To Najibabad: first rain in a long time

May 5, 2016

"We must temper our tantrums about the traffic" Rachel says. We have the same today while on the main road, almost no construction, the road is still lined with beautiful big trees. These will come out when the "4 laning work" begins in this section. A few small towns are being demolished.

First break of chai, we see dark clouds forming, the locals look to the sky and indicate with hand wave that it's 50-50 it will rain. We cycle on and start to see sprinkles on the road, the temperature cooler and we are enjoying the change. Hopefully rain will freshen things up a bit.

At 38 kilometers in Afzalgarh, we stop for a second break and hear thunder. By the time we are done eating, the rain comes down heavily, so we wait for it to lighten up. We've not had rain like this since last August in Uganda.

A couple of kms out of town we are looking for the junction to a yellow road. We miss it and don't realize until after 7 kms. Backtracking we get on the correct road. The surface is terrible!!

The shortest distance saved us kilometers but didn't save us time or effort. Instead we are rewarded with lots to see of rural India. The main crop in this area is sugar cane and we see how the cane is processed. Small operations all along the road of giant presses hand fed. Then in a larger city just outside Najibabad, we see a large sugar factory.

We navigate through the streets of Nagina, to connect to a white road and an improved road surface. Reaching Najibabad, we have two choices on Google maps of accommodation. Checking Hotel Walia Residency first, we look no further. For 980 rupees ($15usd), big room, air conditioning, security for the bikes, and two guys sitting out in the hallway like our personal attendants. When first in the room, it begins; a knock and they walk in with water. A knock and they just walk in with a towel we requested. Unless we lock the door, knocking is simultaneous with walking in..

Patrick goes out to get a menu, one of them gets it for us and takes our order, food is brought to the room. After eating, Rachel goes to place the dirty dishes outside the door, one of them hops up and takes the dishes. Sweet service.

One more day to Rishikesh and then rest days.

We are seeing more mosques and Muslims again.

Friendly guy with a marwari horse pulling his cart. Yeah, he is a Muslim and might not be welcome in my country next year.

Concrete advertisement. We are not sure how this works, but I would consider it on our house if they provided the paint and labor..... Not!

And then it rains. We cannot remember when was the last time we had a downpour like this.

Our "shortcut" route is shown as a yellow road on googlemaps. It quickly turns to this.

The rewards of cycling the backroads. There are lots of things to see.

How about this feature? Just a stick and an umbrella.

We pass by lots of large sugarcane presses. The cane juice is then boiled down, hence the black smoke.

"I am so proud my state legislature protected my freedom to use polyethylene bags in perpetuity. I only wish they would also grant me the freedom to dump them all at the edge of town and set the piles on fire every once and a while like the people in Nagina do." says Patrick

Today's ride: 102 km (63 miles)
Total: 16,812 km (10,440 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0