Josh and JJ proud behind the handlebars of their new purchase, a 1995 LML Vespa.

After spending a week in Varanasi recovering from our 400km row and a variety of gastro-intestinal ailments, Josh and JJ bought a 15 year-old scooter and put me along with a camera and the bags in a hired car/go-cart with an incompetent madman. The phlegm-like sea foam-green scooter, which runs on a miraculously small and cantankerous 2-stroke engine, has no front brake, no headlight, no taillight, and is entirely incapable of idling. We’ve now somehow managed to hobble our way through the Bihar, the birthplace of Buddhism, which has the rather unexpected self-proclaimed title of being India’s “Lawless State,” and are now prepared to finish our journey through the world’s largest delta to the Indian Ocean.

“Scooters are not in fashion,” the previous owner of the scooter warned us back in Varanasi, eyeing Josh and JJ suspiciously as he handed them the keys. “I don’t know what you have been told, but nobody wants to drive scooter. Only poor who can not afford motorcycle do.”

Before buying the scooter Josh and JJ collectively owned one motor between the two of them, and that was in a chainsaw back in Wisconsin. “Be careful. Josh is terrible with a clutch,” Josh’s sister, Sarah, warned us in a Facebook message on our first day with the scooter shortly after Josh had, coincidentally, popped the clutch, skidded out of control, and crashed into a parked semi-truck, bending the steering column…JJ drives the scooter now.

JJ assumes all driving responsibilities after learning Josh is terrible with a clutch.

There are two inescapable truths we’ve found while traveling with the scooter. The first— The scooter WILL break down every day. We’ve come to accept and expect this. The second—The driver of our hired car WILL NOT help. In fact, he will likely drive ridiculously far ahead, then back-track the wrong way up a 4-lane highway, stop to ask bums, beggars, and small school children for directions when there is only one road to take, and swindle you out of as many rupees as he can. Then, he will demand a tip. We’ve come to expect this now, but I still have a hard time accepting it, personally.

“Life is suffering,” I remember JJ telling me when we first started this trip. “Once you accept that, you can do anything.” I laughed. Now, at least when you’re riding through Northern India on a second-hand scooter, I think he may be right.