This morning I started to worry about cycling in India. When I'd observed the traffic here out of a car, a tuk tuk or a rickshaw, it just looked bonkers and dangerous.
After two days actual riding, I'd become completely desensitised to danger. Things that at home would be classed as a near miss, and would leave me feeling alarmed happen to me every minute over here. A truck missing me by a couple of inches seems good enough.
Too much driving and riding at home becomes automatic, and you can easily switch off but here no. You have to pay attention the whole time, and if something nuts happens, or if you see something nuts, there's no point in trying to tell Dean, because while you're telling him, something even more nuts will happen.
Yesterday I overtook a crane on the inside in a scene reminiscent of Terminator 3, and I felt fine. At one point I tried to follow Dean in between two trucks and the gap between them starting disappearing from a small V into nothing so I just calmly backed out of there.
This morning we had 42 miles to go to Rishikesh and it turned out to be all on single carriageway, and as far as Haridwar it was the same as yesterday. Totally flat, with no signs, lots of crisps on sale, but no proper shops, unless you want to buy lumps of metal, sticks or bricks.
When we reached Haridwar we finally saw the Ganges and some of the heavy traffic tailed off into the town.
As we got closer to Rishikesh it started to look a lot more touristy, there were hotels, and the Indians we could see were dressed very much like Westerners, and there was a lot of kite flying going on. And we started to see shops with things in them that you could buy, and we started to pass some internet cafes and then we went down a hill into Rishikesh itself, and it was manic and there was some sort of parade going on.
We went down to the banks of the Ganges, and it seemed altogether more tranquil, but we really wanted to stay at Bandari Swiss Cottages, and we had a lot of disorientation and we had a lot of trouble finding it. After about an hour we took about our tenth wrong turn, and we passed a lady clearing rubbish from the roadside, who shouted 'Oh, Well Done!' at us. She was obviously English and so I went back to talk to her and ask her for directions. And she was lovely, she was called Lorna and she spends our winters in India and our summers running a youth hostel on the Isle of Islay in Scotland. And she told us that it's quite normal to feel overwhelmed after only a few days in India and she seemed pretty impressed with what we'd done so far in only a week.
She told us to get ourselves down and have a dip in the Ganges and all our stresses will melt away. And she also told us to relax into our stress, and we'd soon start to enjoy ourselves. It was good news, and it was lovely to talk to another English person after being a stranger in a strange land for so long.
We found our accommodation shortly after, and it's cheap and on a beautiful hillside, and surprise, surprise it has a double bed. And it has monkeys swinging through the trees outside the balcony, and birds I've never seen before. And internet access. So I'm catching up with my blog, and it feels good to be able to unload after such a bonkers three days. But I made it from Delhi to Rishikesh, on a bike. 153 miles of craziness like you wouldn't believe but I'm here, and now it's time to relax.
After two days actual riding, I'd become completely desensitised to danger. Things that at home would be classed as a near miss, and would leave me feeling alarmed happen to me every minute over here. A truck missing me by a couple of inches seems good enough.
Too much driving and riding at home becomes automatic, and you can easily switch off but here no. You have to pay attention the whole time, and if something nuts happens, or if you see something nuts, there's no point in trying to tell Dean, because while you're telling him, something even more nuts will happen.
Yesterday I overtook a crane on the inside in a scene reminiscent of Terminator 3, and I felt fine. At one point I tried to follow Dean in between two trucks and the gap between them starting disappearing from a small V into nothing so I just calmly backed out of there.
This morning we had 42 miles to go to Rishikesh and it turned out to be all on single carriageway, and as far as Haridwar it was the same as yesterday. Totally flat, with no signs, lots of crisps on sale, but no proper shops, unless you want to buy lumps of metal, sticks or bricks.
When we reached Haridwar we finally saw the Ganges and some of the heavy traffic tailed off into the town.
As we got closer to Rishikesh it started to look a lot more touristy, there were hotels, and the Indians we could see were dressed very much like Westerners, and there was a lot of kite flying going on. And we started to see shops with things in them that you could buy, and we started to pass some internet cafes and then we went down a hill into Rishikesh itself, and it was manic and there was some sort of parade going on.
We went down to the banks of the Ganges, and it seemed altogether more tranquil, but we really wanted to stay at Bandari Swiss Cottages, and we had a lot of disorientation and we had a lot of trouble finding it. After about an hour we took about our tenth wrong turn, and we passed a lady clearing rubbish from the roadside, who shouted 'Oh, Well Done!' at us. She was obviously English and so I went back to talk to her and ask her for directions. And she was lovely, she was called Lorna and she spends our winters in India and our summers running a youth hostel on the Isle of Islay in Scotland. And she told us that it's quite normal to feel overwhelmed after only a few days in India and she seemed pretty impressed with what we'd done so far in only a week.
She told us to get ourselves down and have a dip in the Ganges and all our stresses will melt away. And she also told us to relax into our stress, and we'd soon start to enjoy ourselves. It was good news, and it was lovely to talk to another English person after being a stranger in a strange land for so long.
We found our accommodation shortly after, and it's cheap and on a beautiful hillside, and surprise, surprise it has a double bed. And it has monkeys swinging through the trees outside the balcony, and birds I've never seen before. And internet access. So I'm catching up with my blog, and it feels good to be able to unload after such a bonkers three days. But I made it from Delhi to Rishikesh, on a bike. 153 miles of craziness like you wouldn't believe but I'm here, and now it's time to relax.
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