Konkan Coast - Bangladesh + India x 2 - CycleBlaze

January 14, 2011

Konkan Coast

Destination Devgad

Jam & toast; tomato omlette; a cup and tea and a lassi. That's breakfast done. 

It's the same hotel, which the waiter says is around Rs2,000 a night. Who comes here...this place is a fishing village and I've seen no other tourists. Super spot, though. 

I've had two days of peace.

Malwan
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Looking at the map, the next place of any size is Devgad and it's only around 50 km away, so this'll be an easy day's pedalling if you ask me, but things can take a turn and be different from whatever I've anticipated, so we'll just see what happens today. 

It's a hot one again - not a cloud in the sky.

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The road winds out of the village and there are no arduous climbs like there was coming here  it's more gentle and I ride up a long slope with a gradient that allows me to stay in my middle ring. At the top is more barren countryside like there was on Wednesday. 

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It's probably 30 C or more now.

State Highway 4. That's what the road signs say - the bit I can read. They are in Hindi, but somewhere is 48 km away and my guess is that'll be Devdag, which seems to be pronounced 'Devagard' by people I ask. My map spells if Devgadh. 

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Either side of the tarmac are drystone walls of red-ish rock built by a skilled person criss-crossing the land, which is covered in sun-bleached grass.

Two carts towed by pairs of cream-coloured cows approach and it's a while since my camera was used and after stopping I take it out and take a snap as it rolls slowly past.

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At a small palace consisting of a few homes there's a hand-barrow parked by the side of the road with a red-painted press of some sort mounted on top and a row of bottles containing liquids of varying colours - like a rainbow - arranged down the front. Just as I take another photo of it the vendor appears and wonders what I'm up to. He doesn't speak English.

Younger men gather around as they often do here and one explains to me that he sells drinks and the press is an ice shaver and the bottles are different flavours, so I have a lemon drink and then another as it tastes good and my thirst needs satiating.

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The different colours are a mystery to me and I decide to try a mix of purple and blue and the resultant cocktail has a flavour a little like cola. It'll mostly be sugar and colouring, but at least it's liquid.

A remote Y junction baffles me as it's unclear which is the main route and a man walking along says I should bear right, but the left one would take me closer to the sea and maybe there are beaches there I could cycle along like before, so that's the way my handlebars gets turned. 

He says the other way is shorter, but this is not a get-to-A-quickly kind of cycle tour and a sign says I'm still on the state highway, but my back wheel is losing traction because the tyre is more or less flat.

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There's no shade here and I take off the rear panniers in the glare of the sun and remove the wheel and search for a sharp object that could be the cause of the problem, but don't see anything, so remove the inner-tube.

 My pump blows it up and then a trucks stops and the noise from its engine means I can't hear a thing let alone the faint hiss of escaping air and the driver doesn't grasp this and in the end I have to tell him to drive away.

I fit a new tube.

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The road undulates more. Then it climbs for a while and the Arabian is visible in the distance for the first time today and soon after I pass a village where there's a footpath leading towards the sand that I spotted from the high road and my bike gets lent against a stone wall as my sandals plod across the dune-like terrain. 

It's a five-minute trek to the water's edge where the sand seems rideable, but not for long as there's a headland in what appears to be about a kilometre. I walk back to my bike and feel the heat of the early afternoon sunshine. It's a real hot one again.

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Devgad or whatever it's called is still a way off a teenager in a cafe tells me when I stop for a cold drink at the village at the headland that I'd seen where there's a temple. He says 16 km. It's nearly 4:00.

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The road is steeper now - really steep in places. The closer I get to m destination the steeper it is and in my estimation some of the gradients are 20 percent. Walking is a thing that goes through my mind, but locals are watching and it seems silly and macho, but getting off the bike under such circumstances doesn't appeal and I spin in my smallest gear and crawl up around some sharp hairpins and reach the edge of Devgad.

There's a steep drop to the harbour where I expect to find some guesthouses, but there's nothing - only simple homes - and a man says I have to go aback to the top and look around there near some windmills. I can see the windmills from the market area where there's an auction for the fresh fish going on. 

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I walk up the climb going back and Devgad is much more rustic than where I was this morning.

The Galaxy is the place to go a man in a shop tells me, so that's where I head for, which is easy because there are new-looking signs for it spaced along the lane.

The room the man shows me is huge -more like a family suite with a nice airy balcony, a living room area and a kitchenette as well as a sizable bedroom. It's 1,200 rupees and I explain something smaller would suffice.

A man in a panama hat appears and tells me he's from Ontario, Canada. He was born north of Delhi, but since 21 has lived in Hamiltion, not far from where I lived for a few years in the late 90s - Windsor: the country's automotive capital. He's building a home here as the land is cheap.

The two cheaper rooms that the manager shows me are 1,000 and 800 rupees and I opt for the 1,000 one, but tell him it's really a 500-rupee room and I should know as I've slept in many while cycling around and the Canadian offers to pay, but this seems ridiculous and besides the point. I have the money.

The cost puts me in a bad mood and after I get out my laptop in the room and turn it on the screen is blank (again) which doesn't do my irritability much good.

The Canadian invites a young local doctor friend to join us for dinner and he turns up at around 9:00 with a friend on a motorbike and they're dressed in T-shirts, shirts and fleece jackets and I sit there feeling warm in my short-sleeved cotton shirt as he says that when he's been called out at night he's seen tigers. 

I know some Irish swear they've seen elfs while walking home from the pub, yet this guy is a serious doctor-type and I believe him. 

However, wild boar are more dangerous he reckons. The good news being that they can only run straight and so if one charges at you, you need to just step aside matador-style and it'll miss you and as I ponder doing this on my bike, but he adds that they only come out at night.

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Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 3,150 km (1,956 miles)

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