Our last few days in India

Well the bikes are boxed up, we have our flight booked, and a driver to the airport, and now all we have to do is wait. And quite a lot of waiting, we have. Our flight leaves very late at night, so we will need to stay up the entire day, try to nap on the short flight, and then get to our hotel in Thailand the next morning, and probably crash for a proper nap in the hotel. These red eye flights suck, but always seem to be the best bang for your buck.

We’ve been making the best of our free time, though.

AuroVelo Bike shop

Our water bottles were getting pretty disgusting. We’ve been able to clean them, but I think we’ve gotten a good life out of them, and they are starting to leak as well. We found a bike shop in Auroville called AuroVelo that agreed to box up our bikes for us. On the way to the shop, Steve mentioned it would be nice to find some new bottles, but that we doubted we could find this French brand, which we’ve been very happy with. Lo and behold, we arrive at AuroVelo, and not only do they have these bottles, but they have exactly 4, two of the same color Steve had, and two of the black ones I had. It’s fate!

AuroVelo did a great job with some minor maintenance (finally got my wheel properly trued after the problem in Mangalore) and also was a life saver boxing up the bikes. We had little hope of finding bike boxes in Tamil Nadu that would fit our bikes, but Sukrit at AuroVelo said no problem.

In case you don’t know, Auroville is an experimental community formed by hippies in the 60s who claimed the desert land as property of the world and converted it to forest over the next few decades. Everyone who lives there commits all of their belongings to the community and everything thereafter is free within the town. I wish we had had more time to explore and understand this unique place.

Thanjavur palace and temple

We took a day to tour the famous palace and ancient temple at Thanjavur, very interesting stuff.

On the way towards Pondicherry, we stopped at Kumbakonam to see the many distinctive temples, which were everywhere throughout the city.

Our driver’s dashboard.

New Years in Pondicherry

We spent our New Year’s relaxing in Pondicherry, an interesting, but very stinky (even by Indian standards), former French colony. It was strange to be speaking and hearing French in India, but it was also amazing to have croissants, croque monsieurs, and other European food on the menu again!

The ocean promenade on NYE was packed with maybe 100,000 people, playing music, games, and enjoying the ocean air. At midnight there was quite a nice fireworks show that lasted over 30 minutes.

We found a new years day unlimited BBQ; you get this personal BBQ on your table and enjoy prawns, chicken, and fish. It was quite a gut buster but delicious.

My birthday

Another year older, and another international birthday. Our hotel surprised me with a cake, and we met a local cyclist from England and his parents for dinner. Nick is here with an NGO Engineers Without Borders, working on technology to improve infrastructure in India.

Mahabalipuram ancient temples

Our final stop in India is at the ancient temple town of Mahabalipuram. There’s a small section popular with Western tourists with nice beach side restaurants and bars, and the 1400 year old temples are quite a sight. We hired a tour guide for a really affordable price and he taught us a lot about the history and Hindu religion.

Butterball Rock, hasn’t moved in thousands of years!

Amazing carvings in the cave temples here.

One of the master sculptors created this life-like life-size cow.

Meditation nook. OM…. The echo inside is very pleasant.

Other stuff

We are really ready to be cycling again. Having to use drivers is a real bummer for us. We get car sick easily and miss being on our own on the road. The trains are all booked up for the holidays, and the bus drivers are on strike in Tamil Nadu, so we have to hire private drivers with big cars that can hold our bikes, so it’s also been quite expensive. Cycling really is the best way to travel!

My Thai practice is going well. I can recognize almost every letter now, though I can’t figure out these damn tones! Still, I can pronounce many words in Thai script, and that already goes a long way, as my primary map OsmAnd is almost completely in Thai!

Delicious cashews we found on the side of the road on our last day of cycling. Each cashew stand had a small crew of people taking fresh cashew fruit, pulling out the seeds, roasting them, and bagging them for sale. Interesting to see the process right there!

Sometimes there is only one socket in our hotel room. I bought a 3-way splitter on Crete in Greece, and it really comes in handy!

I will miss the Indian food, including these Mexican-Indian fusion chips!