Day 56 - The First Puncture
Knowing we had another hotel coming up, made it a lot quicker to leave than our previous nights going back to wild camping, so after a very restorative night's sleep we were off at 9am feeling much less ill than yesterday 🥳.
The day was hot and flat and since it was a shorter day, passed very easily. Mind you, that's not to say nothing happened...
Also actually before we talk about that can we talk about "winter" being 30 degrees out of the sun with the Garmin peaking at 40 degrees when not moving in the sun. Winter. Not buying that! Although given I've acclimatised in my happy place at 10 degrees Celsius and only found it "hot" I'm pretty impressed with my heat tolerance 💪. Emma of course spent the whole time saying "your Garmin is a real drama queen isn't it?" and calling the sun weak. I suppose I deserve that after weeks of staring at her incredulously as she put on layer after layer...
We stopped for lunch in a medium sized town on the way. We successfully bought some bananas (then promptly started to cycle away without the actual bananas) and then found a street food vendor to get some quick lunch. English has been a lot less common out of Delhi and so we managed to break the system, obviously.
See we walked up, pointed vaguely at the stall and said "yes" to his questions (assuming he was asking what we wanted) until he started up the cooker and got to work. We stood back in the shade watching while he made it, expecting to be handed a plate. We watched while he served person after person (most of whom were being handed one thing at a time dipped in water/sauce by the vendor and then eaten, repeated four or five times). One group even insisted on sharing theirs with us while we waited, so we knew it was great when we once again tried to order! And again. It was only on the third attempt that we realised he thought we were just curious tourists and it was a pay first kinda affair, so we once again pointed at the pictures and this time handed over 20p per plate - a very tasty success!
I wish I could tell you what we had but I could barely pronounce the name let alone spell it. Small crispy balls filled with lentil/chickpea mash and covered in all sorts of toppings and sauce. The lentils/chickpeas were made by putting a massive ring of the stuff on a cooker and slowly melting/cooking the middle with sauce, portion by portion. Pretty cool! You'll be pleased to know we were quite a bit smoother with the 20p ice cream and Balam (milk, ground almonds, sugar, cardamon and saffron) later in the day!
Disaster struck! Just days before we replace our rear tires we got the first puncture of the trip. Yes you read that right - the first puncture of the trip. The first puncture in 3660 miles (5890 km) of not amazing roads! Insane! And although sad to break a perfect streak, a nice conformation of our decision to replace the tires. It wasn't even a pierce but a tubeless pinch (who knew that was a thing!?) after dropping off a big bump in the road. Pirelli Cintaturo Evo 35c - the best tires I've ever had.
Blasting through the traffic into Jaipur was a lot more fun than expected. Traffic is mental but so smooth here - we only stopped once! People are happy to let others out and because everyone respects others and doesn't try to go as fast as they can, everyone gets where they want to faster! They also have awesome awareness of slow two wheeled objects! I mean they'll still pull ahead of you and then suddenly slow down or stop, but it's generally very fun to weave in.
On arrival to the hotel (bit of a step down from yesterday but great food and a great rooftop) we went up the rooftop and did our long talked about but ever elusive core workout! They must have thought us completely mad arriving on the bikes and starting a workout, but we need it - our weedy cyclist torsos aren't going to cope on return to normal life and skiing otherwise!
Food spend today: 11.47 euros
Tea consumption: 8