South along the coast from Bombay

1 March - We're past the two-third point. We depart Mumbai the same way we arrived, by boat from the wharf at the Gateway of India

Close to 10 o'clock when we got off the ferry, so we were well into the heat of the day before we even got on the bikes. Good thing it was a relatively short 70 km ride today. Tonight's stop was cottages on the Indian Ocean far enough south of Mumbai that we had a clean beach and a warm ocean to swim in before dinner.

The rest of our time in India will be roughly following the coast until we get to Anjuna in the province of Goa. Every five to ten kilometres, there's a river flowing to the sea...

...these are wide rivers with very steep descents and climbs in and out of the valley with 50 to 150 metre, sometimes 200 metres elevation change - that's like the climb to our house in Squamish ten or fifteen times in a day followed by brake-burning descents...

...this one is decent road, but often it's too rough to be able to go any faster down than up... 

...what a waste of all that potentially energy we'd worked for in the climb.

The roads are generally narrow, especially through villages...

Unfortunately garbage is an ever-present blot on the landscape...

...here they kept the village quite clean, but garbage literally strewn on the road immediately outside the village boundary. 

Typically we get a few kilometres on a plateau before diving back into a river valley. Very hot, dry, and parched-looking on top, especially if at all inland from the coast, but this is dry season and it all changes with the monsoons which come in May. 

Fishing of course is big in the villages by the rivers...

On the bike and hugging (to the extent possible) the coast, we're often on really small roads...

...that don't justify bridges so we had a number of ferries...

Ursula buying the ferry tickets - note the dog totally
asleep on the step 

here we're waiting for an early morning ferry - in the background
a fort built around five hundred year ago - apparently it was never
successfully invaded

Our second night out of Bombay was again right on the shore and another delightful swim in the warm salt waters of the Indian Ocean, outside dining, beautiful sunset...

The next day more climbs and descents and more scenic fishing villages...

At one bridge there was lots of bird activity. These may be sea eagles of some sort, not quite sure. Also not sure what this one got in its talons, but it went through all sorts of antics trying to get its beak on it in flight, and then dropping it.

and a couple of crow on the bridge abutment

After three days riding, another rest day on the shore with no internet.

Next post will be the final three days riding to Goa