India Day 3: kids are awesome!

(Daily stats moved to the bottom.)

Kids ruled the day for us! So many happy smiling faces everywhere we looked, walking down the street, in cars, on motorbikes, playing in the yard. And almost all of them, when we rode by, their faces lit up and they yelled “hi” or “hello”. A few even chased us for a few seconds. The adults who had kids with them were good spirits and also waved and smiled.

One young man (maybe 12ish) sat down next to me on the ferry and laid into me with a hundred questions in flawless English. “Where did you start?” “Did you fly here?” “How far are you going?” “Do you really eat hamburgers a lot?” “How old are you?” “He’s only 49?” (About Steve lol!! I responded, “I know, he looks older, huh?” and he made a cute kid Indian head wobble!) And on and on. It was really fun to talk to him.

It was another hard day cycling, mostly towards the end. The first section before the ferry was mostly well-paved and flat-ish around the town of Harihareshwar, a popular pilgrimage spot for its well-known temple. But after the ferry, the road was steep, twisty, and horribly paved. Combined with the the heat, humidity, and the fact that we stupidly missed breakfast AND lunch, it was the hardest day we’ve had since the mountains of Albania. Even on the down hill, we could only go 10kph due to the road surface. We had a protein bar for breakfast, thinking we would have an early lunch. At 11:45, we passed a few restaurants but decided to get to the ferry and cross, and look for restaurants on the other side. Well, there weren’t any. Luckily, we had raided a few road-side snack shops (they are all over the place!) and had a decent stock of chips and cookies. ₹5 (8¢) per bag! And we had a spicy potato sandwich on the ferry. But it wasn’t enough.

Thankfully, at the top of the 150m climb, there was a snack shop just as we were out of water. There was a guy having a chat with the shop owner who spoke good English, and we chatted with him for a while. We topped off our bottles, had a really good mango juice, and bought a few more snacks before continuing on. The fellow we chatted with told us that Airtel (the cell phone company that provides our SIM card) doesn’t work in this area. He said Idea or Vodafone is the best. I think our Project Fi phones roam on Vodafone, so they have been kind of working, but as soon as we are able, we will pick up an Idea SIM. India has a mess of cellular coverage and companies, and none of our hotels have had WiFi, so it’s going to be tricky to stay online.

Last night I was able to search for hotels and found a few in Kelshi, another beach town. So we headed for there. We rolled by a beautiful homestay called Cozy Cottage and asked the woman there if she had a room free. It looked like it might be over our budget, but we figured we’d try. She didn’t speak English, so she called someone on the phone and motioned for us to sit and poured us some water. A few minutes later a gentleman showed up on a motorcycle and said he would show us a few rooms in different places. I’m not sure if he owns all these places or if he was just helping translate. He kept inviting us to come visit his hotel later but apologized that there were no rooms available right now. The room at Cozy Cottage was immaculately clean, well appointed, and had air conditioning, but was ₹3500. We prefer not to have AC, and that’s pricey, so we asked to see other places. We followed him 1/4km down to another homestay on the other end of the spectrum. The staff there explained it was made up like a traditional Konkan home from 100 years ago, and it looked like a really cool place for ₹700 per person including all meals. But, it was kind of like a hostel with tiny basic rooms and shared bathroom and shower. I think it would have been a great experience to share meals with other travelers, and we will choose one of these places in the future, but we decided to check out the hotel across the street instead. For even less, just ₹1000 ($15), we got a nice room with free breakfast, private bathroom, balcony, and fan. And we can keep the bikes on the balcony, and they will cook us a veg thali dinner (small extra cost). Sold!

We took a walk down to the beach, and it’s gorgeous, huge by American standards, and relatively clean by Indian standards. So we decided to take a rest day tomorrow and go swimming.

On the way to the beach, we saw two beautiful women carrying bowls on their head. We’ve seen this all over India, and I’m sure you’ve seen photos, but we wanted to take one ourselves, so we asked. They said no! For all the photos we’ve posed for so far, we felt a little disappointed. Oh well, we will ask some others. Meanwhile, Steve snuck a few of some other women. We have some photos we want to share, but the Internet isn’t good enough to do that yet.

I tried to find an Idea store to buy a SIM, and someone pointed us in the right direction, but it was closed. Probably closed tomorrow, Sunday, too. Oh well, I’ll try at our next city. But, right across the street was a Kingfisher sign! I haven’t had a beer since we left Mumbai, and it’s Saturday, so I went to buy one. Strangely, an older man in the store motioned us to a back room. We know that some of these cities are dry, so at first we thought that I had to drink the beer on premises and couldn’t take it away. But after some back and forth, I think he just wanted to chat. The language barrier was already close to impossible to navigate, taking 5 minutes to figure out what he was saying, so we politely declined.

Dinner at our hotel was one of the better veg thalis that we’ve had, and the cook was very friendly, telling us about the weather and food in this region. He said the food is not typically very spicy here because the weather gets really hot, so offered us a green chili pepper to spice it up. I found it perfectly spiced, so I hope I can handle it when we get to more spicy areas.

After our rest day, we will need to decide whether we will continue cycling along the rough coastal roads or head inland to the “Route 66”, where we’ve heard the roads might be better (but don’t know for sure). Our bikes and bags are really taking a beating from these rough roads! Today, Steve’s front brake came loose from all the rattling and nearly fell off the bike. Then his chain fell off, and while fixing it, I noticed another screw that was about ready to fall out. Our bags are holding up so far, but we have to stop every few hours to tighten the straps and bolts that hold them up or else they slip down and start rubbing the tire. If we were only touring India, we’d have mountain bikes with suspension!

Date: 2017-10-28
Start city: Diveagar
End city: Kelshi
Distance (km): 70
Climbing (m): 650
Route description: mostly coastal roads
Road conditions and traffic: some of the nicest roads and some of the worst. The nicest were freshly asphalted with lots of room. The worst were so bad that it was better to ride in the dirt besides the pavement, and so narrow that we had to get in the grass when there was a car (not often, thankfully). Traffic was very light all day.
Weather: up to 43C but drier than yesterday, still humid AF
Stops: ferry to Bankot