of the temples. For these two world traveling Brits I suspect there were some questions about who, what, and the why these salacious sculptures were carved in the first place.

It was the "off season" for tourists when I rode into Khajaraho, so one pass through town as I looked for a place to stay let all the touts know I was a motorcycle traveler. It was amazing that the next day, as I walked down the street, helmetless and without my Darien Aerostitch riding suit, the touts knew who I was. They used knowing that I was on a bike as way to approach me to sell what they were trying to sell, by saying, "Hey, you are the motorcycle guy aren't you?" If I answered anything I opened the door for continued communication, which was usually "Where are you from?" As I travel around the world I have found the best answer to this question is to answer "Granada." None know where it is and it stops them. Others try to pretend they know where it is, saying, "Oh yes, it is snowing there now, and how do you like it here?" I then answer, as I walk away, "Granada, not Canada." By then I have got a couple of steps on them and chastened, they move off.

The sculptures also depicted how the temples were constructed, with carvings of animals used for heavy work such as elephants and donkeys. In the above carving one can see the construction workers used the donkeys for more than just beasts of burden.

Agra hosts one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal. I am not really much of a tourist in my motorcycle travels around the world, seldom stopping to climb through castles, poke in old churches or search museums, unless they are motorcycle museums. However, to pass up the "Taj", having ridden this far, would have been like not stopping at Daytona Beach during Bike Week if I had been passing on I-95.

For me, the "wonder" of the Taj was the price difference I had to pay to get in, $20.00. The locals paid 50 cents, which meant I paid 40 times as much as they did, making me wonder if we in America charge India residents 40 times as much as Americans to visit the Statue of Liberty or the Grand Canyon. The same policy applied to the Red Fort and the "Baby Taj" in Agra.

Foreign visitors are making someone wealthy through this "wonder policy." It was sad to see the beggars on the streets in Agra, and visit a rug factory where workers make $6.00 per month, knowing the "trickle down" of my $20.00 does not reach them. As a student of economics I would sometime like to research the local multiplier effect of my $20.00, suspecting that millions of $'s never see Agra after it is taken at the ticket booth at the Taj.

My visa was scheduled to run out 5 days before I was slated to leave India, so I had to make a quick run into Delhi from Agra to get a 5-day extension. Riding motorcycle in India means an average riding day of between 200-300 kilometers. A roundtrip ride Agra to Delhi and return would have been 500 kilometers, so I decided to try a train. Four hours from Agra and $1.00 later I was downtown Delhi, realizing that to ride the motorcycle would have taken me all day and cost me ten times as much. The visa extension was free and took ten minutes to secure. By 7:00 PM the same day I was back in Agra, 500 kilometers under my belt and ready for 500 more. The day made me see, again, that riding motorcycle around the world is not the cheapest or easiest way to cover ground. The downside of the trip was the cramped train and the smells. Add to that the scenery of 100's of poor people doing their ablutions alongside the railroad track and I quickly realized why I opt to ride on two wheels around the world.

While the Taj Mahal was well deserving of the designation of being one of the Seven Wonders of the World, I was turned off by the price gouging by the India government, security checks and the crowds. The upside of my visit was I was able to put my shoe into the water of the pool in front of the Taj. The water in the pool was filled with slime, candy wrappers and some small coins, not what we see on the post cards or in the movies. My shoe did come away cleaner looking, possibly because the spooge of the sacred Ganges from the Kumbh Mela was washed off.

(Next I plan to hunt camels, elephants and sand in Rajasthan. The Enfield Bullet 500 does not like sand, especially deep sand when fully loaded, and my last experience with a camel, in Africa, got my Gore-Tex jacket burned with camel spit. Elephants and I have a mutual respect for each other and have stayed apart, except for when several tried to run me over in Botswana, but I suspect that was more them thinking I was a bush, parked as I was, trying to take their photograph)