The planned route for the first day was:
Delhi –> Gurgaon –> Dharu Heda –> Rewari –> Narnaul –> Chirawa –> Jhunjunu –> Mandawa

But I lost my way somewhere after Rewari, and reached Behror instead of Narnaul. This cost me more than an hour (and an extra 50 km), and it was quite late by the time I finally made it to Chirawa. So instead of the original plan of halting at Mandawa, I decided to spend the night in Chirawa itself. Finding a hotel to stay in was not very easy, but there were some helpful people who guided me to a reasonably priced place, which had a private parking space for my motorcycle.

Highway

Desert Road

The next morning I continued my journey till Mandawa, where I expected to find a fort. The fort had been converted into a hotel, and from outside seemed rather unimpressive. There were a few large havelis in town, but I could only take snaps from outside.

The hotel that was once a fort

What was a Kerala registered bus doing in Mandawa?!!

One of the havelis of Mandawa

Next stop was Fatehpur, after which the plan was to ride for about 20 km towards Bikaner for the ultimate desert road experience. But I’d made good time, so I rode all the way till Ratangarh - which was supposedly called the Varanasi of Rajasthan. I spent about half and hour strolling around on the lawns of the peaceful, surprisingly clean and well maintained Hanuman temple at Ratangarh. I was also surprised to discover that in these parts Hanuman is called Balaji. Down south, Balaji refers to Venkateshwara, whose main temple is at Tirupati.

Balaji (Hanuman) temple at Ratangarh

From there, I rode on to Salasar, and this kind of road was exactly what I was after. For most of the time, one could see the road stretching all the way to the horizon; and once you got to the farthest point you could see, the road would again continue all the way to the horizon! On both sides of the road was the desert, with the sand getting blown onto the road every now and then. There was hardly any traffic, and you could spot a camel or two occasionally.

Long narrow road

Your occasional travel companion

Salasar is a holy place famous for its Hanuman temple, but most people in the hotels were unfriendly, bordering on being downright rude. Hanuman alone knows why, but none of the hotels was willing to let a single guy rent a room for the night. People on the streets however, were much better and I befriended an ice-cream seller. He said he had no clue why people at the hotels would have nothing to do with me as soon as they learnt that I was travelling by myself, but he did suggest trying my luck at a Dharamshala nearby. A Dharamshala is by definition a place where one should get accommodation without having to pay for it, but this particular one wanted quite a high price for a ridiculously basic room. The room did not even have a bed, but just a mattress on the floor. But since beggars cannot be choosers, and since I would otherwise have been faced with having to spend the night outside under the stars (and it gets super cold at night in the desert) I gladly took the room. Then I spent a long time looking for an internet centre. I even tried asking some policemen, but they had no idea what the Internet was, let alone where I could get online. Now here’s a potential business opportunity for some enterprising person who doesn’t mind living in Salasar.

There was nothing about my room that would make me want to sleep in, so at 6.30 am the next day I was already out of the Dharamshala and on the motorcycle. I had come as far as I had time for, and it was now time to head back to Delhi. This time I rode via Sikar, Udaipurvati, Neem Ka Thana, Kot Putli, Behror and Gurgaon, and made it back to OJ’s just before 4 pm.

Early morning on the road

I had covered 754 km in 3 days of riding which was nothing short of remarkable given my affiliation to one particular gang :)