Biking allows one to get under the skin of a country. I have already mentioned how great it is to cruise cities on a bike; you blend in more and you can cover a lot of ground quite quickly. Cycling through the countryside, while slower, enables one to taste the air, smell the flora and see a country as it is not supposed to be seen by the tourist.
Assuming one isn’t staring blankly at the tarmac during a slog of a day, there is plenty of time to look around, take in the scenery and observe the locals. It was never the plan to do such long days on the last leg from Kathmandu to Delhi but it is good to know that I can handle eight hours in the saddle if need be. Indeed, a typical day on the road in India was not much fun. There were two days when I really enjoyed the scenery but they were the two days that I was on less busy roads and so I could relax somewhat. Secondary roads were not really an option elsewhere on the route and so the ride was fairly stressful.
What the hotel owner sees when I arrive - I was just trying my best to blend in.India presented several challenges: the heat, the dust, the noise, the crazy driving, poor sanitation, scarce accommodation and malaria. Thankfully the heat was the least of my worries. While it did reach 41 degrees on one day there was plenty of breeze such that I did not really feel it. India is pretty dry post monsoon season and so the dust was a serious issue. Perhaps a snorkel and goggles would have saved me hoovering up so much dirt with my gaping mouth. What’s more, developing countries have no concept of pollution, noise and litter pollution is everywhere and so your senses are bombarded. In terms of their road manners, they drove me mad. In addition the poor sanitation made food-stops tricky and so I would try to eat breakfast and dinners at the hotel where possible. Also, I would ask them to make me a few sandwiches that I could eat later for lunch. While the road-side has plenty of open-air cafes the utensils can be washed in the muddy streams behind the huts. As I don’t have the stomach for Indian food in the West, I certainly wasn’t going to have the tummy for it in India. Thus, it made sense to dodge all seemingly unsafe establishments full-stop. This limited my food options dramatically; however, I was determined to pass though India without getting sick even if I ended up getting sick of the place. The most eventful part of my day was arriving at the hotel. In Nepal every town had some sort of tea-house accommodation and you could reasonably expect to find a mid-size town every 30kms. I had assumed that there would be some sort of travelling business-class in India (being more developed than Nepal) and so accommodation would not be an issue. It was in fact my biggest problem. Hotels were pretty hard to come by in the countryside and so I had to ride the big days just to make big towns where there would be some sort of accommodation. Camping was not an option as I needed hotel food and a bit of space to myself. I’d arrive into a town pretty beat up after the ride and quiz the locals about my options for a hotel. The worst hotel experience in India was in a small one-hotel town. I was low on sugar so inevitably ratty. I had no choice but to take what I was given, which was in fact the best room at the hotel. I sat down for half an hour in the dark waiting for them to turn on the electricity and listening to the hum of definitely more than one mosquito. Eventually the lights allowed me to see the torrid state of the place. It had an en-suite and shower but there was no running water so my shower was of the baby-wipes kind. They kept coming into my room without so much of a knock and so I didn’t really have much privacy. It was just one of those days where I had to lie down on the bed praying for sleep or at least a good day-dream to escape the horrid reality of the next twelve hours of my life. You can imagine my delight the next day when I arrived at what was a luxury hotel in comparison. I was so happy it was beyond words. With regards to privacy, it simply does not exist in India. Once the hotel owner walked unashamedly into the bathroom to hand me the bill ... could it not wait until I check-out chief? You have my bike; you know I’m not going anywhere. Of course, once washed and fed there were the mossies to take care of. We had great fun together playing a game I like to call ‘Tom & Jerry’. A quick look at the map before I hit the hay and that was pretty much it. Not exactly the exciting part of the trip but all part of the experience. Australia and New Zealand should provide the picture-perfect bike-touring experience that I had in my head in the first place; beautiful scenery, relaxed 80k days and only the heat (or the Victorian rain to worry about).