Riding on the Beach - Bangladesh + India x 2 - CycleBlaze

January 11, 2011

Riding on the Beach

Morjim > Mandrem > Arambol & then up to...

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That ice cream seller made it look easy yesterday, and this damp sand is very firm, unlike beaches in the UK or Europe where a front wheel would usually sink down and get stuck within seconds. My wheels purr along and there's hardly the trace of my tyres on the sand's top.

It's only 7:30 and the whole stretch of sand is empty save for a jogger now and then. The sun is low and the tide doesn't seem any different from last night.

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I've my merino wool jersey on, as it's pretty cool in relation to what it has been like recently. It's rare for me to be out of bed at this time.

There are a couple of watery parts where I have to get my sandals wet, but that's no big deal and the sea water does't get much higher than my spoke nipples. 

There seems to be a creek running parallel to the Arabian Sea - cutting me off from land -with a few bamboo bridges spanning it but the beach stretches for miles, although my Nelles map talks about different beaches as does the LP guide. 

It's really all one with the only things to differentiate places being rows of huts and fishing boats and the odd group of colourful beach chairs marking a resort. There are only a few, though. 

I ask a fisherman sorting out his tangled nets where I am and he mentions 'Mandrem' which a few decades ago was a hippy haven, so I guess the next resort will be where it's time for me to leave this sand as the road drifts away from the coast right after that.

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There's a cafe and the place is called The End Of The World and I sit and order omelette and toast with jam. My drink is a pineapple lassi. 

There's only me and I feel good after the breakfast, but I felt pretty good anyway.

A car cruises past nearby, so it's clear there's a road just up there somewhere and I ask the waiter about going north on it, but he says it'll be easier for me to stick to the firm beach and that suits me. 

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I ride for ten minutes or more to reach the next holiday resort - the resort is Arambol and it's marked by the usual parasols and chairs and there are also fishing boats lining the sand's top edge. 

I exit across the softer stuff and soon find an Internet cafe and email Debbie to say all is right with the world in sunny Goa. She's received the parcel containing a silk dress I bought from Fabindia's outlet in Mangalore and a kooky bag I picked up at the weavers' workshop, together with a USB stick that has a bunch of my saved photos on. 

The package took less than a week to arrive - pretty fast.

The scooter guy from Bangalore has finally emailed me back: How long is that?

My daughter Ruby wrote to say she likes my journal's photos and noted that I look thinner, which is true. This ride is a great diet plan.

Arambol
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There's one place down the resort's one lane lined with souvenir stuff like bags and clothes called Coffee Heaven and having a hot drink of java appeals and I brake and lean my bike against something firm then sit down after ordering a cappuccino. 

The two Germans who presumably run the cafe chat with me as I pay and ask about my trip and say it's best if I have time to go on the quiet coast road and tell me to ride north for about 20 km and get the second small ferry. Great!

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The road is nice and peaceful. It undulates and twists and turns and veers close to the water at times. It's very enjoyable.

The ferry has just sailed, although this is not big deal because it'll be back in 10 minutes, which gives me time to grab a cold drink from the vendor's little cafe -an icy-cold mango juice and a litre bottle of water that's equally freezing cold. Her fridge's thermostat must be turned to the lowest setting.

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The ferry is free for two-wheelers a woman on a motorscooter tells me.

 She can't say about beaches though -she just mentions that Paradise Beach is the first and this is about 7 km away, according to a man on another scooter.

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The Germans in the cafe talked about there being lots of beaches and me being able to ride for miles on them. I somehow doubt it. Seven more K and I'll find out.

It seems more than seven K and the road is hilly again. Signs are no longer in English and these small roads are not shown on Google Maps, I learn later. Strange.

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A young man outside a village shop tells me Paradise Beach is just back a kilometre, so I do a U and take the small turnoff near the school building just as he said, then ride to its very end and see the sand and vast Arabian and start to pedal along the empty expanse of near-white beach and feel extremely alive and well.

It's deserted.

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The sand is firm and it's a piece of cake to pedal along. 

In the distance is a rocky premonitory and I get an acute feeling this ride won't last too long. 

The beach curves to my right. There's then a lagoon or whatever separating me from a spit that sticks out into the sea, which is a wonderful blue, like those exotic holiday ads you see on TV and in glossy mags.

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It could be waded across, maybe, but after the spit there's that huge rocky cliff part, which is impassable by the looks of it, so this is the end and therefore I decide to try and get up the rocky hillside and push my heavy Brodie with a struggle. 

Sweat drips off my face and my shirt gets quite damp in no time.

No one has been here on a bike, I bet. 

Less than halfway up the view is superb, with the blueness of the water and the spit's golden shape sticking into it and forming a crescent shape that is the kind that movie makers search for. I rest. I take off my damp wool top. 

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The washing I did last night gets taken out of the pannier and strewn on a large black rock to dry before I leave the bike and trek bare-chested up the rest of the barren slope to do a recce and help decide if it's pure folly to try and make it with the laden Brodie.

It's doable in my opinion, but others might disagree. The incline is about 30 or 40 degrees. 

Two men are sat on the very top, perched across from me, cut off by a kind of natural gully or is it rivouette or something?. They shout questions and I automatically answer 'England' and 'Mumbai'.

Wheeling the bike is a real test - I should say hauling. 

The men watch intently zig-zag up. My feet slip and slide. One inch at a time. Nutter... that's what they're thinking... or whatever their vernacular is.

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The view from the top is even better and I take a few photos, which don't capture it all.

The grass is short still and then there's a dirt trail  not a road as I thought, but it'll lead somewhere. It goes down super steeply from a neat new single-storey building the men say is a pharmacutical place, which I guess is where they work. Strange location. My brake pads squeal. 

This is off the map.

Back on tarmac... I come out a few hundred metres from the same school building and this is a couple of hours later and I call at the village shop and get some cold liquids inside me. It was a nice time - no regrets.

The road continues to rise and fall and it's empty. There are no longer tourists riding motor bikes and scooters and it's as if this is out of bounds for foreigners. 

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There are more side roads that no doubt lead to other beaches and I take one just to check it out. The sand is quiet. There's a guesthouse place to stay which is ghostly but I like the idea of a beer - or the chance of one.

I ride back to the small road and the signs are in local lingo and the people  don't speak English with the only word in common is 'beach' and that's where I head when I get to a junction after a couple of K of easy cycling.

I end up at a jetty and wharf where there's a woman selling drinks from a cannopied barrow and after we chat she says she has a room for 400 rupees and that seems okay to me, so we go there and I like it and hand over the four 100's. 

In a place called Vengurla
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Next door is a 'resort' which is really a restaurant that has five chalet rooms arced around a small lawn and I go there and eat soon after. 

The waiter kindly puts a table on the short neat grass for me, as it seems too stuffy to sit inside. Only one of the five rooms is taken - I think they charge over 1,500 rupees a night. 

The view is south and the sun has gone, but there's a glow still hovering over the water

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I have a cold beer after taking some 'night photos' down by the sand and spot a man inside a dinky church who has his hands above his head and pressed against the wall under a picture of Jesus. He is still for minutes on end and the interior glows a dim blue from the electric light reflecting off the painted walls. It's like an art work.

On the way back to my table, a sign hanging outside the hotel tells me I'm in Vengurla. Very nice it is, too.

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 3,035 km (1,885 miles)

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