God was it hard to get going this mornig! The plan was to leave right after sunrise around six, but the previous weeks I would rarely end up in bed before three in the mornig and with all the last minute stuff to do during the last night my alarm woke me after only four hours. At nine I had dragged my ass out one the street at last.
Getting out of Bombay wasn't as hard as anticipated, the left-sided traffic is indeed chaotic, but also a lot slower than in many other places, if I pushed a bit I could almost keep up with a loaded rickshaw. I had leard from the rickshaw drivers what behaviour is expected here in order to not become an obstacle. And things went smoothly and I realized that in this chaos everyone is respected as a traffic participant, even cyclists. If you behave according to your dispositions people don't honk at you just because you dare to show yourself on the street. That's a nice change.
The weather was good; clouded and I had tailwind once out of the metropolis. Since I started late and it was tempting to reach out for Nashik riding a flat road with good surface and having tailwind, I threw the plan to just chill between 12:00 and 16:00 over board and kept cycling. Shortly after midday the clouds right above cleared a bit for the sun to hit my head mercilessly. After barely one hour I burned certain particularly exposed skin patches and felt the sun-stroke coming. So I rested after all, at a gas station, where one of the employees wanted to charge me a dollar for sitting in the shade of his employers building. I joked around a bit and later, instead of being charged they offered some chilled water which I accepted reluctantly because I was told not to trust it and because cold drinks tend to make you sweat even more but to sweat more was not possible anyway in my case, so I thought fuck it let's have a sip just for the pleasure if it against all knowledge against it. It was great!
One thing that I could not get used to though were the waves of garbage-shit-corps-smell. Out here the contrast between the fresh breeze and those waves were more striking than back in the crazy metropolis. I hope that'll get better further into the country.
Getting out of Bombay wasn't as hard as anticipated, the left-sided traffic is indeed chaotic, but also a lot slower than in many other places, if I pushed a bit I could almost keep up with a loaded rickshaw. I had leard from the rickshaw drivers what behaviour is expected here in order to not become an obstacle. And things went smoothly and I realized that in this chaos everyone is respected as a traffic participant, even cyclists. If you behave according to your dispositions people don't honk at you just because you dare to show yourself on the street. That's a nice change.
The weather was good; clouded and I had tailwind once out of the metropolis. Since I started late and it was tempting to reach out for Nashik riding a flat road with good surface and having tailwind, I threw the plan to just chill between 12:00 and 16:00 over board and kept cycling. Shortly after midday the clouds right above cleared a bit for the sun to hit my head mercilessly. After barely one hour I burned certain particularly exposed skin patches and felt the sun-stroke coming. So I rested after all, at a gas station, where one of the employees wanted to charge me a dollar for sitting in the shade of his employers building. I joked around a bit and later, instead of being charged they offered some chilled water which I accepted reluctantly because I was told not to trust it and because cold drinks tend to make you sweat even more but to sweat more was not possible anyway in my case, so I thought fuck it let's have a sip just for the pleasure if it against all knowledge against it. It was great!
One thing that I could not get used to though were the waves of garbage-shit-corps-smell. Out here the contrast between the fresh breeze and those waves were more striking than back in the crazy metropolis. I hope that'll get better further into the country.
