Day 59 - It's Smoggy!

"Can we have two bottles of water actually please?" "Errrrr, no." Riiiight. The misunderstandings with the hotel receptionist from yesterday are still very much a thing then! To be fair he was very lovely, although I had to refuse when he rushed off to get someone to pump up my bike tire when I was doing it! Otherwise we had a nice breakfast, re-fixed my puncture when the tubeless plug blew out and got on the road.

We were both a bit apprehensive about the first "big" cycling day after ill, but in the end we were totally fine (helped by the negative elevation and slight tailwind). It was smoggy though. Like thick hazy smog all day. I spent most of the day training my diaphragm by breathing through my FP2 mask which did a pretty good job of keeping the lungs somewhat functioning.

We got a lot of bother from people on mopeds and motorbikes today. In Turkey when you were bothered you could relax as in 100% of cases they wanted to offer you something and in 99% of those cases that was tea. In India we're never sure if they're just interested, asking or offering so you're always on your guard. To be fair it is more efficient as you can have these conversations going along, but it means that all day you're having people pull alongside, ask you to stop, ask for a picture, ask where your going, etc, etc, etc. Having no break, and no way to escape from it all day, is exhausting. To make it even harder, the moment you stop anywhere, but particularly in town, people appear out of nowhere to watch and try and talk to you. This is a tiring place to be a tourist outside of your hotel room.

We cycled through a lot of quite sizeable towns today, and between those was a village every five minutes. Towards the end, as we were cycling through the destination city, I realised that I'd been completely zoned out, noise cancelling headphones on full blast, in my own little world, while working through some stuff mentally about the breakup. That in itself isn't unusual, I mean after all I've spent most of the summer cycling and thinking, but what was notable was doing so while navigating heavy Indian traffic in the dark!!! A testament to both the amount of time I've spent cycling recently, and the surprisingly fluid Indian traffic that it can be done subconsciously!

We arrived at the very nice guesthouse and were warmly welcomed by the very friendly owner with a wicked sense of humour, who was also a Maxillofacial surgeon...from the same building! As we were washing our bikes in his nice front garden a certain someone rocked up after a long flight and very long car ride! He'd picked a good evening though as we had the best curry of the trip so far!

Food spend today: 14.60 euros

Tea consumption: 5