Monday, January 31
Sariska Tiger Reserve to Jaipur – 56 miles (I will calibrate my Garmin for Kilometers tomorrow)
This is more of what I signed up for…kind of. I mean there’s really know way of knowing what’s in store on a trip like this, but a 50 mile/day average on marginal roads is doable for me – from the winter training zone. I’m sorry, but a bike on a trainer just can’t prepare most people for a day like yesterday. But today was better – about 15 K on crummy roads, 10 K on OK roads and the rest on good roads. Here is an OK road (the shoulders are ridable and the road semi-broken up). That’s pretty good… we can work our way thru the bad spots without much difficulty and if a vehicle approaches then we ride thru the bad spots (ruts are 1-2 inches deep).
Stopping for a snack and drink along the way I snapped some pictures of my views. Here's one:
Jan has a flat about 10 K from the city of Jaipur. Again a crowd (mostly boys and men) gathered - this time we were in front of a school that was letting out for the day. The children who are wearing their school outfits seem to me to be much better behaved than those of the more primitive villages. I held two bikes while the other three worked to get Jan’s bike back on the road. The youngsters were very curious about me and my bike and we exchanged both smiles and limited conversation. They ask “what is your name?” often and when I told them, then they broke into laughter… they were cute kids. We compared words for bike related items like helmet and bycicle and found that these were the same in both languages. Handlebar, pedals, wheels, etc. were different. I showed them my holiday card of my family that I put on my front bag… pointing out “my son,” “his wife,” “my daughter,” “her husband,” etc. They loved looking at the pictures.
Before we finshed with the flat fix another couple riding (he had 4 flats today) joined us and informed us that Shanny (the director on tour) and Ricardo (another leader on tour) were going to escort us to the hotel when we got close. The traffic was heavy – that was GREAT news.
We rode to the meeting spot and waited – bought a coke and Lays potato chips. I was needing the salt – my left hamstring was thinking it wanted to cramp up a bit – it was time for some electrolytes. Shanny and Ricardo showed up and we followed Shanny as a group, weaving thru traffic like the rest of the vehicles and such on the road. The gal in front of me was cut off at an intersection and she went the wrong way but Ricardo was our sweep and caught up to her while we stopped and waited. Once reunited, we made our way thru the city streets to our hotel.
Riding in traffic requires 110% concentration, hand gestures that tell other drivers to wait for you and it requires being unclipped from one pedal ready to stop at any moment. I don’t like it much.
Here’s a picture I took while we waited for Ricardo and the other gal to return:
The first thing I did when I went into my room at the hotel was turn on the faucet in the bathroom… YES!!! I had HOT water!!!! I was thrilled! I haven’t had hot water since Delhi – 4 nights of it. It’s not that the other hotels didn’t have hot water, but some rooms had it and others didn’t. It’s the luck of the draw and I was losing – last night my water tank in the bathroom was there but it just didn’t work. That seems very typical.
We have a day off tomorrow and are doing a tour at 10am. I’ve put my laundry in a bag for the cleaners – it’s very inexpensive to have them do it… less than 200 rupees (about a dollar). I’ve done laundry once in Bharatpur – hung them up to dry by the room heater and they were dry by morning - it worked good. But this time I am sending out J
