India 03: Indian cycling tales

24.01-03.02.2017

The heat in Goa became unbearable. The hot waft arrived at about 11 AM from the sea and in the next hours the temperature peaked at 36-38 degrees Celsius with 100% humidity. On one hand, we couldn’t tolerate this during cycling anymore, on the other hand we couldn’t finish the daily distance until 11 AM. Beach or mountains?

We departed in darkness to Sawantwadi in order to avoid the heat. We arrived early to the town, which was situated at the bottom of the Western Ghats, which is the mountain range along the western coast of the Indian peninsula. Next morning, we started the climb to the plateau up to 800 m. Lower humidity and cooler air was waiting for us after the 16 km long uphill. We managed it surprisingly well, the incline was almost constantly 4%, thus we kind of enjoyed it.

India, or we could call it the United States of India, exist in this form only since 1947, and it consists of 29 federal states. This confederacy was formed not for, but against something: the British colonizers. The  common enemy united the states of diverse cultures and languages. Official languages are 22, but the number of spoken languages is several hundreds. (The cultural diversity is actually higher than in the European Union!) The locals we met were all 100% sure that there is no peculiarity, that is common to all the Indian states. I believe they’re wrong. Although, we haven’t visited all the states, but besides the nonsense, aggressive and totally unnecessarily noisy traffic there is one more thing, which can be common to the whole country: “dumb curiosity”. 

Fixing a broken chain

“Ah, that’s a button, I must press it!” - said the inner monologue every day in dozens of Indian heads, when they found the shifters on our parked bicycles. Otherwise, they had no clue, what did they press, and what would be affected by that. That’s why their curiosity is dumb. Since other cyclist’s equipment was broken/bent by harmless Indians, we also had to watch our vehicles whenever it was possible. After nights, when the bikes were left alone or with watchmen, usually our derailleurs were shifted. In Ajra (Maharashtra), we had to warn (and prank) the staff not to touch the bicycles after we turn the alarm on, because electricity flows in the frame. Then we were watching them from the 2nd floor how they warned each other: “Don’t touch the cycle, because it will give you a shock!” It seemed to be fun, nevertheless, the derailleurs were shifted by the morning again.

Slowly we approached the highway, where we could move faster and safer as there was separator in the middle, and the number of trucks, rickshaws, motorbikes and cars coming from the other direction in our lane was negligible.

In Kolhapur, Varun waited for us in a 450 sqm flat where only 5 of them lived, thus we got our own room, plus a free walking tour inside their home by his mom. Varun is from a Jain family - a branch of Hinduism which, due to their belief in reincarnation, they really don’t want to hurt any living beings. The typical image of a Jain monk is that he swipes the road before stepping on it, in order to avoid stepping on poor little bugs. That bug may owns a soul belonged to a human in it’s previous life. 

Hindu temple

New palace in Kolhapur

In India there are veg/non-veg restaurants where vegetarian meals and food containing meat are also cooked, but this doesn’t satisfy everyone. Therefore, there are pure veg restaurants where only vegetarian ingredients are prepared. Furthermore, at some places Jain menu is available, avoiding plant parts from under ground (e.g. potato, radish, ginger). Jain families are also famous for being rich. In case of Varun, this was definitely true, but I wouldn’t generalize. 

On our first days in India, we made a mistake in Tamil Nadu: we purchased a Vodafone SIM card with 1 GB data. This was the beginning of our troubles, lasting through states. Instead of 24h it took 5 days to get our card activated, but we received only half of the data. In Maharashtra, I went to complain to the local Vodafone office again. After 45 minutes of debate, I convinced everyone that it wasn’t our fault, but as a solution, they just wanted to send me back to Tamil Nadu. The manager who had seen the grimace of disappointment on my face, came up with a new solution: a new card for free!

 - I need your Indian address (?), a secondary phone number (?), your passport, the photocopy of your passport, the photocopy of your visa, one ID photo and a certificate from the police station - said the manager.

 - Yes, I got all of these, except the last. What is this certification?

 - The same as you had in Tamil Nadu.

 - There they didn’t require such document.

At this point, I gave up with Vodafone. I was tired of the long, tiresome debates, and on the street a new phenomenon made my life harder: curious people forming a circle around me. A dozen of students had surrounded me and started to ask all kind of questions. Soon, I got very irritated, but suddenly my savior appeared: Abhijit. He showed the way to his bicycle shop, he fixed Linh’s bike; got a new derailleur hanger for my bike (the old was bent); arranged a new Jio SIM card for us (unlimited internet and free phone calls for 1 year), and even invited us to his family’s house for dinner. Abhijit and his family run bicycle shops 365 days per year and they are super friendly and helpful. We are so happy to meet them!

In Karad, a very nice family hosted us. In this case not only cyclist helped cyclist, but Ironman helped Ironman. The next early morning we got a snack box and an escort for the first 15 km.

In Satara, we planned to stay only one night, but in the evening we received the news from cyclists, that on the next day there’ll be a massive demonstration and we better don’t leave as we can stuck in traffic jams for hours. We had to stay one more day in Satara, soothing our hunger with street food. These cyclists, especially the prophet of the local cycling community, Ashish persuaded us to get to Pune in only one day (105 km), and as a form of motivation, many members of the committee escorted us in the first 22 km. It worked, we made it to Pune before dark!

Discussion with Ashish

Chicken curry and chapati with the guys

We had higher expectations from this city. There was an Osho Ashram, which, due to the name, was a more expensive meditation labor camp, than in Gokarna. We saw many old, dirty, ruinous buildings, parched, rubbishy river and an interesting Hindu temple, where people performed quite surprising rituals. Hinduism is all about rituals. Do you think these work?

• Put your hands together for praying, then spin two times.
• Put your hand over the sacred flame of the temple, then touch your forehead and hair.
• Take some ashes of saint fires, and mark your forehead, your hair, then you pack some grams for your family and in the end you lick it from your finger.
• Stroke the sculptures of various gods.
• Whisper you wishes into the ears of a gigantic mouse statue.

Péter

Decoration of a temple

Ganesh