11th December (Virudhunagar – Thirunelveli) Nothing seemed open and inviting for breakfast so I was out of town quickly. The next couple of places, more bus stops than towns, didn’t appear to have a hotel or restaurant along the roadside. So I ate idli at a stall, friendly but definitely would not be approved by …
Friday 7th December (Salem – Karur) I was almost half tempted to spend a rest day in Salem; the hotel room was pretty nice with the door open and a fairly cool breeze outside. But I don’t have unlimited time and need to press on, at least one more day before a rest day, despite …
Thursday 30th November – Tuesday 4th December (Vellore) The Darcy Residency is the best hotel I’ve stayed in yet. Clean, good food, excellent service. A room with a desk to work at and wi-fi. But pricy. A good place to catch up on my project, so I decided to stay for a day or two. …
Tuesday 27th November (Gudur – Tirupati) I was almost out of town when my rear tyre crunched down into a pothole and was immediately flat. I pulled off to the side of the road, onto some unused land (amazing!) behind where a shoe repairer had set up for business, squatting below an umbrella with his …
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. …
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 …
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 …
October 27th, 2012 I slept reasonably and woke just after six; it was light outside and the big windows were only partially covered by curtains. Front tyre still hard: good! I loaded the bike up in the room, did a little Internet stuff, had a shower just to start off feeling a little more presentable and …
October 21: Underway at 9:30 am, well breakfasted. Felt like Sunday traffic on NH60 – a few more private vehicles and fewer aggressive trucks. Two lanes and untwinned, so I still had to keep my eyes open for behemoths overtaking directly at me, but it was relatively stress-free. And the road surface was most un-NH-like: …
I left Dhulian with neither regrets nor breakfast and rode back out to the highway at around 8:30. The road was as expected – lumpy, bumpy and pot-holed – and difficult to make any speed on. There were a few sections that had been resurfaced in anticipation of twinning the highway and they were much …