Day 6: After A'bad to somewhere further up the NH8

i haven't mentioned it so far
but WTF!
you buy a nice bike, fairly expensive, looks nice on the outside
and the dealer SKIMPS ON THE BITS YOU CANNOT SEE
like the tubes
although Specialized sells its own brand of tubes
it fits the cheapest local brand to its bikes
so ...
you're in the middle of nowhere and not only do you get a puncture,
it's a hole right on the valve so you cannot hope to fix it
i used my spare tube on Day 1
and ended Day 5 with exactly the same problem on the valve of the other Specialized-provided-non-Specialized tube
so i spent the first few hours of the morning trying to patch the unpatchable
and the hotel manager and his former chef (who know works in and Indian restaurant in Singapore -- all this I learned in the hours i spent with them) commiserated,
told me i was wasting my time
and offered to take me to the the local bike store where the man could "fix anything"

HE DID
he cut out the valves, patched the holes, cut new holes, inserted rusty old Indian-style valves from disused tubes, and told me that would take me "as far as i wanted to go"
(which turned out to be about 70km till the first one blew, but the second got me another 130km, and i'll continue the tube tale in Udaipur - Day 8)

having left around 1:30pm, i put a half day in, and was lucky to get local information about a govt-run guesthouse about 70km up the NH8
unmarked, and according to a local teacher i met, a secure haven in a dangerous tribal area -- "lock your door and don't come out till dawn"


this is not the government guesthouse but a typical Gujarati GH on the highway,
looks good enough to eat

Bike route 674522 - powered by Bikemap 

Day 5:
The saddest thing about the last two days' fiasco is that i am now much further up the road than i wanted to be,
and my tourism day
a 100km round trip to the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Champaner would be more like 200km
so i didn't get to see that, my first real day's tourism


instead i just pressed on northwards
passed this Tropic of Cancer sign where a fellow cyclist appeared just as i was posing for a self portrait


i visited Ahmedabad,
bought a map and book of short stories and used the Internet
then carried on out of town toward the Rajasthan border


this was the first camel i passed
and the driver tried to engage me in conversation

Bike route 668026 - powered by Bikemap 

Day 4:
so the hotel owner tipped off a friend
who banged my door at 2am
saying he was a policeman and ...
well, the usual shakedown stuff
anyway, i fainted in the middle of it
banged my head and ribs
and came to with the guy anxiously peering at me
he left
and i spent the next 30 hours in bed with head ache, rib ache, and awful diarrhea




meanwhile, outside, the rain continued to pour down

Day 3: Surat - Vadodara (and beyond)


greener again after i got past the industry
and i had planned to stay in the historic/student town of Vadodara
that everyone calls Baroda
and the rain was incessant, evidently beyond the drains' ability,
I really wanted to stay downtown
but the cheap-end hotels don't let foreigners stay
WELL DONE Lonely Planet and the rest of you for NOT mentioning this
(it sometimes happens in non-tourist towns; something to do with
police paperwork or bribes, and of course they don't put a sign
outside saying no foreigners ...)
so after 2 hours of trying, i headed back to the highway and eventually,
when the rain slowed a bit
about another 50km up the road,
found the worst fleabag hotel
and of course the boss saw how tired i was and overcharged ridiculously

oh well, one bad day out of 3 isn't too awful

Bike route 667998 - powered by Bikemap 

Day 2: Daman - Surat

I spent the morning in Daman, looking around the old fort, where there were lots of lizards enjoying the sunshine


and checking out the art on boats, mostly fish, but also this picture of Ganesh the elephant deity



then leisurely headed north toward Surat, which is a heavily industrial district
with very polluted air, not to mention this pond/rubbish tip





so i stayed guest house on the highway
with vegetarian restaurant even though the boss is clearly muslim not hindu

Bike route 667779 - powered by Bikemap 

Day 1: Mumbai (Bombay) - Daman in Gujarat State
nice seaside town, used to be a Portuguese colony
stayed in old hotel
wandered on beach at dusk


This is a temple in northern Maharashtra, about 30km before the Gujarat border
everything is a lot greener, and a lot more agricultural than i remember from further south last year


children collecting rubbish on the beach at Daman (to recylce for money presumably)

Bike route 667773 - powered by Bikemap