November 2008
90 posts
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Article in the Hindu on Cycle Tourism... →
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Where's Waldo: Fort Kochi
The final day of riding was nothing to write about… once you get near the coast the side roads get busier and theres not much to see. You spend most of your time dodging potholes and traffic. We did see a work elephant walking down the road with a trunk full of palm leaves and we stopped to 1) take a picture and 2) would you ride past an elephant on the road? We stopped at the ‘Raj...
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“The power will be back in 30 minutes”
– Restaurant server
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Population Control?
Earlier in the trip someone asked Raj why the buses always seem to be on such a tear down the road. Seriously, they engage in some extremely risky driving maneuvers seemingly in an effort to save mere seconds on the route. Raj explained that it results from competition. Some of the buses are owned by the government and some are private. Each are given certain windows of time where they must be at...
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Where's Waldo: Alleppy (ish)
Today was the day that we biked out of the mountains toward the coast. Going downhill is always more appealing initally than going uphill, but then again, it can depend on the conditions. When you descend for 20k, your hands get tired of gripping the brakes to the point where you actually wish there was a hill to climb. Its even worse when you’re dodging potholes the whole way. Another...
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Where's Waldo: Vagamon Village (not really)
The ride to the hotel well outside of Vagamon was only 26 miles (and that was including a detour route just to add distance) so we spent the morning in Kumily. Some of the group hired a guide for some trekking (we would call it hiking probably) and a few stayed in town. I stuck around and did some reading and web browsing/chatting. I found out that I have a layover in Bangalore for like 6 hours,...
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“Hello, sir, please close your window the monkeys are out”
– Call from front desk of Mike’s Inn this morning at 7am
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Where's Waldo: Kumily
After a slight hiccup in the morning involving the hotel being located on a private road that our van could not accessand a phone issue preventing use of a credit card transaction we hit the road ‘early’ (it wasn’t so early anymore) for what we expected to be the hardest remaining ride of the trip. We were not disappointed. When we reached Michael’s Inn 113km ~ 68 miles...
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Where's Waldo: Munnar(ish) [Tall Trees]
The ride to outside of Munnar was only about 50km ~ 30 miles, but it was challenging coming off the ride to Marayoor and was full of climbing. Our guide Raj had to pull some strings to get us a place to stay because a filming cast and crew would not check out of our hotel. We ended up staying at The Tall Trees and it was the nicest place we have stayed so far. The rooms were part of small...
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Bob's Blog →
Included: me making friends with the locals
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