nice pics and log there sir
Keep em coming..
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Jhunjhunu - Mandawa &amp; Back

Sorry for taking so long in putting up the rest of it...

So here it is:

As I said, the environment and surrounds were typically Rajasthan and to get the mood right, here are some more pics of the same.





At Jhunjhunu we kept going around looking to top up with fuel. We had comfortably reached upto this point on the gas we had topped up in Delhi and as we were not sure if we would like to stay at Mandawa of would go on till Samode Palace further up, we decided to take more gas here. It took as a while to find a BP station where we could get Speed and gave our thirsty bikes a complete fillup. Then we set about going to Mandawa which is approximately 28 kilometers further up. Here the road turned to a single lane affair and it was clearly a road less travelled.

We took some detours on side roads to explore the interiors. This shot was taken here:



Tinu and Sunny decided to try their luck here with some off roading on the Yamaha 1300's and while Sunny managed to come out of pure sand riding quite well, Tinu toppled over. He soon came out and decided to give up.



Now it was onwards to Mandawa. We hit the Mandawa fort first. On hearing the sound of all the bikes coming into the courtyard, Ken (Kencool) showed up. It transpired that he had had a change in his itinerary and was having his lunch in the same place as we had arrived. We decided to have lunch aswell at the fort. After a few beers and a lousy lunch which included being bored by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala who was sitting on the table next to us, we decided that the fort was not the place for us to stay.

Having tasted the beer, we decided that it was no fun to go on to Samode and instead more Beer would be nice. So we promptly booked ourselves in at Mandawa Desert Resort. (INR 2500 per room including breakfast) and rode in to the place. It is just 1 kilometer away from the Fort and is in complete contrast to the Fort. We liked the ambience.





After having checked into the room and freshening up, we decided to go for horse riding. It is a 300 acre property and has approx 10-15 horses.



Riding was a mixed bag. I got the worst horse and as I had been warned that this one can really take off, the ride for me turned out to be really bad. I was a bit upset at this but the others had great fun with their riding.

It was dark now and we decided to go for a night ride upto Mukandgarh, which is 14 Km's further down the road. This ride was awesome. Dinner was great too. We had a bonfire lit for us and were joined by another group of some 20 Germans who were starting their trip around Rajasthan the next morning. They planned to hit Bikaner, Jaiselmer, Ranakpur, Jodhpur and Udaipur on Bullet classics.

The next morning after having checked out, it was time to leave. I took a snapshot of the Germans



We asked the resort guys to bring the horse so that we could take some final good bye snaps.







On our way back, we wanted to take a different route than the one we had taken to get in. We were told that we could take a detour from Jhunjhunu. So we kept asking around and this time, instead of heading towards Narnaul, turned towards Loharu. The road from this point onwards was amazing. A good 100 Kilometers of 2 lane smooth road with the most amazing scenery.

When we stopped for tea at this point, I managed to capture three generations of commute:





Well, after crossing Loharu which we had reached in good time, it was time to enter Haryana and we had the worst time of our lives. The road from Loharu upto Najafgarh is really bad, infact backbreaking. We stopped at Jhajjar for lunch. The bikes were mobbed here.

We had intended to get into Delhi via bahadurgarh after riding on from Jhajjar but based on the local advise took the Najafgarh turn. We could have also taken a turn for Gurgaon instead of Najafgarh but followed up on the advise of the locals. Key learning is that Locals are so used to the bad roads that they only consider distance (short route) to be optimal and advise accordingly. For our bikes however, it was the worst advise we could have followed.

On entering Najafgarh, we found the place choked with traffic and it took us 1 hour to cover less than half a kilometer. This stretch was energy sapping and really bad.

Finally we found our way to Dwarka and headed home.

Over all it was a nice trip.

Nice crisp log there, supported with good pics!

Enjoyed throughly..thanks for sharing Anurag!...

Nice pics sir !!!Hope you had a great time in Rajasthan

Thanks Kurt and Akshay

Well presented log anurag sir, but a little confusion, actually which guy toppled over in sand ? You have given both names as Tinu.

And this pose seems to be the best of all

Huge machines, clear roads - great trip
Enjoyed reading the post and great pics

Nice log with great pics Sir

Do i need to tell more about this sir..
just one word is enough.. FANTABULOUS.. .u rock.. ..

btw nice and simple write up with huge machines on board.. keep it up sir..

@Nio, thanks for pointing out the typo.... I should have reviewed before posting... Well, Sunny and Tinu went into the sand and Tinu toppled over.

Lovely pics. Short and sweet writeup. Lil text on how the bikes fared on the Indian highway and city roads would be cherry on the cake.

Anurang Ji, nice pics..and write up.

I never knew about the Midnight Star..and it has got so much resemblence to the Harleys which were featured in the movie "Wild Hogs".

Well i was also wondering to point out this question, how was your experince with bikes on the roads of rajasthan?
Btw loved the pics and nice text
Thanks a lot for sharing sir.

The bikes are extremely comfortable and reliable. We had no problems with flats, leaks nor did we have any problems with things like skidding etc.. The bikes are clearly kitted to cruise for a very long ride and you could actually be doing 200 Kms without a break and still be OK. There is however a rider here, weather permitting. In extreme heat and cold this would be difficult I guess.

The Yam's are very light and easy to handle. They are belt drive and are also very silent. For someone who is used to the torque and power of the Intruder, switching to the Yamaha makes him feel a huge difference immediately.

THe bikes handled the potholed roads of Haryana quite well but we had to ride very slow (in the region of 40-50K's per hour). As it is, during the entire trip, except when there was an urge to Zip and we would accelerate to 160-170 for a short while, we were cruizing in the 90 - 100 Kmph zone 99% of the time.

A lot also depends on the experience and riding skills of the riders but overall, while there were people in the group who had done only 1 trip before, everyone enjoyed thoroughly and we were mishap free.

Both Intruders returned different mileages. When the WineRed one would start showing reserve, I would still be going strong.

We did have problems due to the low GC of the bikes... The speed-breakers in Haryana are really bad and there were some occaisions when the bike's scraped the base and a couple of times, as we could not see them, there were people jumping up!




I dont remember the exact look of the bikes in the wild hog as I saw it a long time ago, but, yes, they are very beautiful to look at - almost feline.

Awesome photos and write-up Anurag sir! Enjoyed it thoroughly.