From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Fourteen - The AH-1

A relatively "calm" street in Varanasi.

The Indian road system that I had known since leaving Bhutan was as disorganized as the rubbish heaps I so often saw along the way. I have come to expect my rides from one city to the next to be a fight through a gauntlet of bazaar crowds and cacophonous skeins of traffic. I inevitably get lost and swallowed into the maelstrom of Indian cities. However, I have learned that whatever your expectation of India, when you embark on a new day, you’ll be surprised.

I left from the hotel in Varanasi and wove Solivagant in and out of the morning bazaar chaos, as I had anticipated. But not long afterward, I took a turn and found myself in the strangest place: an expressway that looked every bit like an expressway back home.

The AH-1. It had three, flawless, clean lanes, bereft of potholes and debris. It had a median that separated the opposing traffic, who also had their own three lanes and who, magically, followed them. It was as if the rubbish pile that I was so used to expecting to drive through was plowed clear in a straight line, leaving nothing but open, easy road ahead.

Ah, the AH-1. It was a dream of a road. I could go eighty, ninety, one hundred kilometers per hour. There were no cows to weave around, no rickshaws to edge through. A paradise of a road. Just as I began to get comfortable, the essential Indian lesson reared its ugly head again: Expect nothing.

The danger with a road like the AH-1 is that it makes you complacent. You can listlessly follow the straight paths and soon lose the hardened, animalistic instincts that you need to survive the other kinds of Indian roads. It was at such an instant of shortsightedness that the motorcycle in front of me flipped his turn signal, indicating that he would turn right across the median. Instead, he slammed on his brakes and quickly swerved left and clipped me on the side. The hit was strong enough to send a shock of pain through my foot and I quickly slowed to a stop and assessed the damage.

The man looked on behind me, waiting, checking if I would come over and berate him for his recklessness. My bike was okay. My foot, though painful, appeared to not be significantly hurt. I looked back at the man again. He was still waiting. I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. He made his turn and drove off. It was another minor accident, so common in India that it is not even worth a conversation between the two parties.

Around noon, a new challenge arose on the AH-1. The Loo, an infamous dry-season wind came fiercely from the west and hit me head on. The Loo is a wind of biblical ferocity. It is the harbinger of drought and heatwave, of dust storms that can blackout the sun. It blows heat as hot or hotter than the daily temperature, up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and can cause heatstroke, even for those trying to escape in the shade. At times it can be fatal. 

Luckily, The Loo was a was a forgiving 90 degrees when I rode against it on the AH-1. The wind beat against me relentlessly and I decided that I could not endure it for a sustained period of time. I was stuck on an overpass that crossed the behemoth city of Kanpur though, and I could not get off of it easily. The Loo and the sun baked the asphalt and the heat came at me from all angles. I began to get light-headed and knew that I had to find a motel. I could not go on in those conditions. But there was nothing in sight. For an hour I rode against the Loo and moved up and down the overpass, crossing the city. By the time I found a rakish, disreputable motel, I thought I’d collapse from the heat. 

As always with these random stops, when I took off my helmet and entered through the doors, the patrons sitting around stared at me in surprise. I nodded and smiled, but the smile was only returned with more intense stares. A liter of cold water and a Coke had me back to coherency and I spent the rest of the evening and that night sitting under a fan and swatting at mosquitoes as I sweat and went in and out of a fitful sleep.