Balurghat west to Gajol

December 5, 2010

riding in circles

Last night's chicken korma was good - from a restaurant across the street. Consequently I return for breakfast after looking at maps and deciding to head southwest, towards English Bazaar, which is now called Maldah. It's over 100 kilometres away.

The restaurant is still closed, but there'll be others.

A man in the street points me in the direction of Maldah and I ride a while and then ask again and keep riding until I notice I'm pedaling north. Why? No one can answer that one.

My guess is it's because this is the way all the buses are going, up to the city of Gangarampur first and then down the main highway. No thanks. I do a quick U-turn and cycle south, find a café where I get 'egg tost' - a piece of bread cooked with egg - and soon after make a right (west) and find myself riding along down narrow urban side streets.

After an hour of leaving my hotel, it's a bit of a shock to ride past it again. Yes, I've come full circle... jeez! How do I do it? If I'd wanted to get here, it's more or less guaranteed it'd take me a lot longer. The time now is 10:40.

A bridge spans a wide river and the road I'm on heads west, the general direction I need for around 30 kilometers. It's a quiet road once out of town and the tarmac is super smooth and makes a wonderful change - being able to hear the whir of my tyres on the surface instead of rattles and bangs as the bike hits bumps and what have you. There're practically no motor vehicles coming along. Strange.

It becomes single lane. A 'cycle road' as locals call it. I'm in the big ring and my cadence is reminiscent of German uber-racer Jan Ulrich.

The white milestones are all in local lingo, so there's no way of knowing where it is I'm heading to. When asked about the only place on the Nelles map - Kardaha - people look confused, but that's okay. My direction is west and I keep riding

The sky is cloudless and blue and the sun isn't too hot.

It's seriously rural in this part of West Bengal and the mud houses look a bit different here compared to neighboring Bangladesh. Some have decoration around the doors and windows and footings - very organic in style and so alien to what I'm used to, with Western straight lines and uniformity borne from centuries of industry I suppose.

Whenever I stop people quickly gather as before and I get to take some portraits - very nice people and perfect cycling territory. I'm happy.

Then the narrow road turns to a dusty trail and it's hard to believe this is the one to Kaldaha. There are oxen pulling carts laden with straw and the winding path is only just wide enough. After I squeeze by two, an oncoming one blocks my way. I try to pedal past, but the thick wooden yoke knocks my bar-end and this sends me crashing and rolling head over heels down the dusty bank, where thorns stick in my back. My knee hurts and I'm pissed.

Now I reckon I'm about as laid-back as anyone, yet when this kind of thing happens it doesn't seem like a laughing matter. Not a bit. So, when one of two twenty-something guys on a motorbike who've been trailing me start chuckling, I let him know he should shut up pretty quick. And when just as my back's turned, the other starts giggling, I walk back over, point to his teeth and use my fist to gesture he'll be loosing them in a second. It works.

The dusty trail soon dwindles to nothing and I'm among trees now, in a spinney, and there're bone-dry leaves on the ground and just the marks left my the oxcarts to show where they've travelled. How did I end up here? No idea.

I drink some water, have a snack and gather my thoughts and see there are huts across the way, in the distance, not too far, and so that's where I head, along a footpath separating fields and paddies that's so small it's hard to keep my front wheel on it.

The bari dwellings are tight together and the folks sat around are shocked to see me, as you might expect. Who wouldn't be. It must be a strange occurrence - this is really off the beaten track.

When I reach an open area and there's a hand pump where I remove my mitts to wash the grime and dust off my palms and then take off my Descente shirt to pull out the thorns and notice there's a hole the size of a large coin that's been ripped into the merino wool, which seems a particular shame as the jersey has only been worn a few times. That's the way it goes. Maybe I can get it fixed somewhere - darned or whatever.

The young people gathered around point me towards Kaldaha when I ask and off I pedal.

Ten minutes later things look familiar and blow me if I'm not riding back up the dusty path where I came a cropper and lost my cool with the motorbike guys.

Once on the tarmac road again, I come to a Y-junction which I'd not noticed before and so try the other fork this time. The road is delightful and as before, is single lane and winding and free of vehicles.

Small villages are spaced every couple of kilometres and eventually I reach a place that I expect to be Padua, but which locals tell me is pronounced Paqua or whatever.

There are no guesthouse here. The nearest is in Gajol, a place actually on my map, so I set off there. They say it's 17 kilometres. They could be right.

My compass initially says the direction is north, but the route slowly, imperceptibly, veers towards the sun, which is very low already at gone three-thirty. The way gets wider, but is still quiet, thankfully.

It'll be more or less dark when I get to Gajol I reckon.

It is.

Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 1,416 km (879 miles)

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