The last few days of a trip like this always bring mixed emotions, looking forward to being home in one's own bed, sad not to be riding with a great group of people, glad to be getting back to familiar things, sorry not to be encountering new ones. As well as taking in the final three days of riding, one tries to consolidate what we've been seeing and experiencing, sometimes feeling an understanding of an irritant during the trip, other times the opposite.
I'm writing this after returning from dinner on March 10th. By this time tomorrow, we should be on our way home, so I'm now trying to pack in three days of riding, three days in Goa, some celebrating, some reminiscing about the last six weeks, and maybe answering the inevitable questions about these kinds of trips - would you do it again, what did we like most/least - things that defy the one-line answer.
We had enjoyed being at the beach on the rest day. We didn't see many western tourists in the area and indeed on the beach, the difference between the Indian and western habits was apparent - we all don swimsuits for the beach, but the Indians are there in their normal clothing and that's the way they enjoy the water, even to the point that many still wear street shoes.
...and of course cows everywhere...
...even though we were never above 200 metres elevation or far from the sea...
We saw this back at the beginning of the trip, so here on the last day was the reminder... cows and garbage... we absolutely hated to see cows munching away in the garbage at the side of the road...
Fortunately some wetland and birds to distract...
...salt flats...
...manual labour off-loading the sand or whatever these boats are carrying...
...some glimpses of shoreline and maybe fancier resorts as we go south...
Then three-days of wind-down time here before the flights home.
Old Goa is about 40 km away, the area where Portugal established their trading presence 500 years ago...
...and we had a relaxed lunch on local seafood...
Dinner tonight at Buddy's was so good we'll go back there for breakfast in the morning.
Those questions...
Would we do it again?... poor question... we've done it once and are very content that we did so. We don't need to do it again... too many other things and too little time at this stage of life.
Are we glad we did it?... Absolutely YES... we saw a lot of the best and worst of India. The pollution and garbage may be the worst - I suspect that's not just an Indian problem. The best is the absolute friendliness of the Indian people. Sure, there were moments when they were beside you on the highway on their motorcycles, welcoming you to their country while slowly cutting you off and making you take evasive action, but in the long run, we'll remember their welcome and if we remember the evasive action, it will be with a smile.
Why in hell did we ride our bikes 3000 km for six weeks on sometimes terrible roads when we could have done it all from the comfort of an air conditioned coach in ten days?... Because ten days in an air conditioned coach is ten days in an air conditioned coach with a few bits of sightseeing. Six weeks on a bike in India is six weeks in real India, and we still got the few bits of sightseeing.
Would we do anything different?... If we'd known how rough the road were in the middle two week, we might have taken mountain bikes for the lower pressure tyres and front suspension
What else... more great friendships. A great group of people. Great TDA support crew. About the most negative thing to be heard was 'Oh my ass is so sore from all those terrible roads, I hope it recovers okay so I can do it again tomorrow'.
Will we ever return to India... again, not to repeat what we've already done, but we're already signed up for a bike ride from Kashmir to Kathmandu in August-Sep-Oct this year, so we will be back.
With that, I'll put up this post and get my last night of sleep on Indian soil. Hope you've enjoyed following our journey...
...Ursula and Rae
I'm writing this after returning from dinner on March 10th. By this time tomorrow, we should be on our way home, so I'm now trying to pack in three days of riding, three days in Goa, some celebrating, some reminiscing about the last six weeks, and maybe answering the inevitable questions about these kinds of trips - would you do it again, what did we like most/least - things that defy the one-line answer.
We had enjoyed being at the beach on the rest day. We didn't see many western tourists in the area and indeed on the beach, the difference between the Indian and western habits was apparent - we all don swimsuits for the beach, but the Indians are there in their normal clothing and that's the way they enjoy the water, even to the point that many still wear street shoes.
It's warm enough that wet clothes on the Indians become dry and whereas dry clothes on us become soaked with our perspiration.
March 5th - ready to get on the bikes. We'd had the rest day to clean them sort out any mechanical issues. Indeed, Rae's rear tyre went flat overnight so we patched it and it was good for the rest of the trip. But departure time till saw a surprising amount of last minute bike maintenance before departing.
The next three days were destined to be more of what we'd seen the last three days, wide rivers...
...many bridges, though no more ferries and the waits that they involve...
...lots of normal river activity, fishing boats, washing and bathing, etc...
Dogs are just as happy sleeping on the bridges as they are anywhere else in the country, totally oblivious to the traffic and trucks and busses...
...and they also happily sleep on the top of metre-high stone walls... we were always amazed to see dogs sound asleep in so many places where in the western world they'd be trampled in nano-seconds.
There seems to be road work everywhere, bridge included. Fortunately here we could walk across and avoid the several kilometer detour that the road traffic had to make...
Leaving the bridge there was always another climb, and it was almost as if there was a temperate climate and sea level but instantaneously twenty degrees hotter with even the modest inland climb in the following picture...
Most of the time, you never even got a look at the bridge after the bend in the road on the climb - it was right away into dense jungle-like forest...
Roads were generally narrow and deserved a bit of attention and prudence in dealing with the traffic...
 |
| truck drivers were overall very good, but best to get off the road when you can choose the place to do so, let them pass, and then continue |
These red busses provide what appears to be an amazing public transit service in India. We encountered many many of them every day and were amazed at the tight places they negotiated. Again, the message for the cyclist is to find a safe place on either side of the road and let them pass...
Land up on the plateaus seemed incredibly parched...
We saw many more beautiful beaches, all seemingly undiscovered by the western tourist world...
There were a lot of seemingly abandoned building in the villages... we wondered whose bicycle it was in front of this one...
...and of course there were a few birds along the way...
Our last night on the road was in this hotel...
...not very remarkable for outside appearance, but everything in the rooms worked, reminding us how disappointed we were at the quality of maintenance at a lot of places, obvious things like lights not working, missing fixtures, unbelievable wiring, etc. The overnights these days were not directly on the beach, but at least the beach was nearby, and on this last night on the road, dining was in the red-roofed place to the right in this photo and we had a delicious meal...
...while watching a different kinds of beach activity than back home...
...and later we all received the tour jerseys to wear on the final day...
So a quick group photo on the beach on the final morning (sorry, I don't have a copy of the photo yet). then negotiate the local traffic that here included a lot of bicycles with kids riding to and from school...
 |
| Cormorant struggling to land on the branch |
...Hindu temple ready for some festivity...
The last day's lunch stop... we really really really enjoyed salads that the support crew prepared every day for lunch especially since that generally wasn't part of what we got with evening meals.
From there it was about 25 km to our destination, and we experienced sudden culture shock coming into Goa's tourist area catering to western tourists, rental motor scooters (less predictable and maybe even more dangerous than the local ones)... the whole atmosphere changed... since we'd left Mumbai, there were lots of beach resorts, generally small scale and catering to Indians. Now it was westerners, now-aged hippies and a different culture.
Ursula and Rae both finished healthy and happy. We both cycled every inch of it, not needing to hitch a ride at all on the support vans. My odometer registered 2997 km in the six weeks.
That night was the wrap-up dinner, a good one, at a different resort overlooking the beach
 |
| Ursula, Rae, Eve, Greg, Dave, Wendy |
Old Goa is about 40 km away, the area where Portugal established their trading presence 500 years ago...
 |
| Basilica of Bom Jesus |
 |
| Church of St Francis of Assisi |
 |
| Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church in Panaji |
Our hotel here is not on the sea; rather it is a half-hour walk over a hill to the beach that's below where we had the final day's dinner...
...and there we find that the dogs know how to fall asleep and escape the sun on the beach too...
...and cows are on the beach too...
...and believe it or not, we saw a cow walking down these steep steps to get down to the beach!
Today (March 10) we got what's likely to be our last swim in the Indian Ocean. Ursula got her pedicure...
Those questions...
Would we do it again?... poor question... we've done it once and are very content that we did so. We don't need to do it again... too many other things and too little time at this stage of life.
Are we glad we did it?... Absolutely YES... we saw a lot of the best and worst of India. The pollution and garbage may be the worst - I suspect that's not just an Indian problem. The best is the absolute friendliness of the Indian people. Sure, there were moments when they were beside you on the highway on their motorcycles, welcoming you to their country while slowly cutting you off and making you take evasive action, but in the long run, we'll remember their welcome and if we remember the evasive action, it will be with a smile.
Why in hell did we ride our bikes 3000 km for six weeks on sometimes terrible roads when we could have done it all from the comfort of an air conditioned coach in ten days?... Because ten days in an air conditioned coach is ten days in an air conditioned coach with a few bits of sightseeing. Six weeks on a bike in India is six weeks in real India, and we still got the few bits of sightseeing.
Would we do anything different?... If we'd known how rough the road were in the middle two week, we might have taken mountain bikes for the lower pressure tyres and front suspension
What else... more great friendships. A great group of people. Great TDA support crew. About the most negative thing to be heard was 'Oh my ass is so sore from all those terrible roads, I hope it recovers okay so I can do it again tomorrow'.
Will we ever return to India... again, not to repeat what we've already done, but we're already signed up for a bike ride from Kashmir to Kathmandu in August-Sep-Oct this year, so we will be back.
With that, I'll put up this post and get my last night of sleep on Indian soil. Hope you've enjoyed following our journey...
...Ursula and Rae
