The most creepy accommodation during the trip was in Naugachia, Bihar state. The hotel, actually rather grim not very clean hostel was above some shops. I appeared to be the only person staying. The proprietor was friendly enough. However, his lackey was rather strange. In the morning he seemed very reluctant to return my passport, even though I had paid in full by cash up front. In the end, shouting at him, “passport or police” did the job.I took in Varanasi and Agra on my way to Delhi. The plains were hot and rather dusty at times. It was usually possible to tell when you were approaching a town or village as it would be surrounded by greenery, in contrast to the dusty barren fields around. Sometimes the road would be shaded by a strip of greenery and trees, which made the the open sections especially noticeable.
India definitely wins the award for the worst driving because of a combination of aggregation, low skill and lack of law enforcement all compounded by sheer volume. I found that the style of driving varied from place-to-place as I cycled across India. In some towns they liked to drive so close they had the wing mirrors folded in. The number of fairly fresh accident scenes was unbelievable. These ranged from the bizarre; the cab looked like it had detached and rolled off its chassis as it stopped at the traffic lights to the truly gruesome. In India undertaking, swerving from lane-to-lane weaving around the traffic are all perfectly normal. In one of the more grim examples it looked like a car had attempted to undertake using the hard should, only to be faced with a parked lorry with steel tubing hanging off the back by several meters. The car had been sliced open from the windows up. Anyone inside would most likely have been decapitated. There are good medical facilities, but ambulances literally will not seep you up off the road until they know who has the medical insurance or credit card! It was during a short stretch along a main highway where I came the closest to being involved in an accident. Approaching a town spread out along the highway a bus stopped across lanes 1 and 2 of the three lane highway. A motor cyclist was to my right and had slowed to a similar speed to myself. I decided to aim left and go down the inside, at that moment a pedestrian stepped off the centre of the road and straight into the motorcycle at point-blank range. The motorcyclist came off, but the motorcycle righted itself and went onwards, pining a lady bus passenger up against the side of the bus. It went with quite a thump, she must have had cracked ribs for sure. I pulled up at the front of the bus, you don’t want to be stopped at the back here, a direct hit up the backside by a car or lorry being the likely result. A BMW pulled up a minute or two later, probably a doctor, BMWs being a distinct rarity in India. In Bihar state there seemed to be a desire to have the loudest horn. All the horns were so loud and they are so frequently used that I think it has damaged my hearing. He who has the loudest horn has the right of way seemed to be the theory. It was demonstrably a flawed theory, especially when attempting to turn across a dual carriageway.