Saturday 25th November (Ongole). Rest day. Went out for a shave and a buzz cut. Bought a shirt. Took some pictures. Then back to the hotel and spent the day working on photos and the blog, with the England-India test match on in the background. With a couple of premier league football games in the …
Tuesday 20th November (Rajamundry to Eluru) A great breakfast of masala dosai, chai and lassi and I was on the road. Leaving town, I saw my first bike with gears! Didn’t stay long enough to see if it was an Indian or an import. There are three routes I could take: the NH5, which takes …
Saturday 17th November (Vizag to Tuni) I felt a bit down when I awoke, not really excited by the prospect of a day on the road. I’m definitely struggling a bit with cycling motivation. But the prospect of a day at the beach resort without a beach wasn’t enticing either, especially at around 2100 rupees. …
A splendid day. Despite the 5:00 am alarm. I left my bike locked to a tree below my room and took an auto-rickshaw to the station – a surprisingly long way. I paid my 20 rupees for a ticket up to Araku and wandered out into the Indian Railways world on the platform – something …
Sunday 11th November I had a broken night and was up early but it was still 8:00 am before I had breakfasted, settled my hotel bill and was underway – without the usual sense of exhilaration to be back on the bike. I’ll have to shake this malaise off, somehow! Puri was a lot easier …
An old friend, with a few more Indian trips under his belt than my four, describes it perfectly: “India, always a roller coaster ride if you fully embrace it…” And my time in Puri has been a bit of a low. A question of expectations, I suppose: it was a significant destination, the end of …
I’d booked four nights in Bhubaneswar, enough to see the sights and to catch up on some coursework. In the afternoon of the first day (October 30th) I walked to the old city, found a nice garden to sit for a while overlooking the big tank Bindu Sagar, then looked at a few Hindu temples …