Mumbai to Mahabaleshwar
It’s hot and humid here in Maharashtra. It’s hilly too. This is tough in a new kind of way. I have always underperformed under the stress of heat. My cognition is impaired, my breath is weak, and I’m just miserable. It’s also bad for my nether regions, the chafing and rashes happen a lot more easily in this climate. But I’m happy to be on the road. I’m back under India’s spell, characterized by the novelty of human kindness. My first day was brief. The highlight was watching a man swim after his cow which had presumably gotten ideas of its own. It looked as though he’d done it before because he had a pretty good freestyle stroke. Nevertheless, the cow evaded him until it had finally had enough and came back to the exact spot he wanted it of its own accord, waiting patiently for him. The man finally emerged, exhausted, and brought the cow back to land. It was a graceful thing to behold. I cycled some more kilometers and eventually the sun went down. I found a little dhaba to have dinner and was overwhelmed by the novelty of the menu. I asked the guy to give me whatever he liked, and out came a refreshingly spicy chicken dish that I mopped up with roti. I took out my laptop and edited for a couple hours. It was dark. I asked if I could pitch my tent out side the restaurant and I could. But when I went out, several men started gaping at me as I looked for a spot in the tall grass. They told me this was a bad spot, snakes everywhere. Indians always tell you there are snakes. There are never snakes. But I wasn’t going to deny them. After a bit of in group fighting it was decided that they would take me to the cricket field, so we went there as a group. I didn’t like the cricket field. It was large and exposed and sandy, not a great place to spend the night. So we left that spot and I told them I’d check further up the road, as I’d seen something promising on google maps. Before I could do that, another guy pulled up on a motorbike and told me he owned the adjacent land parcel. He opened the gate for me to reveal a campers heaven: low grass, flat, with some nice mature trees. Just what anyone would want. I gave my thanks and spent that night gazing at the starry skies of Maharashtra, feeling gratitude.
I awoke to cloudy skies and could smell rain in the air. My instinct was to get on the bike fast. The humidity and hilliness really kicked in as I approached the ghats. There wasn’t much development here, I was in dirt road village India. I like that India, though it means I forego the convenience of easy to find rest stops. After some time I found a little shack with a kind lady who fed me some poha and a banana. The rain came down just at that moment and I felt super lucky that myself and my bicycle were under a roof. As her child and husband sat by me watching television, I sipped on chai and read my kindle. Though unable to communicate, we were together and I was their child. These are the moments I enjoy. The rain stopped and I got back to it. I found my way to a busier road. The landscape was still pretty. Farmland stretched out between large hills, farmers were harvesting and building mounds of straw, perhaps to store for animal feed. I passed an ancient buddhist cave and made my way into a muslim town, where I found a hotel for the night. I ate at a weird American-inspired restaurant with motorcycles everywhere that curiously specialized in Chinese food. It wasn’t amazing, but it filled me up. I needed all my strength for tomorrow, to face the ghats.
Climbing hills in the heat isn’t fun or easy. I thought after the Himalayas I’d left behind my hardest climbing, but I was wrong. Heat changes everything. When it’s the kind of heat you wouldn’t even want to sit around in, let alone walk in, cycling uphill is a struggle. Every kilometer I felt as though I was sweating out all my water weight and needed to chug another bottle. At a certain point, however, I was higher in elevation and the air felt drier. Once I was high enough for a vista I could see I was crossing over to a much more arid India. This was pleasing. I also thought I was pretty high up, and had a celebratory chai at the view point. That’s when someone told me I still had 27 kilometers of up to go. 27?! How could this be real? It was. More trudging. I put some sunscreen on my face and sweat all over it. As I got further along I realized I was severely breaking out in acne. Like really bad. So began my battle with sunscreen and acne. Finally, as night fell, I reached a small town on the other side of the pass. Dinner and a bed at least. I sat at a restaurant and instantly befriended a mother and son who were traveling from Goa. They took me in and ordered all the special Marathi dishes they knew for me. We had a great feast together and they refused to let me pay for any of it. In return I supplied them with Cadbury chocolate bars, literally the least I could do. They tried to find me a place to stay but I told them I’d just pitch my tent somewhere. Luckily somewhere was just around the corner, I found a dirt road leading up to a grassy hill with no one in sight and pitched my tent overlooking the mountains and stars.
As the sun rose I yawned in my dew-soaked tent and got up for the day. It’s Monday. That didn’t used to mean anything but now, now that I work, I feel the pang of anxiety. I have no signal, I need to rush so that I don’t miss any important slack messages. The Australians need to know they can rely on me. I wolfed down some breakfast and made my way past the final stretches of the climb. Where it leveled out, I found a resort town called Mahabaleshwar, and that’s when my slack messages came in. I had work to do. A lot of it. I’d need to stay in this town for a couple of nights. What are the chances they have some kind of cafe with wifi? Somehow, they did. Cafe Peter. My new home for the next few days.
