Out to Samode Before the Heat

Sunday, out of the house before six. August is nearly finished and these are the last mornings of the year that are worth getting up for, so I did not want to spend this one at home with tea and the phone.

Took the Sikar road out through Chomu. Trucks were still parked along the shoulder with their drivers asleep underneath them, and once past the last set of lights the road opened up completely. The Aravallis after two months of rain do not look like the Aravallis at all. Everything is green, the kind of green that holds for about six weeks and then goes back to brown until next June. Twice there was water still running across the road where the nallahs cross it. Both times slow, both times fine.

The Yezdi is a single and it never lets you forget that, but at fifty five or sixty on an empty road it settles into something you can hold for an hour without your hands going numb. That is where I kept it the whole way out.

Samode by half past seven. The palace was still shut, the village was already awake, and I parked below the gate and sat with tea for a while watching a man wash a tractor with a bucket. An older fellow rolled in on a Bullet, parked next to me, drank his tea without saying anything, gave one nod and left. Best kind of conversation there is.

Came back the same way and was home by ten. The tar at the edges was already going soft by then, and that is the whole argument for leaving early here. After noon nobody in Rajasthan rides for the pleasure of it, they ride because they have somewhere to be.

Chain got a wipe and a fresh coat when I got in, it had collected half the road on the way back. Other than that the bike did not ask me for anything.