Day 299: Guna-Shivpuri

I The drama from yesterday repeated itself, a cloudless sky. This time I pushed hard to get as far as possible in the bearable morning hours. I only took short brakes and did good progress until a thorn punctured my front tire.
I barely started fixing the mess, when already a crowd had gathered around me, commenting, giving unasked advice or cracking jokes as they watched enjoyed the show. I fixed the puncture, which was big, thus easy to find. Then, ready to take off, I noticed the air was still escaping. So I took of the paniers again, turned Wolter upside down, took off the wheel and replaced the air chamber by the spare one this time. It turned out that it wasn't properly fixed last time, but I only found out when I was ready to go again. And and so I started over again. Some of the spectators were kind enough to organize a bucket of water. Being more thorough I checked both air chambers in the water. I found out that the thorn had pierced through the entire air chamber and also made small punctures on the other side. I fixed those as well as a smaller puncture in the badly fixed spare tube. I triple checked the tire for any piercing object but still did not find anything more than the thorn I pulled out the first time. Once this whole exercise was over I put everything back together for the third time and I was about to attach the last panier, when one guy noticed laughing that there was still air escaping. At this point I lost it and shouted pretty much the entire repertoire of swiss-german curses. The circle of people around me became silent and drew a meter away. Then I started over for the fourth time. One of the patches I put earlier appeared to be punched, no clue how that could have happend so I also checked the rim without finding the cause. Not wanting to take anymore chances I replaced the tire and checked the spare air chamber in the bucket full of water again before putting it in.
A good hour had passed by now and the painless cycling time was over already, the burning sun reining the sky. I went on for as long as I could and then made a long lunch break. At three I tried again, some clouds gathered and gave me hope that I can advance a couple of kilometres. But the clouds were soon dissolved and I felt myself like evaporating. Today the wind came mostly from north and with the hot air in the face (passing trucks would thrust even hotter air-cushions from their overheated motors at me) and the sun on my head I just waited that the devil would jump out behind a bush and greet me in his kingdom. Jokes appart, the traffic and weather situation had gotten worse continuously starting from very bad once I was fifty kilometres away from Ujjain. I am just counting down the days to arrive in Agra.
After Iran, where I my continuous cycle-trace got a huge gap, I told myself that from now on I could cherry-pick the rides, but this wasn't the sweetest pick here. But I had to try, knowing that a missed opportunity like this would haunt me forever. However off-season cycling in India is not really a god idea. It was pointed out to me now I know it for sure. For those who plan to cycle in India, go between October (after monsun) and the early months of the year, temperatures are lower and everything ist green.
Well, while these thoughts crossed my mind I was dragging myself to Shivpuri, arrived shortly before dark and was completely exhausted. Two more cycling-days to Agra...