Orchha, 11th December 2008

Ed note: I tried to publish this 2 days ago but lost some of it and couldn't load it as the server went down. So - this is a bit out of date, but worth posting. I'll now settle down and do another blog to bring you up to date - keep your fingers crossed that the power doesn't fail!

We've made some important progress since I last 'blogged' from Pushkar - we have headed further south, but then taking a significant left hand turn to head East across India towards Kolkata at last and have left Rajisthan for Mudhya Pradesh. We are now well past the 4,000km mark - if we choose to tell people the truth about where we started our journey, they no longer believe us! Usually we just tell them the last significant town and that appeases them. We only say that we are heading to Kolkata - most people struggle to believe that we're cycling all the way there, so there's no point in mentioning the next 5 countries after that!

The last few weeks have been dogged by ill health - our nasty colds lingered on and on, despite us trying to limit the number of big cycling days. We've been left feeling drained and weary - India is no place to be if you lack energy! For a while we felt that we weren't having quite the rewarding interactions with locals that have been so much a part of our journey so far - we've speculated over whether this is because we are passing through slightly less friendly areas - but we suspect it is more to do with our own lack of energy when engaging with people and this is reflected back on us. When we stop for drinks or food, or to sort out a hotel, we are immediately surrounded by people - often a good 50 or more! This is very normal and we are completely used to it. People stare, but most are friendly and smiley and we certainly don't feel threatened or uncomfortable in any way.

I know you're all fascinated by the resilience of our bottoms - and I am delighted to report (touching wood) that we are still both in good, firm shape! However, we have had one meal that pushed our luck - we found a very 'local' eatery where we received a very friendly welcome as usual. No menu - so we just went with what we were given. This involved little patties like falafel that are cooked in burning cow dung (just dust them off and pop them in your dish). This didn't worry us unduly - anything that is properly cooked should do no harm. Realising we weren't quite sure what to do with these, our host started to break up the patties into small pieces on our plates. Ever anxious about hygiene, we slightly winced at the sight of his filthy hands. Then he poured oil on top of the crumblings and started to need the mix together very thoroughly - at which point his kitchen hand came to help with Andrew's plate with truly filthy hands. No amount of "it's fine! thank you! thank you!" was going to put him off. Cringe-ing, we couldn't decide if we should reject the entire meal and leg it - but we felt we really couldn't - they were so eager to please. So when the hot dhal was presented we ladled it all over the crumblings in the hope that the heat would help kill any germs - and tucked in. It was absolutely delicious - but we spent a nervous night wondering if disaster would strike! One of the many Hindu Gods was perhaps looking down on us - we survived to tell the tale.

A few days ago, unfortunately, Andrew discovered extensive damage to one of his tyres which had split in several places near the rim - the inner tube trying to force its way out in one place. Disaster! He set to with a replacement tyre (we are both carrying a spare) taking care to get it right. We set off again and almost straight away Andrew felt it was set wrong, causing it to bounce. We pulled up again and Andrew re-jigged and then decided to replace the inner tube in case it had been damaged. I pulled out one of the spares (both mine have at least one repair patch already) and he fitted it, only to hear a big hiss as he tried to pump it up. Yet again he dismantled everything and dug ou his completely new tube (we thought we had repaired all punctured tubes, but realised this had been one with a large split that we had missed). By this time Andrew ws livid and frustrated and we had spent about an hour working on his bike. But true to form, soon after we were back on the bikes he perked up again - what a hero.

Scenically, the road south didn't vary much from the scrubby desert that we have seen throughout Rajisthan - only by the time we reached Bundi did we start to see more trees and wild woods, hills, even cliffs - it was a pleasure to finally get the change. We spent a day off in Bundi to explore the crumbling palace that is straight from the pages of the Jungle Book and explore the little alleys filled with colourfully painted old houses (lots of havelis) - most painted 'Brahmin Blue'. Back on the road we suffered the worst traffic yet into the town of Kota - terrifying buses that regularly ran us off the road and the worst horn blowing yet. We seemed to manage the horn blowing up until this point, but if you have a headache, India is a kind of torture! They have deafening horns which they love to blow - all the time if possible - so they'll start the horn as they approach a market place and hold it down (through the congestion) until the reach the other side. If they haven't needed to blow the horn, they'll wait until they are alongside you and blow it then - presumably just to stay hello. Our ears are ringing and even writing this makes them gently hurt! They zoop up their horns to deafening levels - it's the Indian equivalent to a sporty spoiler and darkened windows on your ford escort. (ed note: Andrew is sure he has real damage in his right ear and we have since taken to using an ear plug each in the right ear - makes you feel like you've got your head in a bucket, but it's worth doing what we can to protect our hearing). When the road it quiet it is such an immediate pleasure. We worried that the roads from Kota on might be like this all the way to Kolkata, but astonishingly we spent the next 4 days cycling on all but deserted, new, dual carriageway! It has been absolutely incredible and a much-needed relief.

Much to our amusement, the concept of a dual carriageway is completely lost here in India. Instead of one direction all keping to the left and the other on the pther side, thy treat it like 2 roads that run side by side - traffice going both ways on both sides of the divide - but at least there is plenty of room and the traffic is well thinned out. As many of you have seen from the photos - we've made it into the local papers! See our diary extract for 7th December:

7th December 2008:
.....we stopped for a slightly early lunch at a convenient little town and received a friendly welcome and delicious dhal and chapatti. There was a bustle of excitement and they produced today's copy of the Baran local paper with a huge photograph of us on the front page!! We couldn't believe it! The restaurant guys were clearly delighted to have us as their customers. As we continud through the town it was a comic scene - several shop keeps were holding copies of the paper and either waved them at us with glee or did a wonderful double-take from newspaper to us and back to newspaper again. No one had interviewed us, but we do recall a guy in Baran taking a photo of us (this is very common) and then a little further on there he was again on the other side of the road with his camera - at the time I thought it was a bit enthusiastic! I guess not alot happens in Baran!

We got back to our adventure with a night of camping on this stretch - the first real opportunity we have had in India as so far, there is literally nowhere that is absent of people - even in the desert - and we only ever camp where no one can see us, just to save us from hassle. We met some communications engineers working on fibre optics beside the road, just in the area we planned to camp. One spoke good English and told us the land around there is known to have bears, elephants and used to have lions before the big dualcarriageway was built - pushing them further into the valley (we hoped he was right about this point!). He then said that the area was notorious for robbers - in particular kidnappings! Suddenly the publicity in the local rag didn't seem quite so funny! But we decided to camp anyway and got well off the road deep into a thick thickett (say that quickly 3 times). We were well hidden in our green tent and felt quite happy. During the night an animal went past the tent and tripped over a guy rop - twanging the tent violently - apparently! - I slept through the whole thing! All night we heard lovely smooth 'whoop whoop' sounds from monkeys - it was like sleeping in the Jungle Book! Leaving the camp site in the morning, within one kilometre we saw 3 wolves cross the road, and masses of monkeys preening in the morning sun. Behind where we camped, the land dropped away into a steep sided valley, the far side of which was a cliff, topped by an ancient fortified wall that ran for at least a kilometre - nothing to mark it on the map! It was breathtaking and further enforced the feeling of the Jungle Book and led to lots of happy renditions of 'oo oo ooooooo, I wanna be like you oo oo' etc.

We finished this leg in the lovely Orchha - an astonishing small town that is surrounded by an old palace and many many temples throughout the countryside within a kilometre radius. It's very charming AND we have eaten banoffee pie, so we're delighted and spent a couple of days here to look around and rest. We spotted a familiar face in our guest house - an English motorbiker we met last in Passu, Northern Pakistan. Small world! We'v had fun catching up and comparing notes.