I got my first flat tire just outside of Ajmer as we shoved off headed to Udaipur. I’m not sure what caused the flat since there are about a million road hazards here, but it happened on a morning where the rains had turned the road into a nice messy mixture of mud and other nasty things. Changing the tire under those circumstances was less than great, but at least we were in a somewhat underpopulated area and only drew a crowd of about ten who watched us with utter fascination as I inflated a new inner tube.
That mishap behind us, we headed south on highway 8. Mostly the Indian highways have been fantastic, but we hit a stretch of 20 +/- miles of road construction that was pretty much hell. So if there’s any bike tourists reading this, in five or so years they should have all that cleared up nicely 
That night we enjoyed our first night of camping. We were perilously low on water but managed finally to find a place with enough bottled mineral water and local water that we felt confident finding a camp spot. There was a dirt road that headed off the highway that we boldly chose.
Of course we only got about a hundred yards off the road before we were spotted by the local kids. Though we pushed our bikes well off the road, up a ravine, and over a ridge, fifteen minutes later we had a crowd of fifteen gathered, fascinated by our every move.
The next morning we were greeted by repeated shouts of “Hello, coming to my house!” from one of the lads we had met the previous evening. After packing our tents and trudging down the hill, we were excitedly invited to join the locals for some morning chai tea, before we insisted that we had to get on the road and headed along toward Udaipur.
