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David & his bike go to India
(note:
This site is a re-jig
of the original weblog at:
http://davidinindia.blogspot.com/)
Monday, December
27,
2004
my plans & what I'll take with me
Well, I and
my bicycle are off to India on
2
January
2005,
returning to Melbourne on
17
March - about
11
weeks. After arriving in Mumbai I plan to cycle to Igatpuri (about
125km)
where I'll sit a vipassana
meditation course until
16
Jan. I'm not sure where I'll head after that - either south to Goa or
north into Rajasthan.
here's
what I plan to take (this may seem a bit obsessive, but people are often
keen to know these things):
Clothing:
-
1
T-shirt
-
1
Polo shirt
-
2
long-sleeved shirts (with 2 front pockets)
-
1
windcheater
-
4
pairs undies
-
Pair
Columbia shorts (for swimming, etc)
-
Pair
Gondwana shorts (for cycling)
-
Pair long
trousers (Columbia)
-
Pair
cycling knicks
-
Pair
sandals (for cycling)
-
Pair socks
-
shoes:
black Dunlop Volleys
-
sunglasses/
clear riding glasses (interchangeable lenses)
Toiletries
-
toilet bag,
including small mirror
-
face washer
-
"interdental cleaners"
-
Poly Wipes
- for oily/ greasy hands
-
Wet Wipes/
small tissues
-
small soap,
shampoo, toothpaste (can buy there)
-
First aid
kit - antiseptic, bandaids, alcohol swabs, cotton buds
-
tongue
cleaner
-
shower cap
-
Betadine
drops (as antiseptic, and for water purification if needed)
-
RID
Sunblock with Insect protection
-
RID
Tropical Spray On (DEET)
-
nail
clippers
-
Lomotil/
Immodium
-
Super Glue
for cuts & for gluing
-
Kensington
computer lock
-
Laptop
computer (to keep notes, mp3's
& to store photos)
-
AC Adapter
-
Canon
Powershot S30
& Battery charger
-
International adaptor plugs
-
surge
protector
Thursday, December
30,
2004
Felix & Mr Pumpy
By the way, a
really good blog to keep an eye on is the one by my mate Felix,
called
The Lone Cyclist! You might also like to check out the
Biking Southeast Asia with Mr Pumpy! site. It would've been good to
hook up with Felix and his pal Mr Pumpy but unfortunately our timings
don't quite coincide.
two days to go
Of course,
the list above is overly optimistic, as I'm travelling with Qantas. I
forgot when I bought my ticket that Qantas insists on your bike being
packed in a cardboard box, unlike Garuda and many other south-east asian
airlines who are happy enough for you to let out a little air from the
tyres & then have the bike wheeled on board (I returned from cycling the
circumference of Bali just a few weeks earlier, and Garuda remains quite
happy with this arrangement. They're also pretty flexible with their
weigh-in procedures).
The Qantas box weighs about
3
kg, which represents
15%
of my checked in baggage. It's also much more of a hassle at the other
end. In Bali, it was a delight to be able to collect my bike from the man
who wheeled it into the terminal, pump up the tyres, attach my panniers
and cycle past the waiting hordes and on to where I'd planned to stay.
I've managed to arrange my accommodation in advance in Mumbai (I had one
reply from the
6
hotels I did email ... perhaps business is so good they don't need to
bother replying) - Bentley's Hotel - which Lonely Planet categorises as
budget-range. Hotels in Mumbai seem outrageously expensive in comparison
to much of the rest of India. A comparable hotel in Chennai, where I
stayed in
2000,
is at least a quarter of the price of what I'll be paying at Bentley's.
Still, I've happily been able to arrange an airport pick-up of me and my
bike-in-a-box, so I won't have to struggle with reassembling it in the
terminal and then cycling
24
km into the centre of the city, or of struggling to fit the box on top of
an airport taxi.
Mumbai -
2nd
January
2005
(Day
1
in India)
Well, I’ve
arrived OK at Bentley’s Hotel in
Mumbai. The bike & its box weighed in at
28.8kg
at Melbourne Airport but thankfully they didn’t charge excess baggage, which is
apparently $30
per kilo. It’s hard to think of what I might have left behind, as most of
my "excess" items e.g. laptop, books, etc., were in my carry-on luggage
anyway.
I was quite surprised to meet an old school chum, Dr Rob Moodie on the
flight – he was off to Mumbai for
3
days for some medical conference/workshop. I went upstairs to Business
Class & chatted with him for some while. It certainly was flash compared
to economy class – heaps of room. It was a long and tedious drive from the
airport – scheduled arrival was at
4.15pm,
but we arrived at least an hour after this and I got to Bentley’s at about
7.30pm.
I was very glad I opted to be collected from the airport rather than to
try and cycle to where I was staying – the traffic was hell – apparently
some festival was in progress.
Actually, it’s a Bentley’s offshoot – Bentley’s guesthouse - I’m at, and I
seem to be the only other tourist here. While there are other tourists in
town, and in the restaurants I’ve been in, I’ve spoken to no one yet –
hard to not feel a bit lonely & a little shell-shocked with Mumbai, even
though I’ve been to India before. Mind you, it’s not that much noisier
than the busy road I live on in Melbourne.
3rd
January 2005
After
satisfactorily putting the bike together I tentatively ventured out onto
the roads of Mumbai several times today. The traffic’s not that much worse
to cycle in than in Melbourne (but drivers are more erratic here, and
there are fewer cows and goats in Melbourne). It’s a huge city & a little
hard to grasp an overall picture of. The slums are fairly confronting. I
cycled about
30km
around Mumbai today
4th
January
2005
Day1
cycling:
Mumbai to Shahapur:
Total
102.64
km.
6hrs
54mins
ride time.
MAX =
38.6km/hr.
Average Speed
(AVS) =
15.36
km/hr
15.36 km/hr
is a little slow but I spent a lot of time just getting through Mumbai
(around
20km
until out of Mumbai). Road conditions were generally good, although the
surface became a bit rough over the last
15km.
Overall, not a very interesting ride – mainly highway, and not so many
places to stop for a cup of tea. When I did, people seemed a little
incredulous to see me, as if I was an astronaut just off the space shuttle
– people seem baffled to see a westerner on a bicycle & would stand around
and gawk at me and the bicycle (and they do tend to fiddle with bike bits)
… just doesn’t make sense to them. I started to run out of puff after
about
90
km (!), but there seemed nowhere evident that I could stay. After another
10km
or so I arrived at the small town of
Shahapur, which seemed an unlikely
place to have a guesthouse or any accommodation, and my attempts at asking
led to a few ‘bum steers’. (At this point, I recalled that many Indians
prefer apparent helpfulness to accuracy, and may well make up an answer
and point in any old direction, rather than admit they don’t know. This
cost me about
15kms
on the trip, when I took a wrong turn based on faulty directions.) It was
beginning to look hopeless when a young boy understood my request for
“accommodation” and took me to the Engineers’ Training School (I think
that’s what it was) where he and some other lads aged
16
to
19
helped negotiate me a room there. For
200
Rp (about
6
Australian dollars) I was given a room with a fan and bathroom with hot
water. I felt stuffed but so pleased to be able to stop and rest.
100
km was probably a little too ambitious for my first day’s cycling.
I was a celebrity for an evening. The lads crowded into my room (nine of
them at one stage, plus an engineer or two) plying me politely with
questions (what I was doing, age, profession, marital status and so on)
and examining my bike. Four of them invited me for a Chinese meal in a
local restaurant. They were so very friendly, and at one stage a small
squabble erupted over who would sit next to me at the restaurant. At the
end of the evening they gave me some small gifts (a Hindi calendar and a
small sort of flower arrangement), despite my protestations that I
couldn’t fit anything else in my panniers.
Indians are usually very placid and friendly on a person-to-person basis,
but their aggression seems to become unleashed on the roads. Trucks and
buses are relatively respectful when travelling in the same direction, and
will give you a wide enough berth if possible when they overtake (unless
there’s oncoming traffic also overtaking, in which case they’ll toot away
indicating that they’re coming and you’d better watch out). Oncoming
vehicles however have no scruples in forcing you off the bitumen when
overtaking slower oncoming traffic. Funnily, oncoming traffic usually
gives the best indication of when to be extremely cautious or to pull over
onto the shoulder of the road.
Signs indicating blind curves are also another cue to be very careful,
especially when the sign indicates no overtaking: Indians seem to regard
these signs as an indicator to do just the opposite. I guess it’s because
they can’t see anything ahead. Going downhill, especially when it’s a
steep hill, can be particularly dangerous, as you’re likely to meet a
whole phalanx of vehicles crawling uphill bunched up behind the slower
vehicles. As soon as there’s a break in the traffic coming down the hill
(a bicycle doesn’t count as traffic) every second vehicle pulls right out
with a view to overtake, entirely filling the lanes in both directions.
5th
January
2005
Day
2
cycling:
Shahapur to Igatpuri
Total
51.06km.
Cycling
time:
4hrs
20
min (but really, from
9am
to about
2.30pm).
AVS =
12.15
km/hr (poor, but a fairly hilly ride, mostly uphill…).
MAX =
41.6
km/hr i.e. hills
Vipassana International Academy
(VIA)
The
Vipassana International Academy was an impressive campus, spread over
many hectares (20 acres). Over
400
meditators, male and female in roughly equal numbers, were there to do the
10-day
course – there were perhaps
20
or so Westerners. Scores of others were there as volunteers to help run
the course – cooking, cleaning up, organizing and doing all the other
tasks required to run such a large course. Many others were there doing
long courses of between
20
and
60
days. Given the numbers, everything ran exceedingly smoothly.
The course involves the practice of certain Buddhist meditation
techniques, including the observation of bodily sensations with equanimity
– tough when your legs are unwinding from having cycled
150km
in the preceding
2
days. Each day involves about
12
hours of sitting on a mat from between
4am
and
9pm,
with breaks in between. To minimize any distractions (there are enough
mental and physical ones from just sitting on the mat), there is a
requirement that no communication, either verbal or non-verbal, takes
place between meditators, or that any reading or writing materials be
used, and the cooking and cleaning-up is done by volunteers.
I was very fortunate in being given my own room, with fan, shower (cold),
bucket hot water, loo – many others, particularly first-timers, had to
live in dormitories or share toilet and bathing facilities. I was
certainly glad no-one could see me in my shower cap with a bucket of cold
water at
4
am (the bucket hot water did not come on until
6.30am
each day, for about an hour). Furthermore, as an “old student” (this of
course refers to having done a course before and nothing to do with age),
I also had a cell in the pagoda, which could be used to meditate in for
much of the time. The cell was a small room about the size of a small WC,
which allowed you at various times to meditate away from the distractions
of others (and there were many: the sounds of
399
other meditators shuffling, belching and farting away is awesome, and very
disturbing at times)
Each day started at
4am,
after the ringing of the gong and various other bells, followed by an
explosion of sounds as people in surrounding rooms cleared their nasal and
other passages – coughing, grunting, hawking, gobbing, spluttering,
snorting ... Some people managed to make sounds that I am sure I could not
replicate if I tried. There were many other strange noises during the
course - thumps, grindings, half-caught singing from the nearby township –
and no-one to ask what the hell they were.
We were given heaps of numbers for the course. Mine were: Reg Number:
0004;
room: D-15;
meditation mat:
12;
pagoda cell:
125;
Valuables pouch:
64;
Group:
33;
Laundry
133…
all my undies, shirts, pants now sport the number “133”
in indelible ink.
My first
2
days were torment, with my right leg being slightly swollen from cycling -
within minutes it became totally numb every time I sat to meditate. While
the experience of pain is a ‘given’ on this sort of course, this did not
feel good. Luckily a rather stern and seemingly humourless doctor at the
general office gave me a tube of “Enac Gel”, which saved the day. What
great stuff – as it says on the tube, it’s an “anti-inflammatory
analgesic” - I’ll be taking some with me when I cycle from now on.
I was allocated a seat in the front row on the far left, which was quite
good, as I had no one sitting in front of or alongside me on the left
other than a single column of Buddhist monks hard alongside the left wall
of the hall. The guy on the right was quite distracting at times – he
specialised in these initially very low, rumbling and then finally
extremely loud and reverberating belches. As we were not supposed to
communicate there was of course no way for me to tell him to knock it off.
Meditation instructions were given in both Hindi and English, and
occasionally we English-speaking folk trooped off to another hall to hear
things in English.
The food was excellent and a good re-introduction to Indian food, although
after a while I did begin to wish for something like cornflakes rather
than the savoury food dished up at breakfast time – e.g. rice, idliis,
various sauces. I did however come to love, even crave, the glass of warm,
sweetened milk available at this time, followed by a good strong cup of
chai.
Most of the Indians ate with their right hands, whereas I tended to use
the supplied spoon. It’s interesting to notice my conditioning, I guess
from an early age, when you’re trained to use cutlery and told to stop
playing with your food when you used your hands. I must admit to a slight
feeling of distaste when I see Indian folk digging in, with rice up to
their knuckles, or when I try myself as I did yesterday when I went to a
thali restaurant. What’s this about? Similarly, I much prefer loo paper
than left hand. Curious that we in the west invented toilet paper and
cutlery, to put a distance between our hands and these basic functions
Nasik (or Nashik)
Day3
Cycling:
Igatpuri to Nasik (Nashik):
47.68km.
Ride
time:
3
hours.
AVS =
16.35
km/hr.
MAX =
39.2km/hr
(Overall Distance =
230km)
… i.e. about
200km
from Mumbai to Nasik, which
includes maybe
15
to
20km
where I took a wrong turning. Road flat - i.e. little overall elevation
over the distance, but variable shoulder - it often dropped away & was
stony in many places.
The peace, harmony, and goodwill to others from the
10-day
course was short-lived as I hit the road again, as I was regularly forced
to the shoulder by other traffic. Even though I set off fairly early, and
it was Sunday morning, the traffic was quite heavy. However the trip was a
little more interesting this time - I saw several overturned trucks, and
the results of a head-on collision, with police in attendance. I would be
very mean spirited to think "serves you right", but it was hard to feel
overly sympathetic for the drivers. And these graphic indicators of the
potential hazards seemed to make little impression on the passing traffic
- vehicles continued to overtake each other with careless abandon even at
the accident sites.
I even saw an elephant lumbering along on the other side of road, with
mahout (rider) on top and a fellow walking alongside, on its way to Mumbai
- so I was told after giving them a small donation (at their invitation).
With its huge yet beady eyes looming down at me, it sucked up the few
small notes I put in its trunk and handed them to the mahout. I did feel a
little uneasy looking into the eyes of this gargantuan creature, but it
was quite fascinating at the same time. Other vehicles gave the elephant a
little more room than they did to cyclists, but not much.
I’m also beginning to notice the signs of "bicycle hypochondriasis" -every
new and unfamiliar squeak, rubbing or vibration - and there seem to be
many - has me worrying that something is amiss!
So, here I am at the Hotel Panchavati, as suggested in the Lonely Planet
guide (single room rates are
660
RP plus tax - about $19
AUD, which is reasonably lavish, but hey, if I’m doing it hard on the
road, I may as well live comfortably when not travelling). The place was
extremely hard to find without a map, with most of the street signs being
in Hindi only, and the usual difficulty in asking directions. After
enquiring of about half a dozen people wandering by I finally managed to
find it. It’s quite reasonable, with friendly staff, hot water and shower,
fan, TV and not too noisy - well, it’s pretty bloody noisy but tolerable.
They wouldn’t let me take my bike into my room, which I rather prefer to
do – one becomes quite attached to one’s bike – so it’s bolted to the wall
downstairs under the steely gaze of the moustachioed security man (perhaps
they’d let me if I paid for a double room ...). I’ll stay here a day or
two to settle and figure out where to next.
I’m feeling a little anxious at present about where to next, and it may
have been wiser to have cycled west from Igatpuri toward the coast, as
this is now where I’m thinking of going. The map (Lonely Planet Road
Atlas), which is OK but not fantastic, indicates a
96km
journey to a town called Chiol, and then another
20
km to Pardi. Worryingly, my other map suggests something a little
different, and doesn’t even include Chiol. Still, what’s the worst that
can happen?! (hmm ... that doesn’t help me much). If I head west, I’m
bound to hit the coast or Highway
8
eventually!
My rough plans are to head north into Gujarat - via Surat, Bhavnagar, to
Diu and Veraval and back around to Ahmedabad (also
known as
Ahmadābād or
Amdavad) and maybe one or two other
places then on to Mount Abu where I hope to catch up with an old school
chum Charlie who will be there in mid-February. He’s a member of a group
called Brahma Kumaris, who have a ‘Spiritual University’ and museum there.
After that, Udaipur and maybe one or two other places in Rajasthan.
Depending on my time, I might then head down to Goa for some R&R. Knowing
me, this plan is probably overly ambitious ...
INDEX:
- this page -
2. Nasik, Kaparda,
Daman, Surat, Bharuch, Baroda
3.
Ahmedabad,
Lothal/Utelia, Bhavnagar, Palitana,
Rajula, Diu
4. Veraval (via Somnath), Sasan Gir, Junagadh, Rajkot
5.
Mount Abu,
Gogunda
6.
Udaipur,
Ranakpur,
Kumbhalgarh
7. Mumbai,
Melbourne
|
on the road!
my sandal |
