Cycling Around the World by Tim & Steve

Okay it’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I’m going to start with the good stuff, the food!

Aside from the one order of larb moo (spicy grilled ground pork) that ended up having pig entrails grilled in with it, and aside from the challenge of a farang trying to get spicy food, the food has been unquestionably amazing. From night markets, to side-of-the-road holes in the wall, to street vendors, to fancy places, we’ve been in foodie heaven.

Restaurants

We could both eat shrimp pad Thai every single day, but we are doing our best to branch out and try new things.

We rotate through the various curries, red, yellow, green, and panang. There’s also a jungle curry but we haven’t tried that one yet. Always ordered phet mak mak krap (very very spicy), but usually received phet nit noi (a little spicy)… Luckily for spice lovers in Thailand, every place has “plic nam pah”, a mixture of Thai (birdseye) chiles and fish sauce, and you are expected to doctor up your dish to your preferred level of saltiness and spiciness.

Adding a fried egg on top of your Thai food is a real thing here, and you have to try it!

Every region of Thailand has their local specialties that you can’t find easily outside. In Phuket Town, they are known for their Malaysian-inspired (formerly Chinese-inspired) noodle dishes like the Hokkien noodles at this local place, Mee Ton Poe. And of course, you can add an egg on top, and you should. The noodles didn’t blow me away but were full of flavor and really cheap.

As we were cycling near Khao Sok National Park, a woman with a small pond-side restaurant called out to us, “hello!” I asked Steve, “are you hungry?” “I could eat,” he said. So we turned around and pulled up a plastic chair. It was a small place across the street from a construction zone and several locals stopped by for a quick bite while we were there. They didn’t speak a lot of English but were all smiles and seemed tickled that we’d come back to eat with them. They had a pot of broth boiling, so I pointed at that and said, “soup?” The chef nodded and then pointed at some noodles, three different kinds. We chose the wide ones and then she motioned for us to sit. She poured the hot broth over the noodles and then added chunks of grilled sliced chicken, sliced fish cake, meat balls, and something that was either bone marrow or chicken liver. For condiments, we had bean sprouts, green onions, cucumbers, cabbage, chili flakes, and chili paste (like Sriracha). It was a perfect lunch for 30฿ per bowl ($1).

Another chance delicious road-side meal, we were leaving Surat Thani early in the morning to make the ferry to Ko Samui. There were shops and stalls everywhere with all kinds of food. In this area, it seems to have a lot of Chinese influence, and so there were lots of dim sum places. We stopped at one and the lady there waved us inside and spoke quite good English and explained we should pick out several dishes (all raw, under a glass deli case). I picked these three, pork balls with mushrooms, pork ball in fish cake with carrots, and my favorite dim sum item of all time, a pork bun! The dishes are then put in these bamboo containers and steamed. The pork bun, for me, was better than the ones you pay $5+ each at Yank Sing in San Francisco. (The other two dishes didn’t knock my socks off but were tasty enough for 50c.)

I had this whole “white snapper” deep fried with spicy sauce, and it was delicious! We’ll be leaving the Gulf of Thailand soon, so I wanted to make sure to try some of the fish while I can.

Street food

Surat Thani has an excellent night market, so we visited twice on the two nights we stayed there.

These little dough balls of octopus or shrimp are cooked through and then covered with spices and seaweed.

Skewers of meat, fish and meatballs are everywhere. You can choose a sauce to put on top.

Tasty small grilled veggie cakes. Some may have had fish or meat, not sure! You kind of just have to go with the flow and point at whatever looks good unless you can read Thai! I think this would be a lot more difficult for anyone with dietary restrictions.

Seasoned fish cakes on a spit. This time, I know it was fish because I saw “ปลา” on the sign along with a dozen other Thai letters and know that’s “plah”, the word for fish. One woman mixed and formed the fish balls, and the guy (off-picture) furiously spun and moved around the skewers over hot coals to get exactly the right level of doneness, even snipping off bits of char to keep it from burning. We waited 10 minutes for ours, and they were worth it.

The classic mango sticky rice but with colored rice was delicious but a bit pricey at 50฿. Look at us complaining about $1.65 dessert.

Convenience store food

I always like to see what’s for sale in the convenience stores. It’s usually a weird mix of local favorites plus what they think foreigners miss from home.

Sorry but no… We had some amazing cuttlefish pintchos in Spain, but these don’t look good.

I don’t think this packaging would fly in the US. A bit explicit, I think? Maybe it’s just me.

Is it going in or out of his mouth? Either way, is this appetizing to anyone? I do like roasted seaweed though.

Mango lovin’!

Two aisles of ramen and cup o’ noodles, but they don’t have any Snickers bars.

I hope you are enjoying my food posts, I’ll write about our recent travels soon!

Ever since I visited Thailand two years ago, I’ve been eager to return, and it has proven to be everything I’ve remembered. It is so good to be back!

Our flight was uneventful, despite leaving from India at 1:30 in the morning, so we got almost no sleep. Again, we swore off red eye flights for good. The good news is, we shouldn’t have to set foot in the airport for at least another 6 months, as we cycle across the land borders in Southeast Asia.

Our bicycles were not on our plane when we landed, but the excellent Thai Airways staff immediately flagged us down with a sign with our names on it, so we didn’t even have to wait around. They had us fill out a form, and then delivered it for free to our hotel 6 hours later, completely unharmed. It actually worked out perfectly because we didn’t need to find a big taxi, and we took a nap to catch up on sleep in the meantime.

Our first hotel was nearby a bicycle shop for a tour company that I used two years ago to do a 10-day supported cycling tour of Thailand. It was that tour that prompted me to plan this around-the-world trip, so I was happy to do some shopping there, replacing my torn and worn out cycling jersey, helmet, and gloves. In India, we wore cargo shorts and a sports tee shirt because we didn’t want to offend local sensibilities against wearing tight fitting clothes, but in Thailand I think we’ll be okay again to wear our more comfortable Spandex cycling clothing.

We then embarked on an amazing relaxing 10 days of island exploration and vacationing, using up the rewards points that we’ve been accumulating on our travel credit card for this trip. We did three very small bicycle rides around Phuket and discovered that the hills in Phuket are stupid steep and the humidity (due to the out-of-season rain we were also getting) is intense. I did get Steve to agree with me though that cycling in tropical rain is super fun, so I think we’re going to do just fine as we get more towards rainy season around May/June.

We ran into two cycle tourists from China on one of our short rides around Phuket. They were also hating the steep hills and were adjusting their derailleur to better shift to their granny gear.

Amazing views near Kata Beach.

Kata Beach Viewpoint

At the Big Buddha there were many monkeys. They were fearless and would try to open purses and even bit a woman. One made a lunge at Steve while he was taking a photo. But yet, he still thinks he wants one!

Next, we visited an orchid garden and fed some birds. This stuff is super touristy, but it’s really hard to avoid the tourist trap places in Phuket, which is incredibly built up and has a huge well-oiled tourist industry, so we just went with it. We will get away from this stuff once we leave the island.

Elephant statues at Promthep Cape Viewpoint.

Wat Chalong Temple at sunset.

We also reconnected with some friends who live here and met some of their friends.

And got a little crazy for a few days on Phi Phi Island.

The drinks come in buckets on Phi Phi. Yikes!

Thai food is my favorite cuisine of all time, and it hasn’t disappointed. Even the mediocre Thai food we’ve had has been yummy.

Som tum, Papaya salad

Pad Thai may be basic, but it’s still amazing, and we eat it quite often.

On Patong Beach (of all places), there’s a beachside restaurant with some of the best squid dishes. I remembered it from last time and returned, and it’s still amazing. We asked for it spicy and it was like a cozy campfire in my mouth, so good.

The crab curry was super tasty but so much work cracking those claws.

Tom yum flavored EVERYTHING!!

Okay, so now we are itching to get back on our bikes. Our clothes are starting to get too tight. One more day visiting with a friend from California who happens to be in Thailand, and then we hit the road towards Myanmar!

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!

As we rest and reflect on an amazing year gone by, most of it cycle touring, I started to think about the many lessons we have learned along the way. It was one of the goals of this trip to open our minds to other cultures and different kinds of thinking, and it has. We still have a lot to learn, but here’s a start…

First, pizza is an international food. Get over it, Italy! Yes the pizzas in Italy are often profound, but pizza anywhere is good, whether paneer tikka pizza in India, quatro stagioni in Italy, or feta and olive in Greece.

Next, nowhere is as scary as you think, and most places are safer than the US. We had scary notions about countries like Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and India. But the reality is that all of these places are like everywhere else, filled with ordinary peaceful people going about their lives. Nowhere did we feel unsafe besides a few scary moments on the road. Meanwhile in the US, there were countless shootings, my former neighbor was shot and killed in Twin Peaks, San Francisco, and we lost friends and relatives to accidents and illnesses.

When you move to a new place every few days, no one notices if you are wearing the same clothes. Unless it’s been too long since they’ve been washed; then they notice and generously and politely offer the (usually free – hey it benefits everyone) use of their washing machine!

Cycling is the best way to travel everywhere, and we have grown to hate other forms of travel. Cycling is good for your health, the environment, and turns an unpleasant transfer into an interesting adventure. We get sick in cars, anxious and bored on flights, and walking is so slow… I would rather cycle two days than be stuck in a car for 4 hours.

There is one place in my bag, and only one place, for my toothpaste. I once tried another spot, but I didn’t like it.

The “optimal route” is never the best choice. People worry too much about finding the absolute fastest or most optimal way to get somewhere or accomplish something, and they forget that there is value in every second of life. Valuing only the end goal is missing the point. We always have more fun cycling 4 days through country and small towns versus 3 days on the highway.

Bum guns need to be a thing in the Western world! Forget those pretentious bidets and fancy Japanese toilets. Just put a sprayer nozzle on a hose and Bob’s your uncle! Why wipe your ass with dead trees and smear shit all over yourself when you can take a little bath instead? So much nicer!

We receive an automatic, but unachieved, privilege in most parts of the world, simply because of where we were born as well as our apparent gender and race. While we can just show up in Europe and be waved through the immigration line because of our US passports (Bosnia didn’t even open ours), those born in India or Thailand have to prepare an application that can take 6 months before they can get their visa. We like to think in the USA that everyone is equal and it is only because of our hard work that we have these opportunities open to us. But that’s bullshit. It’s only due to a freak chance that we were born where we were and look like we do, and flat out gifted these opportunities. At random. A trip like ours is really only possible for someone with these privileges, but travel is available to everyone to some extent. It’s important to me that we don’t squander this unique situation and instead do what we can to equalize privilege in the world when we can.

Bananas are available everywhere! And cows like to eat them too, peel and all. Monkeys, too, but you already knew that. And forget the genetically troubled Cavendish banana; you need to support genetic diversity and try some others as well.

Most people think we’re crazy for leaving home. Many cultures we cycle through would never dream of a trip like ours, and some have no desire to travel at all. The concept of wanting to travel on vacation to “get away from it all” seems foreign to many people because, why is your life at home so horrible that you have to travel to be happy? And they have a point, don’t they? We like to think we have different motivations, but it’s interesting to learn that many folks simply have no interest in anything outside their own community. But, it’s also nice to see a few people we meet be inspired to start to think about “what could be”.

“Clean enough” hasn’t killed me yet, and is one of the least important things I look for in a place to sleep. All I need is a toilet and a shower and something bed-like to sleep on. India challenged us a bit with the $7 rooms and moldy buckets to wash up in, but like I said, I haven’t died (or gotten sick) yet…

The hospitality of strangers is overwhelming. Americans as a whole don’t understand the true meaning of hospitality, and it’s only through our travels that I’ve seen how important and rewarding it is to take in travelers as if they are your own family. We have been treated so well by strangers along the way, offered beds, food, clothing, transportation, advice, expertise, and more. From now on, I will always offer up space and support to travelers who need it. You should too, but I promise I won’t preach.

Never believe directions given to you by a non-cyclist. “It’s flat” is never a good sign. That usually means that it’s less hilly than the mountain next door, just a few 500 meter foothills into a headwind.

Ignore the top 10! All those places are so overrun with tourists that they won’t give you much more than what you get at home. If you just want to be lazy, see a Disneyland version of a place, and get away from your life (see above), then sure, go there, but then consider a) how much you could have saved with a staycation and all the same comforts, and b) why is your life so miserable that you need to get away in the first place? You should be traveling because you want something different. Skip Venice, go to Chioggia to see the canals and local markets. Skip Dubrovnik, go to Korčula for the crystal clear waters and walled town, or Zagreb for the history and cafe culture. I’m thinking to post a “Tim & Steve’s Destination Underdogs” article, but I don’t want to ruin the places we’ve found. Just don’t pick the “top” spots, and you’ll find them too, and much of the adventure is in finding them anyway.

Learn the local language. Sure, we might be lucky to be native English speakers, which is often the universal langauge, but when we’ve spent some time to learn the local language, it’s opened us up to so many more interesting and local opportunities.

Appreciating natural beauty is more interesting than seeing all the man-built monuments. Marveling at something that humans built is a little like navel-gazing compared to standing in awe in a river valley at the immovable mountains that dwarf us. After the first dozen monuments (whether they be churches, temples, buildings, statues, etc), they all start to look the same. Monuments are nice for understanding history, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they prove anything about us as humans except for a desire to leave a legacy.

Bicycle glove tanlines look ridiculous. Especially when the logo of the gloves gets burned into your skin.

Meeting local people and people watching are my favorite activities in a new place. Rather than going to see the major sights, I prefer to find the best people watching spot and hang out.

It’s none of your business what other people think of you. My friend Colin gave me this advice, but it took experiencing the intense scrutiny we’ve gotten during this tour to really internalize it. People may stare, ask questions, and even confront you, but as long as you are doing positive things and they aren’t bothering you, it’s none of your business what they think.

A smile doesn’t mean the same thing everywhere. In many parts of Europe, if you smile, people think you’re crazy. You just don’t smile at strangers there. Or if you do, it may be a sign of superiority. In India and Thailand, smiles take on totally different meanings. Thais famously have 13 different smiles, all meaning different things. As an American, we smile to indicate openness or friendliness, but it turns out it’s not one of the universal expressions we have as humans.

You can still gain weight even if you are cycling every day! I blame Turkey, Greece, and India. We have both been a bit chubbier since then. Especially Steve.

Convincing other people to hate is an unfortunately effective way to gain power. Only those who crave power will ask others to have hatred. Need I say more? Read the news.

It’s okay if your life doesn’t fit into other people’s rules, in fact it’s preferable.

The best experiences are the ones that make you uncomfortable at first. Restaurants without menus, talking in front of 600 cadets, staying with a stranger on CouchSurfing or WarmShowers. They all challenge our comfort zones but are the most rewarding.

There is something magical about seeing the ocean. It’s something I am drawn to instinctively and makes me most happy, and I don’t know why. I don’t like laying on the beach and don’t swim too often, but I need the ocean to be there.

Aside from technological advances, the relative cheapness and disposability of everything we take for granted (clothing, etc) is only sustainable because of the poverty where these items are created. I feel like there’s a fundamental problem with currency when people make $2/day to make clothing that is then sold for $500 a piece, with 52 seasons of style per year.

Money can buy you comfort, but comfort is temporary and too often overvalued. It doesn’t make for good stories, memories, and teaches you nothing.

I can’t poop without a proper toilet. Those holes in the ground they call toilets in some places just make me constipated for days. I guess I’m getting old! Sorry if TMI!

When you only have a few things, each one becomes special. The idea of disposable things becomes strange, and you learn to repair what you have.

However, the popular concept of minimalism is a bit too hipster for me when we’ve met people in India living rich lives with far less than we or those famous minimalists have. We may be minimal in what we carry, but the idea that we are “living with less” is ludicrous compared to most of the world.

Curious kids always put a smile on my face. Cycling by a schoolyard filled with bicycles where all the kids come running out to wave at us, those are some.of my favorite moments on this trip.

We are unhealthily removed from our food chain in the US. So many Americans only know chicken as those pre-cooked cubes of tasty boneless pre-cooked meat sold wrapped in cellophane, or even as just a slab of protein in a bun. It’s not healthy to have such a disconnect with our food source. As we travel through rural regions, we see live animals for sale, fruits, and vegetables in all of their forms, from farm to vendors, and it has really taught us to respect and understand where our food comes from. I never understood the amount of land and human effort required to produce our food until I cycled through hundreds of miles of farmland filled with workers bent over all day long working on that land. It puts those tasty chicken cubes in perspective.

And finally, cows always have the right of way! There just no other way about it.

Happy Year New, what are your lessons from last year?

For our Christmas holiday, we splurged a bit and found a very nice hotel in Madurai that was having a Christmas Eve dinner, complete with tree, Santa outfits, and a roasted turkey along with a buffet of other Indian and Continental food. It was a nice reminder of home, and we took the time to connect with friends and family with video chat and text messages. I haven’t shaved with a blade in probably a year, but I made the effort to clean up as best I could!

As we got back on the road, we cycled through quiet farmland roads with many friendly and curious people and interesting temples and monuments. The temples in this area are stunning in their complexity and color.

Near the end of our ride to Karaikudi, a gentleman in uniform waved us over to stop. He quickly explained that he is a Commanding Officer in the Air Force. He’d seen us cycling and would appreciate it if we could take a few minutes to speak with his 600 cadets, who were participating in a 10-day program at a nearby school. We, of course, said we would be honored!

What ensued was nothing short of an unforgettable experience, and we were deeply humbled. We arrived to a line of cadets in full uniform, some with ceremonial rifles, to lead us in to the courtyard. Cadets came running from all corners and quickly took place seated in the courtyard to hear us speak.

Steve and I are quite shy with public speaking, but we did our best to answer all the questions asked, explain our bicycles and bag system, and learn about this program the kids are participating in. Several of them had in fact just cycled themselves 500km over 4 days, quite an amazing feat, considering they hadn’t done any training for the ride! They took with them a message of education to the rural communities of Tamil Nadu as they passed through. We were very impressed with these young men and were happy to answer their cycling questions. We hope they will continue to cycle and spread enjoyment of the sport in India!

Wing Commander C Gunasekran then made us coffee, prepared us some cookies and sandwiches, and took us out to see the young men and women playing sports and flying a model airplane, doing some great stunts for us, something which they’d excelled at in competition. We met some women who’d won awards for rifle drills, and were invited to play volleyball; I had to decline as I’m quite horrible at any sports besides cycling and would have just gotten in the way!

What an incredible experience, and I hope the kids will remember the two crazy Americans cycling the world, and maybe we will inspire some of them to chase their dreams as well.

We wished we had been able to stay longer and see some more of the cultural activities, but our host for the evening had already begun cooking us an elaborate Chettinad dinner, so we apologized and excused ourselves as best we could, and the cadets put on another farewell for us as we cycled off.

As if this wasn’t enough of an experience, we were then contacted (through the cycling club we’d met a few days earlier) by a reporter with The Hindu newspaper. He wanted to write an article about our trip, and so we did an interview with him, and here’s the wonderful article he published just today. Link to online version.

Cycling in India has been a life-changing experience for us. We have made memories and friends we will cherish for our whole lives, and although there have been challenges, there are so many unexpected and wonderful things that quickly make you forget about any difficulties. To those who want to visit India, we say to you, get off the tourist trail and see the real India. Sure, Goa and Varkala are not to be missed. But if you want to see real India, go to Madikeri and sample the food and see the rolling coffee plantations. Stop in the fishing villages along the Malvani coast and watch the fisherman bring in their catch. Find an out-of-the-way temple with a festival. Try to order lunch at restaurants (aka “hotels”) in small towns with no menu and no English on their signs (there are pictures usually so you can just point – using your thumb!). Say hi and smile to everyone you meet. Pose for selfies whenever asked. Put yourself out there in the less comfortable situations and be open to whatever happens. These have been the magic moments of India for us.

We still have two more weeks in India, as we prepare for our trip to Thailand, but we are now planning to take a break from cycling for a bit and relax and explore the surrounding area. We hope to get in a few more rides after our bikes are tuned up at a bicycle shop, and before they are put in boxes for our flight to Thailand.

Okay, so we’ve figured out our path from India into Southeast Asia. Since our original plans to cycle from India to Myanmar at the border crossing have been thwarted, we’ve had to consider another way of getting there.

After considering many different options, the one we decided on is to fly from Chennai, India to Phuket, Thailand in mid-January. I’ve just booked the flight, and we are starting to figure out other logistics.

Why Phuket and not direct to Myanmar? We have friends in Phuket, and it also has a great cycling culture, so we will be able to get our bikes and cycling clothing repaired and updated. Also it’s super easy and tourist friendly, and after nearly three months in India, that will be much appreciated.

After Phuket, our plan is to make a figure-eight through Southeast Asia, heading north into Myanmar and doing a loop there, then coming back through Thailand towards Cambodia, then Vietnam, then up the coast and back west into northern Laos, to Chiang Mai, and then back south again towards Singapore. Once in Singapore, we would like to explore Indonesia a bit before we finally head to Australia!

Other options we considered:

• Continue cycling through India to Bangladesh and then fly from Dhaka to SEA, possibly doing side trips to Sri Lanka and/or Bhutan. This was a very attractive option because there are so many interesting things we’d love to see in all of these places, but it would mean we’d get to SE Asia towards rainy season. SE Asia has been one of my most looked-forward to areas for cycle touring, so we decided we should try to get there while it’s still season. Also, the states of Odisha and Andra Pradesh in India, although probably very interesting, have few things that were high on our list. I think it’s likely we will come back to India to cycle tour again, so we are happy to save that for another time.
• Try to find a cruise or boat to get from India to SE Asia. It is possible and would be quite an adventure, but it’s prohibitively expensive. There’s a boat that runs a few times a month from Chennai or Kolkata to the Andaman Islands, part of India. It’s fairly affordable, running from $30-150/person depending on whether you want to sleep on the deck for 3 days or be treated like a king. But from the Andamans to Thailand, there are no public boats, just private yachts that you can charter. The cheapest are around $3,000/week.

There are many things we will miss from India, and there are many things we are looking forward to in SE Asia. We are very excited to have a goal to cycle towards, and we still have 3 weeks to enjoy India.

What a difference a day makes! Our ride and Tamil Nadu quickly cheered us up; India has a way of turning a frown into a smile in the most unexpected ways.

Maybe it was the holiday weekend or maybe it was us being a bit more relaxed and cheerful ourselves, but suddenly everyone we met on the road seemed extra enthusiastic, waving, smiling, cheering.

About halfway through our ride, another cyclist rode up to us and invited us to join his cycling club across the street. Remember yesterday I said we haven’t met a single other Indian cyclist in over 2 months? Well today we met 20! Here are just a few; we exchanged contact info, and I asked them to email me some of the photos taken!

An amazing 20 minutes ensued with people handing us oranges, parking our bikes with theirs, and taking a million selfies, and even a video interview. We shook hands with everyone, and really enjoyed meeting them. They are cycling from their home in Madurai to Kanyakumari in one day, then taking the train home. It is taking us 3 days to do that 250km ride in reverse. Quite an impressive ride! Good luck guys!!

The rest of the highway riding was fairly monotonous, but we passed through some picturesque rice paddy fields, and Steve kept the mood light singing Christmas songs and taking turns with me blocking the headwinds.

Half of the day was actually riding on service roads, which have no traffic and access to local shops and whatnot, so it was a very stress-free day of cycling, if not a bit boring. Even some of the service roads had service roads! But many of those were being used by local farmers to dry and separate their grains, so it was a bumpy ride if we tried to use them.

Still, there were many interesting monuments and temples along the way.

Last night I scoured all the online booking apps and found one hotel that was over our budget but within cycling distance at 107km. Not wanting to risk getting stuck, we booked it. We also booked a hotel in Madurai; I had posted on a TripAdvisor forum along for Christmas things to do in Madurai and someone responded with a Christmas gala at one hotel. They still had vacancy, so we booked a room, which includes admission to the gala dinner. I hope our business casual dress is sufficient for their dress code!

We will update soon on our Christmas events, and we again wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Today was full of ups and downs, but it had some really great parts.

What a crazy place to be a foreign tourist, Tamil Nadu is… I hate to say it, but as amazing as the highlights have been, the lows have been a bit discouraging. In one day, all of these incredible and disconcerting things happened:

• A nice fellow from North India joined us for breakfast and we spoke about our mutual travels around India and Southeast Asia.
• When he heard we were cycling, he then proceeded to tell us that he doesn’t like cycle tourists because they rush through places and don’t get to see anything. WTF?! I was too tired and already discouraged from yesterday to have an argument with him, but I told him he was wrong, we see 100 times more than any tourist, and he backed off. Why would someone dare to make such a blanket judgmental statement to our face?
• A bunch of touts outside our hotel kept poking our bikes getting in the way of us packing them, and we had to tell them to stop.
• A hundred people passing us on the highway gave us thumbs ups, waves, peace signs, smiles, and hellos.
• Three hotels in our destination town refused to give us rooms because we are foreigners. We showed them that they had rooms listed online, and the promptly picked up their phones pretending to be busy and shooed us away. One other hotel would give us a room but had no place secure for the bicycles and refused to let us bring them in the room. Prior to this, in 10 months of travel, we’ve only been refused a hotel twice, both because they had no secure bike storage, zero have lied to our face about availability. Four refusals in one day is absurd and really gives me a foul impression of Tamil Nadu, I hate to say.
• Even on the 4-lane highway, the scenery was stunning as we rode through rice paddy fields with wind turbines and mountains for a backdrop.
• After being refused at 3 hotels, two guys on a motorbike waved and said, “welcome to India!” I smiled back and beckoned them over, and asked if they could help us figure out why hotels wouldn’t give us a room. But alas, “welcome to India” appeared to be the only words they knew in English.
• We had to spend 4 times our hotel budget for a boutique hotel that was amazingly courteous and let us bring the bikes into the room. And they have a bar, a rarity in the prohibition-happy southern states. I need it after today’s nonsense.
• We decorated our backpacks with Santa ornaments! Steve’s fell off though!
• 
• And the one most awesome thing that happened today was one of the nicest simple gestures any stranger has done for us on this entire trip, and really really makes me want to love Tamil Nadu despite all the other bad experiences here. A man pulled his car over on the highway and jumped out and handed us two small woven boxes with candy and caramels inside. We later learned that this a tradition of the region, and several locals were very impressed that we had received this gift and said it was a very great gift to receive.

We were lucky today to be in a town with a boutique hotel and with a credit card to use. Tomorrow we might not be as lucky. It’s 80km to our preferred hotel, and 100km to our second choices. None of them are bookable online (without an Indian credit card), and if they all say we can’t stay, then we will be knocking on the door of some churches and hoping to have a place to wake up on Christmas Eve or else riding into the dusk towards Madurai.

We are thinking of flying from Chennai to Thailand in a few weeks. We will have to take a flight at some point from India (or Bangladesh) anyway because of being unable to get a border crossing permit from India to Myanmar, and we have been in India longer than any other country so we are ready for our next country. And it will be nice to be in a place that’s more common for cycle touring as well; we haven’t met a single other cycle tourist in 2 months in India. But we are still excited to see some of the UNESCO temples between here and Pondicherry and think we will enjoy Pondicherry and Auroville as well, so we still have some things in India to look forward to!

While we enjoyed Varkala, Kovalam we found a bit less interesting, with more touts hassling tourists, higher prices (some breakfast items were more expensive than they are in the US!), and not as scenic. But our hotel room was cheap, so we took a day off and got bored. It was time to get back on the bikes and make some distance!

Lighthouse Beach

Somehow the sight (and smell) of all these fish outside each restaurant convinced me NOT to order the fish. Maybe it had something to do with the lack of ice? I ordered the chicken. It came out raw in the middle, so I fed it to a stray cat and switched to veg dishes for a while…

It’s been two months since we arrived in this country! And today, we were going to reach the end of India! Well, the southern most tip of the Indian subcontinent, anyway.

The ride was full of challenges, though, upon entering our fifth Indian state, Tamil Nadu.

It started with kids coming up to us, which has always been a fun sign. They love to practice their English and joke around and poke the bikes. But this time, they simply said something in Tamil and held their hands palm up; we didn’t need a translation to know they were saying, “money”. While we get this sometimes in the cities, this was a first outside tourist areas while on our bikes and was quite depressing.

(Just a side note: I don’t give to beggars because many are part of bigger organized groups and the money is rarely given out fairly. Instead I find responsible organizations that I trust to help those in need. In India, I’ve made a contribution to Reality Gives in Mumbai, which provides education for youth in the slums.)

Another sign of entering Tamil Nadu is that spitting is back in. Spitting and smoking in public is against the law in Kerala. Lots of Indians chew paan (a mixture of narcotic betel nuts with tobacco and other spices) and spit the reddish mouth juice into the streets. These red stains are all over India but nicely absent in Kerala due I guess to strong enforcement of the ban.

Not only did we see lots more red stains everywhere, but one guy spit out of a bus missing me by inches. I caught up with the bus and the asshole wouldn’t even make eye contact.

Now I was getting grumpy, and I wasn’t the only one apparently. I tried to cheer myself up by smiling and waving “hi” at some kids and young adults, always a way to elicit a smile everywhere else in India. But here in Tamil Nadu, I just got worried or upset looks. Thinking maybe the hand wave gesture isn’t nice here, I tried the Indian head wobble with the same result. It’s one of the things we’ve grown to love about India is the cheerfulness of almost everyone we’ve passed, and suddenly it was gone.

Traffic was not nice, either. In addition to the typical India traffic patterns, Tamil Nadu people seem to be in quite a bit more of a rush and like to overtake a lot more aggressively. There are also a ton of triple and quintuple sped bumps everywhere causing traffic jams, where everyone again tries to overtake each other even though everyone is stopped, taking the speed bump at 0.5kph. Honestly, I think the potholes are sufficient; they don’t need to add speed bumps to the mix, but whatever. We’ve grown used to getting off the road to safety in these situations, but today was notable for the number of times we had to do so, often cursing quietly in the process. (Yelling is considered incredibly rude in India, and it was all I could do at times to prevent being an insufferable asshole, I’ll tell you.)

The roads were quite rough in places, and riding along the coast was nowhere near as nicely paved as Kerala. Part of this is due of course to the tsunami from 2004, and we saw some monuments commemorating the lives lost to this tragedy and took some time to stop and have a moment of silence.

At one section of washed out road, we turned around and made the next turn inland trying to find a way around. There was a family standing there talking in Tamil, and I waved, and in response, one of the men said something that sounded an awful lot like, “go away!” I will try really hard to assume that I misheard, but after another gentleman gave me directions with hand signals, I turned around to see the family quite agitated, a woman raising her voice to the man. I waved sheepishly an apology and received a snarl as a response, so we quickly left.

On the plus side, we did get a number of friendly waves and smiles throughout the day, and one person even said, “welcome!” to us. It just seemed that the difficult interactions far outweighed the pleasant ones, quite the opposite of every other day in India so far. Two fellows even asked us if we’d eaten, and we assume they would have offered us something if we hadn’t just had lunch. And whenever we stopped, we got tons of questions about our bikes, which is normal, especially when we stopped outside a paan shop to fill our water bottles. So perhaps we just got unlucky today; I hope it doesn’t continue negatively for much longer.

And, aside from too much trash, the coast is stunning, a true gem. Lined with small villages with colorful houses, tons of churches and temples at least every kilometer, crashing surf, and palm trees everywhere. And not a single tourist in sight.

Finally we reached “the end of India”, Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip. From here on, all of our travels through India will trend to the north instead of south. Of course this city is quite a tourist spot, mostly with Indian tourists but we spotted a European couple and spoke with a South African couple at dinner.

We found a nice hotel for a good price and an amazing shower. We haven’t had a hot shower in over a week, as most places don’t have 24 hour hot water and we shower in the afternoons after our ride when the water heaters are usually off. So we both soaked for a while before finding a nice restaurant that would have had an ocean view if it hadn’t been dark.

So the next three days will be riding along the highway and stopping at non-descript towns until we reach Madurai, where we plan to spend Christmas. Not my first choice for a Christmas destination, but I’ve had stranger Christmas’s before, so it will be fine.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

I’m not going to lie. As much as we enjoy the adventure and the unexpected interactions and experiences we’ve had in India in the many places we’ve been with zero foreign tourists, rolling into a town like Varkala that has all the Western comforts, beautiful beach, and tourist-friendly hotels, bars, and restaurants set along a scenic cliffwalk is enough to make us pause and relish the things we miss from home. It’s like a little mini vacation in our more adventurous overall journey.

But it does tire quickly… After two full rest days, we are growing bored of the cookie cutter expensive (relatively) but poorly-made tourist food, hawker stalls, and disillusioned tourists. I don’t think most of them realize that they aren’t seeing the real India at all, and it makes me sad to think that most of these people will go home to tell stories of “what India is like”, describing this ridiculous tourist trap. India as a whole has none of the touts, no one trying to rip you off, no Israeli food (duh!), and almost everything they sell at these stalls are for foreigners only.

It’s funny because in Europe we hated these places, but in India, because the overall experience in the country is so foreign, these stops at tourist-heavy towns are guilty pleasures, like little oases of refreshment for us. We can indulge in some of our favorite foods, drinks, and habits that we miss from home, while relaxing and planning our future path, before continuing back on our much more rewarding jaunt through the real India.

Leaving Kochi, we said our final goodbyes to our generous, loving, and helpful homestay hosts Linda and her husband.

There were dozens of Catholic churches on the way out of Kochi, and Steve got some great photos.

Our short day ended in Alleppey, with flooded streets after the recent rain showers. Trying to figure out how to cross one particularly large puddle, a man on a motorcycle started talking to us and invited us to check out his budget guesthouse. For a reasonable 1200 rupees, we got a basic room with an ocean view and a place to lock the bikes and dry our laundry! Perfect!

We didn’t realize the town is under construction as they are building a huge elevated highway, so the rest of this beach town was quite a disaster, but we found a decent place for dinner even if the former ocean view now consists of nothing but concrete and mud.

It started pouring during dinner so we hired an auto-rickshaw to go back the 1km to our hotel, saving us from getting completely soaked and caked with mud.

Our next day was a tiring 90km trudge through muddy roads, heavy traffic, and lots of smoke from burning garbage. My cold was still causing me grief, so it was a bit uncomfortable. But we found a perfect place to rest for two nights where I recovered fully in peace and quiet on Monroe Island, amidst the undeveloped backwaters. Our room at this quaint 3-room resort overlooked peaceful waterways where locals paddled canoes and kids played drums on tin roofs and we heard chirping birds and beautiful rhythmic chanting all day long. And the local Keralan food they served was good, and the server explained each dish and how to eat it. A nice couple from Germany was staying there also, having just finished a week-long ayuverdic treatment in Kovalam and looking to see more of India before returning home.

The resort offered a canoe ride through the backwaters and nearby lake, and we enjoyed a two and a half hour 1mph relaxing drift through the waterways in a canoe punted along by our friendly captain using a long stick.

Our next day of riding through a maze of tiny residential back alleys (thank God for GPS!) took us to Varkala, where we found a lovely hotel just steps from the cliff and the beach. The couple running the place are absolutely amazing, friendly, accommodating, and cook a mean breakfast (yummy masala omelet and banana pancakes)! Plus we have a balcony with private bike parking and sun to charge my solar panels (the power here is a bit iffy).

We took advantage of some more rest days (boy we are getting lazy!) to plan our route through Chennai for the next few weeks and consider some other options. Tomorrow we will head towards the much more touristy Kovalam, where we hope to get a taxi or bus ride to see a lion park! I love seeing big kitties in the wild so we hope to see a lion or two if we are lucky!

Finally the rainy, humid, cloudy, hazy weather seems to have gone, so we hope to have some nice cycling days coming up before we get to Tamil Nadu, where I understand we are cycling directly into their winter rainy season. Well, we’ve been super lucky avoiding rain all year, but I doubt our luck will hold up forever. I hope at least we get a little snow for Christmas! 😁