Cycling in Northern India – 1995

Gaziabad – Gajrola

Woke up at seven by a room boy who was bouncing our door; ‘chai’ was coming up for breakfast. Just outside the city we met two other cyclists; dutchmen on a world tour! The road was busy with traffic and many local cyclists and pedestrians etc. But between villages it often was surprisingly quiet. Easy to find a good spot to have lunch with bananas, peanuts, cookies and the mineral water we had bought in Gaziabad.

Gajrola was a prosperous little town. The even had their own Rotary-club. Our hotel was full of people but it just was an engagement-part that left soon. That night we seemed to be the only guests. At bed-time our small thermometer still was pointing at 32 degrees Celsius. The ceiling fan was operating, but only at full-speed. The choice was difficult: be blown away or to cook slowly!

Gajrola – Rampur

Another very hot day coming up. The Tourist Bungalow at Moradabad looked very inviting to us. The served a good lunch but more important: icy-cold Pepsi’s!

We really needed that extra rest because before us was a another challenge. Cycling trough Moradabad. The traffic was a chaotic beyond belief. Hundreds of overloaded trucks, cars and rickshaws were crawling through the centre of an already very crowded and busy city. It was only km’s after we had passed Moradabad that the traffic was thinning. At this part we only had to get of the road every 5 or 10 minutes to make way for one of the hundreds of trucks on this stretch of highway. Our map was showing our destination Rampur as a city with up to 500.000 inhabitants. But upon arrival it looked more like a village.

Not wanting to repeat our hot and sleepless night we checked in a hotel roomwith AC. Wonderful, until the power fails. The hotels generator was doing ok but of course not powerful enough to make the AC work.

Rampur – Haldwani

After the junction to Haldwani at least 80% of the traffic dissapeared. Everything seemed to be greener and quieter. We were now cycling through endless sugarcane fields. Just after lunchtime the road started to climb very very slowly. The mountains were coming up!

Finding a hotel in Haldwani was not easy. As usual this Indian town had no real city centre. As experienced India cyclists we made our way to the local police-station. The local police is mostly very willing to help visitors. A 3-star officer immediately called a boy to bring us to a good hotel. Without his help we would never have found the friendly Kailash View Hotel.