Thanksgiving in India

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends and family!

While we haven’t found anywhere for a turkey dinner, we’ve found some dishes approximating some side dishes, like bread stuffing. It’s not really anything like it, but it’s all we got!

We left Mangalore late, after finishing up with our bicycle repairs in Mangalore. They rebuilt my wheel with new brass nipples, but unfortunately it seems the tension on the wheel was too low, and I’ve had to re-tension and re-true the wheel after a spoke came loose after 80km or so. Sigh… I’m learning a lot about cycle maintenance though.

One awesome find at the bike shop, though. As I was having them help me find some longer screws to attach a huge heavy Indian bike bell, Steve noticed this sucker hanging from their shelves. It claims to be the loudest bicycle horn you can get. 140dB! And it’s freaking awesome for India. I get a few surprised looks from others because it is as loud as some car and motorcycle horns! With India roadways being as much about sound as sight, it will come in handy. I think we will need some extra batteries though!

When we arrived in Puttur, we were surprised to see a circus in town. We asked around and learned that it opened today and the next show was 7pm, so we had an early dinner and headed to the show! Why not? It was an old school circus with acrobats, fire eaters, water spitters, a motorcycle sphere, and some unfortunate animals that they really ought to give a nice retirement.

As always, it’s been lots of fun and games on the road. Tons of people waving, giving thumbs up, kids looking at our bikes, etc, but as we get away from the coast and really into areas that never see tourists, it’s getting even more intense. When we stop anywhere for food or water or bike repairs, we draw a small crowd of locals and kids who check out the bicycles, honk our old squeaky horn, squeeze our tires, and ask us the same questions, “Where are you from?” “Where are you going?” “How much cost the bicycles?” “Do you like India?” “Can we take a selfie?” It’s fun for us and gives us a chance to ask questions back like good places to eat, but it’s challenging to eat a meal with every bite being watched carefully. We’re getting used to it though and just learning not to be self conscious about our inept one-handed eating techniques.

We had a huge “small world” moment when we texted a cycle tourist Jeremy, whom we’d met on our last day in Croatia many months ago. We knew he was doing some work with an organization called Engineers without Borders in Bangalore, so we reached out to say we were in Mangalore. He responded that he was heading to a work trip to Puttur the next morning, apologizing that it was 50km from Mangalore. We received the text message as we were checking into our hotel in none other than Puttur! So the next morning, we shared coffee and breakfast at the hotel (where he was also booked!) and caught up on our travels!

He gave us some advice to pick up a “lungi”, simple pants the locals wear, so we’re going to keep an eye out and give it a shot…

Tomorrow is our big climbing day up into the Coorg area, known as “the Scotland of India” for its similarity to the Scottish Highlands. We’ll be thinking of everyone back home stuffing themselves on turkey as we psuh ourselves up a 3600ft climb to our homestay on a coffee plantation, where we are taking our next rest day. May not be Internet, so we’ll update when we can.