Our ride today was from from Agra to Lucknow and totalled 480km’s in distance and was simply a transport ride together to the Nepal boarder.

As usual we stopped at a road side restaurant for lunch, the food was pretty good (local India dish that we can’t remember the name of). Soon after eating the food we looked around to see the dishes that we had just been eating from being washed in a mucky whole…. Lovely!

Major roads pretty much all the way which was a result, however we missed a turn which resulted us ending up arriving at Lucknow at peak traffic which is a real problem on the big BMW’s. It took two hours to travel 8km.

At one of the stops unfortunately Steve dropped his bike when taking it off the stand. Thankfully the locals were there to help and soon got the bike upwright.

We had a few heavy showers which resulted in us getting soaked but when temps are in the low 30’s it’s is nice relief. At one stage the rain was so heavy we were down to 60km/h on a major highway.

the countryside was very green and we noticed a cart being towed by camel’s which was the first time on our travels we had seen this.

For some reason there were a large number of vehicle that took to driving down the wrong side of a dual carriageway, head on into the opposing traffic, rather than sticking to their side of the road. Very dangerous as it would at times have vehicles going in all directions to avoid the idiots.

We arrived quite late, around 9:00pm at the hotel which was nice compared to what we had been staying in, but still no wifi.

It’ s Friday morning and we are planning to leave at latest Saturday morning to head towards Nepal and with Saturday being a holiday due to the Indian Independence day I had to have my tyres arrive and fitted today. With great assistance from the team at The Vibe Hotel who made numerous phone calls and even called their account manager at head office who also uses the same carrier we managed to get the delivery drivers mobile number! By now it was 10:30am and we managed to speak with the driver who after a quick chat, had the tyres delivered to the dealer within the next half hour; relief!

The tyres were fitted and the bikes were all sorted now ready for the second half of our journey with a clean bill of health. Bring it on!

Steve had been suffering from an iffy tummy over the last day or so and was also feeling somewhat better by the day’s end he was also feeling on the mend so tomorrow we are back on the road.

Today was to be our 3rd day stopping in New Delhi  with my bike being serviced today (hopefully tyres will arrive) and Steve will aim to strap himself in the rental car and let the driver do his thing so he can go back up town for a 3rd day running to collect the visa’s.

I pleased that my bike servicing went well with no additional work required, however I was still awaiting the arrival of the tyres and the week was running out as it was a Thursday already.

Fortunately I had now been sent the consignment details for the tyre shipment so we were now able to chase up the delivery at this end.

The great news was that Steve collected the visa’s without any hassle. We were both looking forward to visiting Myanmar however the visit process when arriving overland was more difficult as the application date was time critical and had to be done in person rather than a simple prior to our original departure.

Today was to be a busy day as we had several items to attend to including submitting our visa applications for Myanmar as soon as possible.

Fortunetly The Vibe Hotel where we were staying offered a late model hire car with driver for only $36US a full day which worked out a treat when having to navigate Delhi.

First we were off to the Myanmar consulate to submit our visa applications. First problem for the day occurs as the visa office is only open between 10:00am & 11:00am daily (despite the website saying all day) and we arrived at 11:40am! It would not have been so bad but due to the traffic and location it was a two hour drive each way. We checked with the guards what we would need for tomorrow and off we went.

Next stop was to visit a camping store as my camel back bladder had failed recently and Steve required a new bag and a top. We were fortunate the driver knew his way around and although we had to use an interpreter via his mobile phone to discuss anything. We were soon at a great little camping store and we were able to get what we wanted.

Next we had a break for food which involved making a quick run from the car to the shop due to the monsoon rain occurring.

After lunch it was off to a bank nearby our hotel to obtain a bank cheque for the visa applications. The first bank had a fault with their printer so we then drove another 15km (each way) to another bank that would provide a cheque.

More on the cheque later but for now it was time to introduce ourselves to the service department of the BMW dealer where we were to get our bikes serviced as they had traveled 14,750kms since last having a spanner on them.

It was great to meet the people I had been emailing some 6 months earlier as part of the preparations for our Mad Ride. We were hoping the tyres I had being shipped from Mumbai (I had pre shipped them there as tyres are not available in India) had not arrived yet. A BIG shout out to Shyam Narayanan who is my Great work colleague back at Suncorp in Sydney who assisted greatly with his cousin in Mumbai to have the tyres shipped. Thanks loads!

We arranged to drop the bikes off tomorrow and hopefully the tyres would be in by then?

We had achieved most of what we wanted but it was going to be a case of heading back to the Myanmar consulate tomorrow to have another go at submitting our visa’s.