Day 55 - Cycling again!

We had a nice breakfast with everyone and then waved them goodbye as they headed West to continue their travels and we continue our constant Easterly push.

We spent a good couple of hours building the bikes, packing, and altering the setup from camping to hotel optimised. We both now have a whole pannier which can remain closed - should make hotel mornings easier, particularly as my closed pannier is a deal fuller than the other one! We were very pleasantly surprised when we set off at 12 - we'd expected it to take much longer!

We haven't seen anything resembling a supermarket here yet, just small markets (that's a problem for later), and as we were hungry we went back to the best restaurant from yesterday where the food was good and we knew we could store the bikes easily before we could get going properly.

By this point my head was full of cold (headache, tired, snotty, sore throat, etc) and we realised there were hotels at 100km or 50km. We'd intended to do 100km, but since we have two days to do 160km to Jaipur we decided to do the shorter option so we could get to bed early and hopefully be better tomorrow. We'll just have a bit less time in Jaipur, but we're pretty citied out at the moment so that's fine.

Our first experience of cycling in India was very positive indeed, and much like Delhi, a lot better than we expected! Outside of the cities the roads calmed down rapidly, and we soon found ourselves weaving down quiet back streets through farmland. There were still a lot of people about (and cows!) but the roads were quiet and really, pleasant. Possibly the most pleasant of the trip and we really enjoyed the very short time we were on the bikes.

The traffic, yes it came very close at times, including in the other direction, but knew how to deal with slow moving things on the road and did not mind one bit that we were side by side which is SUCH a welcome change as it means that we can talk properly because we can actually hear each other.

We saw some cool wildlife too - chipmunk-y like things, fun birds and an iguana! How cool is that (I imagine very variably cool based on where you live - cool for me anyway)!?! It was like a small dog moving in the undergrowth.

Finding a hotel was not as simple as choosing a cheap, well reviewed one online and rocking up. That's what we tried at first and on arrival the price was 35 euros versus 7 euros online. Emma stuck to her guns and had the price down to 12 euros when they told us that they can't actually have foreigners as they don't have a license. Right. You might have led with that. I guess he was just trying his luck to see if this two star hotel could charge as much as the 5 star hotel with turning circle just down the road. So we know in the future they'll try and rinse us on arrival. The advantage of bikes though is that we can easily relocate a few kilometers to the next hotel. The story was the same for the next hotel we tried - no foreigner license, so we reluctantly went to the bigger, higher star and obviously more money hotels they recommended. The first place was very pricey, but the second was both a significant upgrade and very reasonable at 20 euros, so alls well that ends well in the hotel finding saga. A great shower and a comically wide bed made me very happy. It did look like we'd be getting the tent out for a second there though.

Out for dinner then early to bed tonight! With our stomachs a bit tested we'll find a local restaurant as we're getting a bit tired of the expensive tourist ones with variable food quality. We'll let you know how that decision goes...

We immediately caused some carnage on arrival, not realising that the place only did a couple of items from the menu each night "are you comfortable in English" we were asked 😆. The meal was better and cheaper and spicier than our previous places. Two of those were what we were after and the last was expected so we'll call it mission success!

Food spend today: 28.88 euros

Tea consumed: 10