We were out of bed by 6:00 am and on the road by 7:30. Even with a new tube, my front tire is still losing 4-5 psi every day. In anticipation of no lunch stop, we had a big breakfast before leaving. It was not raining when we left, but the sky looked threatening. Tropical storm Thane made landfall yesterday near Pondy and may be heading our way. One advantage to being on the road so early was that traffic was very light. We made it out of the city quickly and onto good, four-lane highway for the first 120 miles. We set our throttles at 45 mph and made good time until the road turned bad. The rest of the trip alternated between good, four-lane and really bad two-lane road.

About 70 miles south of Nagpur, we got stopped at a railroad crossing, and in the 15 minutes we waited, it started raining. When I was planning this trip, one of my goals was for all of our gear to be waterproof. But when we did the final packing in Portland, we found that the Pelicans and Ortliebs didn't hold all of our gear, so we pressed our old daypacks into service. These packs ride between our knees in the step through and are unfortunately, not waterproof. Before we left the US, we discussed buying small drybags to use instead, but we liked the convenience of the daypacks. My solution was a couple of “custom” raincovers from the Hefty bag company. While waiting for the train, we bagged up our daypacks and wondered if we would ever make it to Nagpur. Finally, the crossing gates were lifted and we rode the final 70 miles in the rain.

We made it to Nagpur by around 5:30 pm but could not find Central Avenue. I am finding that my OpenStreetMap maps of India are incomplete for some non-tourist cities. While the map of Nagpur displays many roads, they are all just named, “road.” We knew Central Ave should be near the train station, so we found the train station and then rode around. After about 30 minutes of not finding the hotel area, Re finally called, and with the help of the hotel and some passersby, we made it to the area. We pulled up in front of the hotel Re had called, only to find that they had no motorbike parking there, but we could park at the “Hotel Grand,” located a couple blocks away. We rode to the Hotel Grand and found nothing grand about it. It was down a dark and dingy street in an area where, if there were motorcycle chop shops in Nagpur, this is where they would be. We declined to park at the Hotel Grand and rode back around to Central Ave to look for better prospects. A local tout spotted us perusing the Lonely Planet and directed us to a nearby hotel where they allowed us to park our bikes in their front hallway. The evening was cool enough that we didn't need AC, but we decided to get it anyway to help dry our still damp gear overnight. Bikes secured, we went around the corner for a very excellent thali dinner and then to the local wine shop for a bottle of celebratory whiskey with which to toast the new year. After today's long ride and facing another one tomorrow, we decided around 9:30 pm that it was midnight somewhere, toasted the new year, and went to bed.

340 miles in 9.5 hours. Today was a day full of death. We saw a couple of dead cows, several dead dogs and goats, and three what must have been fatal accidents. In the six months since we began, we have covered 13,800 miles and 18 US states, nipped into 1 Canadian province, rode through 7 African countries, and 6 Indian states. All on 100cc bikes!