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It’s been a bit of fun as well as annoyance our past few days in the capital of Goa, Panjim.

Idea SIM Card

First up, I wanted to get another SIM card on the Idea network, which seemed to be more reliable along the coast of Maharashtra and hopefully will continue to be a thing as we go on. Knowing the drill, I took my passport, one passport photo, the card of the hotel manager, and some patience to one of the Idea stores in town. Even though they have a copy machine, they wouldn’t let me use it to make copies of my passport photo and visa, so instead I had to go 4 stores down to the copy man, operating out of a shoebox-sized kiosk, and for 2 rupees, I had my copies.

Another tourist wandered in and tried to ask the staff about getting a SIM card. Not getting helpful information, I explained to her the process and the documents required. Looking disappointed, she said thanks and “oh well” and left the store; I don’t think she’ll even bother. Meanwhile, I gathered all the documents, my prepaid (unactivated) SIM and signed the form three times, including one time half over my passport photo. SIM card fraud must be a serious concern with all this paperwork; the purported reason is to stop terrorists from using prepaid SIMs to coordinate with each other.

Overall, it ended up going smoothly; after 2 days waiting, I was able to activate the SIM, but I couldn’t recharge online for some reason, so I stopped by the store again and activated the plan they offered me under “my offers”, 28 days of Internet (1.5GB/day) with unlimited (Indian) phone calls and 100 SMS/day for around $5 US. Now we have coverage on the three major networks: Vodafone (which our Project Fi phones roam on), Airtel (the SIM we got in Mumbai), and now Idea. Airtel and Vodafone have nationwide coverage, but it’s spotty and not overlapping. Idea seems to have better coverage but only in the south of India; it is missing coverage in some states up north.

Taxi mafia

The last time we used taxis in India was in Mumbai, where they are dirt cheap and available everywhere. Plus, Uber and Ola have ride-sharing apps that work excellently for just a tad more but include A/C cars. We naively thought this would continue in Goa, so we chose to get a hotel in Panjim, which is centrally located in Goa but is probably only worth a day or two to visit by itself. We’re waiting for a package,  so staying in one spot for a few days was required anyway. We figured we’d hop on Uber or Ola to jump around the area, and we’d be able to explore easily.

Boy, we couldn’t have been more wrong. The taxi rates are astounding, more expensive than in the US! And there’s a super powerful “taxi mafia” (aka “out-of-control union”) here that engages in price fixing and gouging, so ride-sharing apps aren’t available and no taxis will use their meter (most don’t even have one), so you have to bargain (hard!) for what should be a simple trip. Prices between cabs vary by 2-3x, depending on how much money they think you have. Add to that, we haven’t seen any official taxi stands (there might be one at the bus station, far from our hotel), so you just have to walk around randomly until someone asks you if you need a taxi. Then you have to be prepared to bargain and most often walk away because they will try to charge you twice the “fair” price. Some have even laughed at us when we quoted a fair price, saying we’d never get that. (Last laugh was on them; at the next block, we found a guy who took us for just a tad more than the price I asked.) If you have your hotel call a cab, which we made the mistake of doing once, they will charge 2-3x the going rate, and demand you also pay for “return fare” even if you aren’t using them to go back! Transportation in Goa is a nightmare, and we are kind of bummed we ended up being stuck in Panjim with no reasonable way to explore the rest of the state most of the week.

The silver lining is that locals are really frustrated with this as well, and one person said it’s the biggest problem for tourism in Goa, and there have been recent votes trying to invite more competition, allow ride-sharing apps, and remove power from the taxi union.

If you are doing a lot of moving around in Goa, we’ve heard the best option is to either rent a scooter (scary) or hire a driver for a half or full day, which will work out to about the (still-high) price of one trip, but you can go where ever you want during the time you have him.

Panjim

It’s a pleasant city, quite a contrast from the insanely hectic Mumbai. Aside from the gaping holes that are the sometimes-covered drainage system, walking around the streets here is quite enjoyable, and there are lots of shops and restaurants (and liquor stores, a welcome change from nearly-dry Maharashtra). There’s a definite European feeling about it, from the centuries of Portuguese occupation. Some of the residents here say their parents and grandparents still speak Portuguese at home.

We’ve found some great food, some interesting architecture, and a bit of nightlife, though the nightlife gets going after midnight, well after our bedtime, so we’ve only managed to catch a bit of karaoke one night.

Overall, we wished we had stayed somewhere by the beach instead… Lesson learned.

The beach and Anjuna fleamarket

Our first taxi experience took us to Anjuna, where we spent the day at the famous fleamarket, once apparently the home of hippies selling their possessions (and buying weed) so they could stay a bit longer, but now full of vendors selling clothes, belts, spices, and trinkets of all kinds. We had a great time exploring, watching the crowds, and eating and drinking at beach side cafes.

Fleamarket and roaming cattle behind us…

Food

The Goan food has been incredible, and we’ve tried all the usual items plus a few of the less common ones. The shrimp curry rice is excellent, as is the cafreal (a cilantro-based curry), and the xacuti (coconut-based curry). The bebinca cake for dessert is also quite tasty. Oh, and the local favorite fenny (cashew or palm distilled liquor) can be quite good as well, similar to rakija or grappa but with a hint of cashew or coconut taste.

But the highlight of our food experience in Goa was taking a cooking class from Rita’s Gourmet! Her backyard is a beautiful and very clean full-fledged outdoor kitchen with prep tables, gas burners, and washing/sink area. Along with her assistant and prep/cleanup staff, she made us breakfast, took us on a market tour, taught us about all the local fruits and vegetables, picked up some fresh fish, and then explained, smelled, or tasted all the spices we’d be using.

Part demonstration, part participation, we kneaded and rolled dough for our pies, squeezed juice out of coconut pulp, sauteed onions, simmered curries, and fried fish. The final result was a hearty meal of rissois de camarao (prawn empanadas), galinha cafreal (chicken), aloo mutter gobi (potato, cauliflower, and green pea mix), Goan prawn curry, fried pomfret (fish), and for dessert, bolo mimosa (coconut pie).

We really enjoyed the whole experience, and it was great chatting with the two Australians also taking the class about their travels, as well as Rita’s daughter, who is about to start a master’s program in IT in Southern California (small world)!

Spices at the market.

Fresh kingfish.

Bags and bags of dried chilies everywhere! These are the spicy ones; others are used for coloring or a more mild flavor.

Steve working on the chicken cafreal.

Our pies!

We are ready to get back on the bikes and move on down the coast. We hope to get another day or two on the Goan beaches before entering our next state of Karnataka. We are still uncertain about the side trip to Hampi, but we’ve decided not to rent a car for now, so if we go, it will be by bicycle…

Originally we were going to follow the coast to Goa, but when we saw it was a ton of steep climbs, we decided we should look at other options. Since the Tour of Deccan just came through here a few days ago, we decided to follow their route, thinking it would be on the best roads for cycling from Malvan to Mandrem Beach, Goa. And it was!

It was easy to follow with their route arrows clearly spray painted on the roads, but just in case, I found a participant on Strava and downloaded her GPX track.

Half and half well paved, half and half low traffic, we even spent about 10km on the Mumbai/Goa 4 lane divided highway with almost no traffic, gentle gradients, a nice shoulder that was 75% clear of overgrowth, and a smattering of wandering cows, drying hay, and herds of goats.

As we got closer to Goa, fewer and fewer people took any notice of us, just an occasional wave, thumbs up, or “hello!”.

We stopped at a small town looking for lunch but instead found a pastry shop. We’ve seen these everywhere, but amazingly (given Steve’s sweet tooth), we’ve yet to try anything! I ordered us two donut looking things, and they were so tasty, we ordered two more, much to the shopkeeper’s amusement.

A few kilometres later, we found a small stall selling our snack of champions, vada pav, potato cake sandwiches, and had two each. A guy there asked if we were Russian. I think Goa is popular with the Russian tourists.

As soon as we crossed the bridge from Maharashtra to Goa, everything changed. It was like being teleported to another universe (or maybe like the spore drive on Star Trek – I’m really enjoying it). We’ve only seen 2 white people since leaving Mumbai, but across the bridge in Goa, every other person was white. All the signs were in English. Restaurants advertised “continental food”. The roads were better paved. And the goddamn dogs chase bicycles here! We’ve seen hundreds of dogs in Maharashtra and not a single one paid us any attention except to get out of our way, but the first pack of 6 dogs we saw in Goa were close at our heels.

We stopped so I could have a beer before heading towards the beach to find our beach-side hut for the night. It’s super cute, just across a foot bridge from Mandrem Beach, and with a good seafood restaurant attached. After 6 days of consecutive cycling, we decided to spend two nights here and enjoyed a very lazy beach day, reading, planning, doing laundry, and having lunch and dinner on the beach.

Our beach hut. We snuck our bikes inside when the power went out lol.

Basic but comfortable. We didn’t even need the mosquito net.

The huts are separated from the beach with rickety bamboo bridges.

Sunset on the beach.

A bunch of photos from the past few days…

Hindu statue.

Water buffalo (?) swimming.

Following the TOD signs.

Fishing boat by fishing village.

Our favorite snack.

Birds along the coast.

One of the road signs we’ve been following, kind of. Still don’t know what they say.

I knew we took a wrong turn somewhere…

MTDC hotel.

Typical coastal village.

Cows enjoy the beach as much as we do!

Everything in this region is built with these clay bricks, dried in the sun. All you have to do is (try to) dig in the ground and you find this clay everywhere.

Fixing my broken nipple beside a trash pile, which are too common here.

Kundeshwar temple along the beach.

A temple on an island. They are everywhere!

Horse drawn buggies on the beach are a thing here.

Today was one of those days that you dream about when you think about cycle touring the world. Everything went perfectly, and we have a story that we will remember and tell for the rest of our lives.

We left before 9, and the hotel manager heard we were going to Malvan and said that we must visit the state-run scuba diving school just south of Malvan. It’s got the deepest swimming pool in India and one of the best scuba instructors in the country. So we said we’d be sure to stop by. I’ve always wanted to do scuba diving, but I’ve been afraid because I’ve got sinus and ear issues.

The ride was fairly short (45km) and the roads good overall with not as much climbing as recently. Before we knew it, we were entering Malvan. Before we passed a schoolyard full of kids, we saw a whole bunch of them with their bicycles riding to school or parked in the yard, and when we passed the school, a big cheer went out from a large group of them as they waved at us. We waved back… India is going to give us big heads with all this attention!

It was then that I saw the first white person I’ve seen since Mumbai. It took me by surprise for a minute! We are getting closer to the toruisty hotspots. But that couple was the only ones we were to see all day, even.

I looked on our map and we decided to try to find a beach hotel in Tarkali Beach, south of the city. We went past dozens that looked pretty good, but we were hungry, so we found a restaurant for lunch and had an incredible veg thali and discussed our options.

We were close to the dive school, so we decided to stop by and check it out. On the way in, a man asked us if he could take some photos of our bicycles after we finished speaking with the dive school. Sure, no problem!

The dive school, the Indian Institute of Scuba Diving and Aquatic Sports, was quite impressive. Great large classrooms, extensive certifications offered, lodging for students, immediate beach access, and a crazy deep swimming pool. And it’s all state run, by the same tourism organization that runs the hotel we stayed in. This is the place to go to get certified for sure. We aren’t going to do it right now, though I’m tempted.

The fellow outside turned out to also work for the MTDC, and he’s working on filming some promotional videos for the state to encourage tourism, aimed towards certain audiences. Currently in the works: adventure tourism. He showed us some great footage recently shot with motorcycling through the region, and a cool drone shot of someone cliff jumping in Maharashtra. He’s at the dive school to shoot footage of scuba divers as well. He’s been wanting to get some cycling footage too, and he asked if we’d be willing to let him film us doing our thing. Absolutely, why not? We would love to help out and maybe see more cyclists ride through here.

So he filmed us putting our helmets on, cycling down the streets (from the back of a motorcycle, Tour de France sports photographer style!), and then walking towards the beach with the bikes, and then we did some high fives, which may have been a little goofy. We did a few takes; we are not great actors. I hope he got some usable footage, and it will be great to see the results!!

Not having Internet for days, we wanted to find a hotel in an area with cell signal or WiFi, so the photographer suggested we head to Chiwla Beach back in Malvan, where there should be a cell signal close to the city.

We found a small hotel right across from the beach and they even have WiFi, which is faster than our cell signal. Taking advantage of the Internet to plan our routes, book some hotels and plan some activities in Goa, blog, and download some movies to watch and books to read when we are offline again. As much as we are enjoying the offline world, it’s nice to be connected again!

I also took the opportunity to do a little work on my bike. My seat has been a bit to low causing some hip pain, and my handlebars too high causing hand pain. So those should be better tomorrow.

We went for a sunset walk on the beach and encountered a really fascinating event. A crew of a dozen or more fisherman were lined up on the beach pulling a long rope onto the beach, literally pulling in their catch for the day from the nets they’d laid earlier. I’ve never seen this before, and it was mesmerizing. We watched for almost an hour until it was too dark to see anymore. Not sure how they keep going; the edge of the net was just barely on the beach. A guy at our hotel said they do this every day, three or four times.

Our hotelier generously offered to pick me up a beer, so I enjoyed a refreshing Kingfisher, and we walked to a Malvani restaurant for our last taste of seafood in Maharashtra, a spicy shrimp curry. It was phenomenal, one of the best dishes we’ve had in India. The place was called Atithi Bamboo, and every local we asked for a restaurant recommendation pointed there. It’s even listed in Lonely Planet. Tomorrow we will be in Goa.

Things started to get a little weird the previous night. We asked our hotel for dinner (they have a restaurant) at 7:00. They said okay, so we came out at 7 to find a different crew working, looked like the mom and dad of the younger ones working when we checked in.

The food was the worst we’ve had the whole trip by far. Overcooked papad, stale naan (usually we’ve gotten chapati (roti), not sure why they served naan), flavorless potatoes, and the veg curry and dal tasted like it had started to spoil (didn’t eat anymore!). The whole dinner, the family watched cricket and talked about us. I know this, not because I understand Marathi, but because the word for “foreigner” sounds like “foreigner”, and they were talking about the dishes we ordered. It made for an awkward dinner, and we didn’t have nearly enough to eat.

The younger kids had given us a WiFi password, but when the older crew showed up, the hotspot suddenly went offline, not to return. As soon as we finished dinner, they asked when we would wake up, and then locked up the whole place.

We headed to bed, watched some Netflix shows (the new Star Trek is really good, and Steve is enjoying Stranger Things 2), swept away a few bed bugs, turned on the Good Knight insecticide sprayer, and had a pretty good night’s sleep.

We woke early to find that we were out of water. After just a trickle left in the pipes, we had no shower, no brushing teeth, no washing hands, no flushing toilet, and no bum gum! Luckily we had some toilet paper and wet wipes that we carry with us. The staff will have a smelly surprise awaiting when they come to clean up.

Knowing the breakfast would be no good, we left at 7:30. It’s a good thing one of the walls of the hotel wasn’t finished and has a gaping hole covered with a sheet, because otherwise we’d be locked in. No one was there, and the door to the lobby was locked. We’d already paid, so we exited through the sheet and set off on the bikes. It was refreshingly cool at this hour.

We haven’t ridden this early before, and it was interesting to see the workers waking up and heading to work. There were several carts serving fried breakfast items, though we opted to just pick up some cookies and water instead. There has been some road work being done along the coastal road, with diggers digging trenches beside the road and laying pipes. On the wide straight parts, they use big digger machines, but on the curves and narrow road sections, there are dozens of guys wielding picks and hoes, backbreaking labor for probably not much pay. And in the morning we saw where they spend their nights; dozens of makeshift tents were scattered along the road with workers milling around making breakfast. Some of these guys have been really friendly, giving us smiles, waves, and head wobbles, but most of them stare at us like we’re riding a unicorn.

Random note about buying bottled water: pretty much all the snacks vendors along the road have various brands of bottled water for sale, often even chilled, and sometimes even frozen solid. So we rarely need to worry about running out. The one major brand is called Bisleti, which we had in Mumbai. No one has that brand out in the country here, but if you want bottled water, you ask for “Bisleti”. You will get whatever brand of bottled water they have. I suppose it’s kind of like asking for a Kleenex in the States. I’ve gotten used to saying “doe Bisleti”, which means 2 bottled water in Marathi. Someone told us you can ask for “pannie water” also, but “Bisleti” works better.

Our initial goal was a small coastal town called Devgad. A few other cycling blogs had mentioned stopping here and I had some of their favorite hotels starred in Google Maps. But, getting started early, we felt ambitious and decided that it would be awesome to make it to Malvan beach for the night. Apparently, there’s a proper dive shop and lots of beach side hotels.

For the first 40km, we were making great time with the smooth roads, cool air, and manageable climbs. But suddenly the road went to shit, and we had 20km straight of the horrible roads like the ones we started out with south of Mumbai. So, close to Devgad, we decided we didn’t want to try to go too much further. In addition, both Steve and I were hitting the wall and were already exhausted. I thought about it and realized that neither of us had eaten any protein yesterday, save for an ice cream and a few cashews. Sticking to vegetarian meals is easy here, cheaper, and a good way to avoid food poisoning, but it makes it harder to get enough protein, which I think has been sapping our energy.

The hills didn’t help either. Although not an extreme amount of climbing if you look at the numbers, each hill, even if only 10m tall, was a 10% grade, sometimes more. It’s nice to have bridges instead of ferries on this part of the coast, but each bridge is preceded by a downhill and followed by a steep climb.

So, we decided to splurge a little for a nicer hotel. I had found the MTDC in Kunkeshwar a few days ago and saved it on my phone. It had great reviews, but we didn’t know the price. We showed up and I think we are the only guests here. Unfortunately the restaurant is not open yet (the hotel is only 6 months old), but they offered to send out for lunch for us, and the manager upgraded us from the cheapest room to an ocean view cottage for free. And there’s a pool! Perfect. Even with all this luxury, we are still well under budget for the day. India is certainly proving to be easy on the wallet.

The manager explained that MTDC means Maharashtra Tourism Development Commission, and these hotels (there are many of them in the state) are all state run places, designed to bring up tourism in Maharashtra and provide jobs for locals. This hotel was under construction for 4 years and just opened but already they had the place sold out during Diwali. Seems like a good strategy to jump start tourism in this almost-undiscovered corner of the world. We haven’t seen Goa yet, but the beaches here have been pretty remarkable so far, and almost empty. It will be hard for Goa to beat them (we don’t like busy beaches), though Goa is world famous, so maybe it will be better.

Lacking in protein, I ordered a local Malvani fish curry, which was excellent, except that the manager asked it to be made “not spicy”. Grr, servers in Thailand always did this to me; because I’m white, they assume I don’t want spice, depsite all my insistence otherwise. Oh well, a minor problem overall; maybe I will figure out how to convince the server otherwise. In Thai, it was “pet mak mak krap, low chat Thai Thai” (very spicy, local Thai style). Doubt that works here…

Later in the afternoon, someone came by with a long form for us to fill out and asked for a photo! Huh? Well we have some spare passport photos for visa applications (and Indian SIM cards), but hell if I’m going to give up one of these precious commodities for a single night hotel stay! So we said no, why would we have photos of ourselves? He even had a glue stick with him like this was the most common thing in the world, tourists carrying passport-sized photos for hotel registration. WTF? So we told him we’d meet him at the front desk, where the amazing English-speaking manager would be able to clarify. He said because they are a government-run hotel, they have to fill out all the forms. It’s crazy because we also had to fill out their registration book, have copies of our passports made, and then we had to fill out this paperwork with our visa number, reason for visit, home address, previous city, next city, and on and on. Damn, India, where does all this paper go?

Had chicken curry Malvani for dinner. Taking a chance with both fish and meat in one day. Hope we don’t regret it, but we need more than potatoes to keep our energy levels up… The meal delivery was quite a fancy affair. They rang us in our rooms, and we came to the restaurant, where someone on a rickshaw pulled up, unloaded all the dishes that would normally be served with our meals at the restaurant, and then played our food and sat and waited for us to finish. Only after dinner did the driver pack up the leftover dishes and head out. Best food delivery service ever! And when we got the bill the next day, there was no delivery charge. Not sure if the hotel picked it up or the restaurant includes it in the prices.

Still no (or close to no) internet, so we will for sure have to get an Idea SIM in Goa.

Oh nipple, why have you forsken me? Oh nipple, once so hard and stiff, but now just dust. Oh nipple, we’ve been together so long, over many kilometers, and many countries. Oh nipple, I will miss you.

Or maybe not. 1km into the ride, I heard a noise. Steve rode up beside me and said, “what’s that?” “It sounds like a broken spoke,” I said. We found a grassy field and pulled over to check it out. Sure enough, my spoke was hanging loosely in the wheel. Rear wheel, drive side, the worst place to break a spoke because that means you have to remove to cassette to fix it. I have a cassette tool but would need to find a mechanic with a long enough wrench to get enough leverage on it. Shit!

Looking closer, though, I noticed the nipple was broken but the spoke and thread on the spoke was still fine. Okay, so I’ve read about how to fix this without removing the cassette, but I’ve never done it.

It took some patience, but after removing the tire, tube, and pulling aside the rim tape, I was able to remove the broken nipple head from inside the rim and then drop in a new nipple into the hole. Bending the spoke as little as I could, I got it into the nipple and tightened it up, and good to go! The wheel is still slightly out of true, but it’s rideable, and I’ll try to true it up better this evening when it cools off and I can spend some time on it. Theoretically, I only need to tension that one spoke so don’t need to do a full truing.

Cycling today was mostly on lightly trafficked roads, some by the coast, by small fishing villages. But for the most part it was pretty boring non-descript roads with not much to see. Overall well paved though!

Cycling through Ratnagiri, however, was one of our busiest cities since Mumbai. We rode through a very busy bazaar in the city, and then worked up the courage to cross a four lane divided road to leave the city.

We didn’t see much on the map after leaving the city, so even though it was early, we decided to stop for a quick lunch. We saw a tiny place with food photos and about a dozen chairs, so we stopped there. We liked the vada pav (potato cake sandwich) from yesterday, so I asked the woman working there, “vada pav?” “Huh?” Trying another pronounciation I’ve seen, “wada pau?” “Huh??” Ah crap. Steve pointed to the wall, and said, “this”. The lady said, “ah! Vada pav!” Sounded exactly how I said it, oh well, I’ll keep trying. In the meantime I’ve taken photos of the food pictures with the Marathi script below it so we can pull up the photo and point if needed. Wish we were going to be here long enough to where I could learn more of the language, but in a few days we’ll be in Goa, and totally new language.

We ended up under $1 with four sandwiches and a bottle of water. Best vada pav yet, served with a mild green sauce and some kind of spicy, stringy, powder stuff.

On one of the non-descript roads, we were taken by surprise when a car coming the other direction came to a stop with 5 Indian guys in it. One camera-wielding gent hopped out of the car with a big smile and pointed at his camera and then at us. Haha, sure why not? We all posed for a few pics as another took photos. We all shook hands, and he bid us good bye and safe travels. His four friends looked amused by his behavior but went along with it.

We didn’t know for sure where we were going to find a hotel. There was a town Rajapur that would make a 90km day, or another town Devgad that would be 110km. Both too far with our mechanical issue, etc. There looked on Google Maps to be a few road-side hotels halfway between Ganpatipule and Devgad, so we hoped they were there and open. We passed a few that were definitely closed and then finally came across one that had an open gate and two people sitting on the steps.

A quick inquiry, “rooms?” was answered with a head wobble, so we looked at the rooms, agreed on a price, sat down, did our registration, and bought some ice cream. The butterscotch is one of our favorite flavors of the local ice cream so far.

They wanted us to leave the bikes outside, but we pointed in to the room, and one guy motioned to follow him and showed us the back door. Before he could object, we picked up our bikes and put them in the room. He looked a little surprised, but we said, “this okay?”, and he gave the head wobble that seems to mean, “maybe” or a reluctant “okay”. I think if you just smile a lot and pretend like it’s the most normal thing in the world to do, it becomes a non-issue. Nice warmish shower (in this heat, you don’t really need a hot shower anyway), and a patio to dry our clothes in the sun. And they have a restaurant for dinner and wifi that sometimes works. Nothing at all to do here except watch the rare car or motorbike drive by, so we are reading books and watching Netflix and blogging.

Soon, we have to start thinking about where we are going after Goa. The three options are: 1. Cycle inland to see Hampi then come back to the coast, taking about 2 weeks. (A lot of time, but an interesting very rural ride and really spectacular place to see) 2. Keep our bikes somewhere while we take the train or bus to Hampi for a few days and then come back. (More expensive and we’d worry about the bikes.) Or 3. Skip Hampi and head down the coast to Udupi. Any suggestions?

We got up early to get ready and go to breakfast so we could cycle before the heat hit, knowing that we had up to 80km to go today. The restaurant downstairs was supposed to open at 7:30, but didn’t open until 8, and our bikes were still locked up, so we didn’t get going until around 9.

We picked up a few bungee cords at a junk shop near our hotel and used them to reinforce our bags, hoping to prolong their lives with the beating the roads have been giving them. It was good timing too, because my previous reinforcement strap broke as I was putting it on. The bungee cords work much better anyway; we didn’t have to tighten any straps today after going over rough roads.

That said, the roads were really good overall; they are definitely improving as we get closer to Goa. Most of it was freshly paved, but a few sections were really rough.

We continue to follow the TOD arrows painted on the road; it is nice to see that we are not totally out here on our own. In fact, when we stopped for water, a man came up to talk to us and said that 2 days ago he saw a group of 10-12 cyclists go by. Some of the TOD signs are words of encouragement (“C’MON!”), which are also helpful.

The ride was very rural, so we saw very few people or traffic the whole way. We rode through a few small cities and had to take another ferry. That should be our last ferry before Goa.

When we arrived at the ferry dock, the ferry was just pulling away, so we sat down at a restaurant next door to the ticket counter. An older gentleman got to talking to us and ordered us some kokum juice. He said it’s great for cycling and is used in ayuverdic treatments. Indeed, it was salty and sweet, probably has good electrolytes. I liked it, but Steve didn’t. He tried to get us to buy a whole bottle of concentrate (half a liter!), but we said it’s too heavy, and he looked at our bicycles and said, “you’re right”.

We asked if they had thali, and he said no, not for 10km after the ferry, but suggested we have some vada pav. This is a fried potato cake sandwich with spices. So we had two, and it was perfect!

After the ferry, we cycled through some beach areas with hotels and guesthouses, some looking quite fancy with proper landscaping and modern architecture. We then arrived at Ganpatipule, where I demanded we stop for some kulfi (Indian ice cream).

Over ice cream, we considered our options and decided to stop for the day there in Ganpatipule, and split the rest of the way to Goa into 4 more days of about 60km each, getting us to Goa Saturday evening.

Hunting for hotels is getting to be a familiar challenge each day, especially as almost all of the hotels have signs in Marathi (or maybe Hindi, I can’t tell the difference) and no English. And only a few are listed online. So we have no idea how much the hotel will be when we ask. They usually insist on showing us a room first before we even get a price.

In Ganpatipule, it was a little easier, as a few hotels are listed on Booking.com, and Lonely Planet has one pricey seafront one listed, but also a warning that they couldn’t find any hotels that would accept foreigners. Something to do with the Mumbai bomber spending time in this town before carrying out his plot. Well, we can report this does not seem to be the case. We asked one hotel, and he didn’t speak much English but said something about “online only” and “passport”. Maybe it’s a vacation rental, not hotel. He pointed us at the MTDC, the one hotel listed in Lonely Planet. We knew it was out of our budget, but we decided to go look anyway, and maybe the shoulder-season rate would be affordable.

Right in front of their gate, a man came up to us and asked if we are looking for a hotel. Usually, I find these guys annoying because I’ve got enough information online to make my own decision. But in this case, with so many options not immediately obvious to us, I heard him out. He had a room just 5 minutes walk away for much less than the MTDC, and it is the nicest room we’ve had since Mumbai. Probably not the cheapest in town, but it works for us.

There is a famous temple on the beach here that we took a look at. It’s nice, but you have to go inside the fence to get a good look, and it was too hot to put pants on, so we just walked around the outside along the beach, watching the camel rides and horse drawn buggies again. One side of the beach had a small herd of cows laying on the beach. Damn, these cows have the life in India!

We did go into the MTDC to have a snack. There was beer on the menu, but the waiter said today is a “dry day”. Oh well, I’ll be fine without a beer until Goa. I ordered a lhassi and some fried potato things for us. After a few minutes, two women sitting next to us asked us where we were from and then said, “Why did you choose this place to visit? This is not a place tourists usually come. We live in Mumbai and have wanted to come but didn’t make it here for 30 years.” We explained our trip, and they said it was great to see foreigners enjoying their country and their food. One of them said she’s traveled to 20-something countries but when she comes home she knows India is special. Every state you visit here will have different cultures and different food. She said every US suburb is the same, and we couldn’t argue with that! They left us with some fried vegetables to try and good wishes.

We’ve only been cycling in India for 5 days now, and I already feel like we’ve had more human connections than our whole 8 months in Europe. I don’t think that’s really true, but it’s certainly on another level here. People have been overwhelming interested in talking with people who are different from what they expect to see. It’s not universal; we’ve gotten a few scowls or disapproving looks, but it’s really refreshing, and is taking our trip to another place. We are looking forward to this experience continuing and evolving throughout Asia!

We started early today to avoid the heat and get a head start on the bad roads. The amazing chef at our hotel made us some kind of fermented pancake slathered with ghee and spices. It was really good and great energy food.

Surprisingly, the roads were the best that we’ve had for the whole trip. Still worse than any European roads, maybe on par with Albania. As always, they varied from freshly paved to almost gravel.

Traffic was almost non-existent though. It was a very quiet ride down the coastal roads with a lot of climbing and some spectacular views.

I found a coastal road on OpenStreetMaps that was listed as “unpaved” but saved us a bit of climbing and about 10 kilometers. Given how bad the paved roads have been, though, we were a little reluctant to try it out. We waited until the turnoff and decided to give the dirt road a try. At first it was actually quite nice, going by fancier hotels and beaches, but quickly it became an under-construction road with just a bed of gravel and 10% grades. We had to walk some of it, and at the end, the road turned into a path so narrow that we had to go single file along with a few other pedestrians and motorcycles. I think it was worth it to go the road less traveled, but Steve was upset about his butt hurting from all the bumps. But we did get to see some water buffalo swimming in a stream! (Plus lots of cows… There are cows everywhere if you haven’t gotten that by now. We may even stop talking about them. They’re like pigeons in New York City; everyone ignores them except the tourists.)

We rode through an actual working fishing village. Small ocean-front and ocean-view homes, not for holidays, but for sleeping after a hard day work on the boat. Women selling fresh fish on the main street and drying fish skins for something. After seeing many Greek fishing villages that are more tourist spots than fishing spots, it was really interesting to see a place like this with 0 tourists (well, I guess there were two!).

Not wanting to make the mistake of skipping lunch before the ferry, we stopped in the tiny ferry town of Dabhol and found a snacks vendor with a couple tables behind the desk and some photos of plates of food with Marathi letters next to them. We hopefully asked, “thali?”, and they motioned us to sit down. While eating, we were entertained by a toddler crawling around and tugging on our shorts and a gentleman who sat down beside us and spoke a few words of English and wanted to know about our trip.

The ferry was easy, once we found it, and on the other side the road surface immediately got better, and the area started to look more upscale. And, our Airtel service started working again, kind of!

I found a hotel with good reviews online in Guhagar and showed up at the door and asked to see some rooms. The one English speaking guy said he’s a cyclist himself and was glad to have us and gave us his locked storage room to keep our bikes along with his. He also said we just missed another group of cyclists 2 days ago, riding the Tour of Deccan. Indeed, we had seen “TOD” painted on the road, and I remember reading about this on another cycling blog. I googled it, hoping we might catch up with them, but they’d just gotten to Goa, finishing their tour that day.

We walked around town and tried to find a SIM card with a different company, but no one had them. So we took a walk on the nice beach, where kids were riding camels and families riding horse drawn buggies back and forth along the beach, then ate a nice vegetarian thali for dinner and went to bed.

Sailing away from Mumbai’s Gateway of India.

Arriving at Mandwa just before we began cycling.

The patio of our first hotel.

The staff posed for selfies with us.

Veg thali by the amazing chef at our hotel in Kelshi.

Door and window in Kelshi.

Temple.

People working in the fields.

The beaches in this region are almost untouched.

Fishing boats in a natural harbor.

Palm grove behind our hotel in Kelshi.

Not sure what this is, cool building.

We’ve seen lots of cows but this is the first with jewelry.

Ferry map of the Maharashtra coast. Lots of ferries, not a lot of bridges.

Another cool old building.

We had a nice lazy rest day in Kelshi, a super quiet beach town in the middle of the jungle. It’s the kind of town that you would probably never think of if you thought of an Indian beach town. The beach is surrounded by agricultural fields (rice?) and the town is small and quiet. It is nice to be so far away from crowds and especially tourists; we are the only westerners in town I think, though there are other Indian tourists from other parts of Maharashtra. We are enjoying it while we can because we will be in tourist-filled Goa in a week.

Our hotel has an amazing chef on staff who made us all three of our meals and told us we were doing it all wrong! He’s got quite a fiery personality, but because he speaks in Marathi, we miss all of his jokes. He has the other guests giggling, though, and he invited a group into the kitchen to give them some tips.

We asked for dinner at 7pm, and when we came down, he asked why are you eating so early? It should be 8:30 or later for dinner. He speaks English really well but doesn’t understand our American accent, so we didn’t get a clarification, but a couple at a neighboring table overheard us and asked if he could help. He said that it’s typical to eat 7-8pm, but there is no set time, so don’t worry about it.

We saw them drinking chai, so after our dinner, we asked for two. “Tea, now?! Okay…” We wondered aloud what we’d done wrong since the other table had ordered it, and he spoke up again and explained it’s usually had in the morning, but some people (like them) enjoy it after a meal or before bed. Okay, one more lesson learned!

The other thing we are trying to master but haven’t figured out yet is eating with our hands. No one has said anything to us about doing it wrong, and some have told us just use a fork and spoon, it’s no big deal. But sometimes they bring our food with no utensils, and we feel like we should be able to master this! I mean, the fork hasn’t been around forever! We already know that eating with the left hand is absolutely forbidden, so we haven’t made that faux pas. But when they bring chapati (like a soft flour tortilla) along with dal (lentil soup), how the heck do you eat soup with that?? After watching some YouTube videos, we’ve learned that there are two tricks. First, as we go further south, we will get rice instead of chapati, so we can mix the rice with the curry or dal and eat it that way. Or we learned a technique for folding up a piece of chapati into a spoon shape and scooping up the dal that way. More practice is required…

Another custom that’s not as easy as YouTube makes it out to be is the head wobble. Apparently in Maharashtra, the head wobble is particularly pronounced, and we’ve noticed that often they will wobble without speaking. It means anything from hello to okay to yes to maybe. Each meaning is subtly different, and we are slowly picking up on it and also trying to emulate it.

We are finding that, except for younger people, the women here are much more guarded when we say hello to them. While most guys will instantly respond back and smile, most women give us an incredulous or worried look, though many do smile or wave. Being in a different culture, I have to stop myself from jumping to judgments or conclusions, so I will just leave it at that and see if we learn more about the gender differences as we spend more time here.

We spent a lot of time lounging around the hotel, so I downloaded a history book on India and am enjoying reading about some of the ancient history of the subcontinent. There’s a nice palm grove in the back of the hotel with walking trails and a swinging bench.

We walked around town again, and it was very sleepy on this Sunday. Tried to say hi to everyone we met, and most people responded with a head wobble at least, but we don’t get nearly as much attention off the bikes as on!

Since our internet has been kind of working, I planned out our routes all the way to Goa, uploaded them to my GPS unit, and made sure there are hotels we can find in each stop. So even if we don’t get internet again, at least we will know where to ride! I also reduced our expectations to 60km/day, as that’s all that’s realistic with the roads and heat. Should be in Goa in about 6 more days.

(Tried to upload photos, but it’s timing out…)