6400 - 7000 miles: Chennai to Bangkok

It was dark when the MV Nancowry sailed out of Chennai Port, 4 hours late. We had left the Indian continent but unfortunately not India. The filthy ship, stained red with betel spit was infested with cockroaches which crawled over us and everything. We travelled bunk class in large, open dorms and the sounds of All India Radio playing Hindi classics competed with those of Indians hacking up phlegm. There were several hundred Indians and 9 Westerners on board and the 3 day journey could not pass fast enough for all of us.

Flying fish leaped out of a deep blue sea that extended south unbroken all the way to Antarctica. At times the ocean was as still as a pond and we watched turtles, dolphins and Indians spitting and throwing rubbish over the side of the boat.


At dawn on the third day the decks were packed to watch the sun rise over the Islands of the Andaman Archipelago. To the north lay Sentinel Island where tribal people still live a hunter/gatherer existence, hostile to contact from the outside world. We sailed past uninhabited islands where tropical forest carpeted the hillsides right down to white sandy beaches and a pod of over 100 dolphins swam alongside the ship.

We eventually disembarked at Port Blair, which despite its setting in a beautiful natural harbour the Indians have succeeded in turning into an unattractive, dirty, noisy town replete with cows eating rubbish and mangy street dogs that could be anywhere in India - as if to reassure themselves 900 miles from the mainland. We were up at dawn scrumming for tickets for the first inter-island ferry out of there.

We had to use a new phrase "spectacular spectacular" to describe how we felt about Havelock Island, one of the most beautiful places I have been. Enormous rainforest trees grew right down to deserted white sandy beaches which sloped gently into a crystal clear turquoise sea full of coral reefs and rainbow coloured fish. The Andaman Islands are part of the Indonesian Archipelago that stretches south to Sumatra and the flora, fauna and native people reflect this. It is only a fact of history that the islands are controlled by India, but given the fate of the natural environments in much of South-East Asia this has probably been for the best.



It took us 30 minutes to cycle the Island's only road. We stayed a week in a simple weaved bamboo hut near the romantically named Beach no. 7 and spent our time snorkeling reefs, exploring the rainforest and body surfing at sunset. I was really proud of Tracey who has a phobia of sharks that was once so bad she was scared to get in her bath tub but who by the end of the week was snorkeling in the deep pelagic waters around South Button Island, whose coral reefs and fish were so "spectacular spectacular" they will stay fixed in our minds forever.

We were still trying to confirm our boat to Thailand but no phones or internet had been working on Havelock for over a week - we had to cycle 5 miles to the main village, borrow a dive operators mobile phone, call my friend Emma in the UK and ask her to check our email and then phone her back to get the information we needed. It was all confirmed, we would sail from Port Blair on the S/Y Siren on 12th April; some old fashioned baksheesh had done the trick.

We were excited to have finally found passage to Thailand but we were sad to be leaving such an amazing place before we had really explored it fully. Our sadness lasted up to the moment we saw the S/Y Siren moored off Port Blair - a beautiful, wooden, Indonesian style luxury yacht! The boat sails the waters of SE Asia providing expensive live-aboard diving holidays and the crew were taking her back to Thailand. The wealthy dive tourists disembarked and we loaded our bikes, bags and selves into inflatable dinghies and zoomed out to board the yacht. Tracey had a smile like a Cheshire Cat as did the Thai crew who were going home to their families after a month at sea. We were joined by Martin from Norway who is also attempting to travel around the world without flying (but not on a bicycle) and like us had found this as the only way out of India. Immigration officials came aboard to fill out countless forms, our passports were stamped and we were given permission to sail.

Storms were brewing as we motored out of the harbour and the weather forecast was bad; when the crew start taking anti-seasick pills you know you are in for a rough ride. We were pitching and rolling all night and hardly anyone slept as we felt like we might roll out of bed and the cupboard doors periodically sprang open. In the morning the view out of the porthole near our bed was like looking into a washing machine. We were served the first decent cooked breakfast I had seen in what seemed like years but I was so green I could barely get it down. Thankfully by the afternoon the weather improved and we were able to explore the boat and enjoy the empty ocean, free drinks and great Thai food, though the sight of so much plastic rubbish adrift in the Andaman Sea was surprising and depressing.

After 40 hours at sea the first land we sighted was the Similan Islands to the north-east and not long afterwards the hills of Phuket to the east, but it was dark when we dropped anchor in Chalong Harbour so we stayed onboard for the night. In the morning the setting in the natural harbour surrounded by jungle clad islands and hills was beautiful but it was so hot and humid that the sweat was dripping off us just eating breakfast and soon afterwards a tropical storm let rip - the rainy season was approaching. Immigration officials were not at work as the government had extended the national holiday for Thai New Year in order to restore order in Bangkok after the political demonstrations there. It was midday by the time we were given a 30 day visa and officially entered Thailand, the land of smiles.

As we cycled along the smoothly tarmaced road we were struck by the silence - no horns!! We passed restaurants advertising "fish & chips" and a branch of Tesco Lotus and followed a road to the Laem promonitory, at just 7.5 degrees north of the equator it was the most southerly point we had reached, nearly 600 miles further south than Chennai. We turned a corner and began what would be a journey of several thousand miles back to the temperate north, but more immediately was a slog up and down ridiculously steep hills in air so humid that when we paused at a viewpoint to look down along the sandy bays and tourist resorts of Phuket I was able to wring the sweat out of my shirt. Overweight tourists on hired scooters gave us the thumbs up but they had no idea. We were immediately introduced to Asian attitudes to animals as we cycled past performing elephants, monkeys and birds. We stayed the night in the tourist resort of Kata in order to buy a road map, guidebook and supplies. Phuket must once have been beautiful but the beaches are now backed by tourist resorts that resemble the Spanish Costa-del-Sol, with All Day Breakfasts, men in Speedos and McDonald's. Only the Lady Bars and sex tourists seem to distinguish them from any other package holiday destination in the world.

We took advantage of the cooked breakfasts and then continued north, up-and-down the hills past endless resorts, construction sites and tsunami warning signs. 5 days on the decks of boats at sea had turned our bicycles into rust buckets and my chain was finished. Thankfully we were in Thailand and not India and we tracked down a recommended cycle shop in the town of Thalang where the mechanic did a great job replacing worn and rusted gears, cables, etc with the same quality parts we had installed in the UK. The northern part of Phuket is less developed and we camped the night on Mai Khao Beach. The tent was like a sauna so I jumped in the sea to cool off but this was as hot as a bath and not in the slightest refreshing. I would have slept on the beach but for the Spawn of Satan (mosquitoes).

Turtles nest on the beach and in the morning a pick-up truck arrived and a man got out and started digging up the beach in broad daylight. I couldn't believe it and was just about to throw myself under his spade to save the turtle eggs when two elderly women that had been standing around took off their clothes, got into the hole and were buried in the sand!?! We went in search of breakfast which turned out to be boiled squid on rice. While I was tucking in two Canadian cyclists saw our bikes and stopped to say hello - over the next few days we would see several others sweating along the highway, more than we had seen in 4 months in India.

We took the scenic route north and spent a couple of days exploring Ao Phang-Nga National Park in a colourful long-tailed boat. Hundreds of towering limestone cliffs, topped with jungle rise spectacularly out of calm green waters. We slept the night at the foot of one of the islands in a muslim fishing village built entirely on stilts which was fascinating to wander around.


We continued north on well surfaced minor roads with hardly any traffic through some beautiful forested hills accompanied by the whistles and hoots of tropical birds and the high pitched buzzing of cicadas. At That Put we got caught up in a funeral procession and found ourselves amongst smiling mourners being led by four decorated elephants. Further on rural people were waving and smiling from the verandas of their wooden homes built on stilts but the deforestation was fairly depressing. We thought we had made it to Khao Sok National Park by dark, we had, but the entrance was 30 miles away so we camped the night in a rubber tree plantation amongst some very weird insects. I was woken at midnight by what I thought was lightening but turned out to be someone shining a light on the tent - we were naked and unprepared for hand-to-hand combat with a gang of armed poachers so we were eventually relieved to discover they were collecting rubber - though it remains a mystery as to why they were doing this in the middle of the night.


Next morning we cycled past some great scenery on lovely quiet roads to the National Park. I indulged my passion for charging around damp, leech infested jungles in search of strange creatures and was rewarded by almost falling over a boulder sized and very ancient Asian Giant Tortoise. I splurged and we stayed in a beautiful wooden bungalow on stilts close by a running stream and surrounded by jungle - we lay under our mosquito net listening to the rain, the stream and the din being made by frogs, cicadas and crickets. It was a fantastic rainforest and we were amazed to see a flying gecko, keelback snake and dusky langur monkeys, but Tracey rather freaked out when she was attacked by a leech.
Cycling west from Khao Sok it was so hot and wet that the road was actually steaming as we climbed up to a pass through the hills with fantastic views as we swept down back towards the Andaman coast before turning north again. In anticipation of rain hundreds of frogs were croaking from roadside ponds so loadly that it actually hurt our ears, which was quite amazing. We stopped for dinner at a roadside eatery and were joined at our table by 500 flies. A monk in a mosquito net was our neighbour as we camped the night under a picnic pagoda near a lake. I was overjoyed when a huge storm brought cooling rain and the prospect of a decent nights sleep. I awoke in the early hours needing the toilet and fumbled around in the dark trying to get my feet into shoes outside the tent, shoes that unbeknown to me had become the temporary home for an army of biting ants that within seconds had swarmed painfully all over my feet, legs and hands. I got back into the tent bringing a sizeable number of ants with me which we had to massacre. Trouble was we both needed a piss but were trapped in the tent. After much bladder holding and deliberation in the end there was nothing for it but to leap from the tent barefoot, take the pain and run for the nearest bush.


We continued north with forested hills on our right and mangrove swamps and prawn farms on our left. Palm oil plantations are a major environmental catastrophe in SE Asia (if you do just one thing to help the planet this year do NOT buy anything with Palm Oil in it!) but make handy if rather dank campsites. I was so hot in the tent that when a storm came over I got out and stood naked in the torrential rain to cool off - this proved rather too effective and I spent most of the night damp and chilly. When we stopped for breakfast the next day I was served cold noodles with cold crab curry, Tracey just had the cold noodles. Later that day, as I slurped my meaty Thai food and watched Tracey eat a plate of plain rice I realised that travelling with a fussy eater in SE Asia was going to be a trying experience for both of us. It was a regular occurrence that when it seemed we had communicated to the cook that we only wanted vegetables the eager to please Thais had added surprise meat/fish/tentacle which meant 2 portions for me and a grumpy, hungry girlfriend.


Further north past Ranong things felt a bit more remote and we had views west across the Pak Chan estuary to the heavily logged hills of Burma. That night we pitched the tent in the dark in what turned out to be a mangrove swamp and the air was so still and heavy that after a sweaty day in the saddle it was like hell itself. I willed it to rain but the only water was the perspiration dripping off my back.


Near Kra Buri we reached a viewpoint over the river to Burma and pondered why the Bay of Bengal is awash with refugees floating around on bamboo rafts when they only need to cross a 50m stretch of river. This was also one of the narrowest points of the Malay Peninsular and it only took us a few hours to cycle across the country to Chumphon on the sunnier Gulf of Thailand.

We left the cycles on the mainland and joined the backpackers for a 2 hour ferry journey to the Island of Ko Tao. Emboldened by her snorkeling Tracey had decided to learn to scuba-dive and complete a 4-day PADI course. While she blew bubbles in a swimming pool I was trekking across the small islands forested hills to beautiful boulder strewn bays with water so warm and crystal clear that at times it felt like I was snorkeling in an aquarium. We enjoyed the trappings of holiday tourists and socialising with Tracey's dive companions - it was a lovely break from the rigours of the road. Tracey completed her course, making 4 dives in the sea down to 17m, an amazing achievement that she surpassed by snorkeling amongst Black-Tipped Reef Sharks (admittedly they were only 30cm long but sharks all the same). Having survived the perils of the ocean she fell over a step whilst inebriatedly celebrating her diving success and the subsequent cuts all went sceptic.

Our 30 days were going quickly so we crossed back to the mainland and began the 350 mile journey north to Bangkok, which took 6 days, mainly along Highway 4, a tropical version of the A1. The main interest was provided by giant sculptures of pineapples, golden birds and dragons. We cooled off with brightly coloured ice slurpees that were so cold the first sip was like being shot between the eyes. Thailand has many beautiful snakes, butterflies and frogs and we saw most of them dead on the road. Whenever we could we got lost on lovely quiet minor roads that wound their way through the infinite shades of green of rural Thailand. Approaching Bangkok we cycled alongside and over myriad canals and rivers that only a few decades ago were the main highways but now carry only occasional boat traffic past the wooden houses on stilts that line the banks.

Entering Bangkok was like cycling into any major city - 8 lane highways choked with traffic, industry, shopping malls, housing estates and constantly being cut up by diesel belching buses and inconsiderate taxi drivers. We crossed the Mae Nam Chao Phraya river into the Chinatown district. We had cycled over 7,000 miles in nearly 12 months and street vendors were selling giant cockroaches to eat.

5400 - 6400 miles: Mumbai to Chennai

We could scarcely believe it. A 10 mile boat ride across the bay from one of the most populated cities in the world and we found ourselves cycling in some kind of tropical idyll - palm trees, quiet roads with white oxen pulling carts, buffaloes wallowing in the shade and people easily going about their business without a care for us.

Late in the humid afternoon heat we passed through a village with a massive crumbling coastal fort overgrown with jungle climbers and surrounded by coconut groves that cast a beautiful mottled light over everything. Friendly people waved and smiled from rustic, brightly coloured colonial style houses with red tiled roofs. It was the first of a thousand tropical cliches.

We cycled south with the Arabian Sea and setting sun on our right and the distant hills of the Western Ghats on our left. We camped the night on a sandy beach and drank Sean's wine while we cooked, then slept to the sound of the waves and in the morning swam in the sea. Tracey fed the beach cows our scraps of greens and we cycled past sandy beaches, coconut groves and shady villages and then sweated up over rocky headlands and sped down the other side to more beaches, coconut groves and shady villages. We had a fantastic lunch in the small resort of Murud, in the shade looking out to sea with a roost of Flying Fox bats in the pine trees by the shore. We caught the first of many small wooden ferries across a wide estuary, past the island fort of Janjira to the village of Dighi, where dozens of brightly clothed women were carrying tiers of metal water jugs on their heads from the well. It was a very steep climb out of the valley and even in the late afternoon shade we sweated buckets. From the top we could see a long sandy bay flanked by trees and found our way there to watch the sun set. We camped on the beach, washed in the sea, cooked under an impossibly starry sky with shooting stars and slept to the sound of the waves again. Next morning it was so beautiful we decided to stay a day. Tracey caused excitement when she cycled to the nearest village to buy supplies - she paid 70p for a kilo of fresh cod like fish and a handful of king prawns and I gutted and skinned them on the beach and made paella for lunch.

It took us two weeks to cycle the 300 miles from Mumbai to Goa. It was probably the best cycling of the trip so far - the scenery and days seemed to blur into a cycling paradise - beautiful tropical scenery, deserted undeveloped sandy beaches, heavily scented groves of flowering mango and fruiting cashew trees, traditional fishing villages, the hoots and whistles of Coucals and Drongos, friendly people wearing colourful clothes and smiles, making coffee and omelet amongst the pines while watching dolphins out at sea, crossing rivers in a variety of wooden boats and dug-out canoes. Most of the roads were quiet with hardly any traffic, though the surfacing was so bad at times we were being shaken apart. We camped mainly on beaches watching the sunset and cooking under the stars and at the fishing villages of Valneshwar, Malvan and Vengurlu we stayed in lovely simple accommodation overlooking the sea.

It is a mainly Muslim stretch of coast, more bhurqa than bikini. Zuber Amed, a young muslim man invited us to stay a night in his house in the village of Bankot as the canoe to the next village had stopped for the evening - it was an interesting insight into local life and culture - the house had no toilet (a trip to the beach was required) or running water and we were eaten alive by mosquitoes in the night as we slept on the floor.

As we made our way south the hills separating the bays got steeper and higher and the tropical sun was fierce, it was the most physically demanding cycling since the mountains of Turkey. The tops of the hills were grasslands scorched brown by the sun with red rocks and earth, where villagers laid out thousands of small white fish to dry - the stench and heat was nearly enough to knock us off our bikes. In the valley bottoms large rivers flowed down from the ghats to the sea, their banks cloaked in mangrove forests.

I have a diary to record our route and some of the many highs and lows of each day. Looking back, the entry for 1st Feb seems to capture some of the essence of our journey down the Konkan Coast: "Eating 2 dosas each for lunch at Dabhol; washing our clothes & selves in a clear tropical stream when we were so hot; watching the sun set with tea/coffee and bourbons on the beach at Guhagar; new stove is major jet furnace; nearly lost pans washing up in the sea; had to tell two blokes to leave us alone while i was naked after washing in the sea (it was dark); scorpion in kit; v. tired; woken at dawn by thud of coconuts being picked by man up a tree."

Crossing into Goa I suffered shock at Western culture after being away from it for so long - white people everywhere in tiny swimming costumes eating pizza and pasta and drinking beer. Tracey thought it was great, describing it as "like being at home only hot and tropical". We based ourselves for two weeks at Arambol beach (Camden Market-on-Sea), which may have the highest concentration of old hippies and white people with dreadlocks on the planet - they are if nothing entertaining to watch and put on an informal show of yoga, circus skills and bongo drumming on the beach at sunset every night. The sea, beaches, palms and international food of Goa were enjoyable after the madness of India but at times the Goa scene was a cliche of itself that I found both amusing and sad but not in a good way and I left Tracey on the beach for a few days and went inland to the tropical forests of the ghats in search of wildlife and some sanity.

From Arambol we cycled south past the package holiday resorts to the state capital of Panjim, on the banks of the Mandovi River. Having been built by the Portuguese it was quite charming for an Indian city. From Panjim we rode south-east and after a hot and hilly day in the saddle we camped in a cashew grove at the foot of the ghats. We were up before dawn to beat the heat and ascend the 1000m high ridge before us. We had two maps, both showing a major road over the hill but we found ourselves pushing the bikes up a very steep and rough dirt track through the jungle and when we came across a villager with a machete he indicated that it only got worse. It was a major blow and after two hours we found ourselves cycling back past our campsite and spent the remainder of the day riding through the blistering heat amongst hundreds of quarry trucks covering us and everything in red dust, back to the coast.

Cycling on India's National Highways is never pleasant but we had no choice but to endure a day and a half riding south with the noisy and dusty trucks and buses into the state of Karnataka before we could again turn inland to ascend the ghats. When we did it was such a joy to once again share quite country roads with bullock carts and the scenery of wild tropical forests and fast flowing streams as we sweated our way up the winding mountain road was beautiful. Once we had crested the ridge and rode out onto the Deccan Plataux our joy soon turned to disappointment. We had been expecting a lush, green, hilly landscape of forests, paddyfields and estates of spices, tea and coffee but found a hot, dry, brown and heavily cultivated place where once again we were the centre of attention for the enthusiastically friendly and curious Indians whose jaws seemed to hit the floor as we passed and who yelled after us in their Kanada dialect in a primitive manner.

As we made our way south-east towards Mysore the midday heat was nuclear - 40C and increasingly humid. If you wish to recreate our cycling conditions at home then try riding a cycle machine in front of your fire with your central heating on full and a hairdryer on "hot" blowing in your face. We cycled from pop stop to pop stop and were drinking over 3l of fluid a day each, most of which perspired straight out of us as curry flavoured sweat. To make matters worse, Tracey had a heat rash which could only be alleviated by covering her skin from the sun. We sought refuge at Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary in the Baba Budan Hills and the Forest Department allowed us to stay in their Resthouse (for a not inconsiderable fee) - it was basic (scorpion in the sink, tree frogs and geckos in the bathroom) but had a wonderful breezy veranda overlooking a huge lake with layers of forested hills beyond that are home to tigers, elephants, bison and leopards (we saw deer, a wild chicken and bear poo).

Rested and re-motivated we rode through the hills, mist laying in the valleys at dawn, through forests and coffee estates and bright green paddyfields. Out of the hills we tried to avoid the worst of the heat by stopping for lengthy all-you-can-eat thali curries and could barely get back on the bikes after lunch. We were wowed by the intricate stone carvings of the 12th century Hoysala temple complexes near Belur and the 10th century jain statue of Gomateshvara at Sravanabelagula, the world's tallest monolithic statue that looks serenely over the surrounding plains from a temple atop a smooth rocky hill. We had cycled 500 miles in 12 days and were hot and tired by the time we rode into Mysore, through the eye-watering industrial smog in the dark.

We rested and saw the sights but the presence of tourists in Mysore has turned the locals into the most annoying touts we had encountered - or perhaps it was the heat getting to us. We rode south-west from the city and after lunch had reached Nagarhole National Park in the Western Ghats, which is part of a the Nilgiri Hills Bioshpere Reserve, a huge tract of forested hills on the borders of three states. We enquired at some safari lodges about visiting the Park but they were expensive even by London standards, let alone India. Storm clouds built in the heat and we spent two hours sheltering in a small temple as the cooling rain fell in buckets in one of the wettest places in the world.

In fairness everyone told us the road ahead was not safe on bicycles due to wild animals, but then people have been telling us that the next place down the road is not safe since we left home. It was getting dark when we approached a Forest Dept checkpoint at the entry to the National Park. We expected to be told that we could not proceed until morning but they raised the gate and waved us on - which in hindsight was at least negligent if not plain stupid. It was soon clear we had entered a wild forest and decided to make camp near to the edge of the Park hoping there might be less animals about. We pushed the bikes along a muddy path and found a good spot in some bamboo forest. It was after we had pitched the tent that we noticed the elephant poo and the giant bamboo trees that they had pushed over and I remembered that they ate bamboo. We used branches, bamboo and our bikes to create an enclosure for extra security. As darkness fell lightning lit the sky, thunder rumbled and all around there were howls, hoots, screams and whistles of wild animals and birds. If felt like the most dramatic place in the world.

I wasn't worried about the leopards and tigers but elephants were a different matter. We had read several news stories in the local papers of villagers being killed by elephants and a jungle lodge elsewhere had told me that they did not like people and may attack. Unarmed, we would not stand a chance. We agreed that if we heard the pachyderms approaching we would grab the bikes and leg it. Once in the tent the flaw in our plan became clear - if we were asleep we would not hear them until it was too late. I laid awake all night rigid with fear, straining to hear the sound of approaching elephants over Tracey snoring next to me. The forest was full of animals, twigs were snapping, peacocks were crying alarm, deer were barking. It felt like the longest night of my life and I have never been so grateful to see the dawn.

The storm had passed and we cycled through the beautiful dry, brown forest on a "road" that was rubble and shook my front loader apart. As we were carrying out makeshift repairs a Forest Dept Jeep pulled up, advised us to be careful as there were lots of elephants in the area and drove off - they didn't even ask if we were OK or needed any help - every man for himself out here. The forest went on for miles and we saw Spotted, Sambar and Barking deer. At one point we passed a tribal village, many of their homes were small and flimsy, built from mud, bamboo and thatch they looked like they wouldn't withstand the monsoon let alone a herd of grouchy elephants - I couldn't imagine what it must be like living there. Some miles further on we both pointed in amazement as an elephant was lumbering through the jungle almost alongside us. There was a moment of mutual shock as the elephants trumpeted and thundered away from us and we legged it down the road. Once we were at a safer distance from each other we watched the 3 elephants for quite a while through binoculars and they watched us - until the one that had been staring straight at us and flapping its ears started moving in our direction - when we decided it was time to leave. It was an incredible experience and the adrenaline made my legs tremble.

After several hours we reached more tribal villages, where they had built platforms in the trees near their paddyfields so that they could scare the animals without being attacked. Further on we reached a larger village and a tarmac road and then crossed the state border into Kerala and back into wild animal territory in Waynand National Park. We cycled along a forest road that we would return to the following evening on a jeep safari when we watched a bull elephant cross the road and saw a herd of magnificent Indian Bison.

One of the great things about cycling is that you can just make the journey up as you go along. Hot and thirsty we stopped to buy a bottle of water as we passed through a village, in doing so we noticed another shop selling soda and so made it a pop stop in the shade when we noticed a sign advertising a guesthouse 600m down a minor road. I was tired after not sleeping all night and so we thought we would check it out - much buggering about and 5 miles up and down hills later we were escorted by 30 very small and excited school children to the Varnam family's homestay, which was like finding paradise itself.

Their home is on a small estate where they grow bananas, jackfruit, rubber trees, coffee and a list of exotic spices as long as your arm. Elephants and wild animals roam the surrounding forests and the paddyfields of tribal villages. As the heat and humidity of the Indian summer intensifies, hot air rises over the ghats and late every afternoon storms form - sitting on the Varnam's veranda drinking fresh coffee, reading the newspaper and watching the cooling torrential rain was a tranquil delight. Mrs Varnams Keralan home cooking was interesting and delicious, we even had a dish made with banana flowers. We could probably have stayed there forever but eventually and reluctantly got back on our steeds and cycled on in the heat, past hills of bright green tea plantations and down out of the mountains.

Kerala is a communist state and with India holding elections in April every surface was covered in red and white posters of the hammer & sickle or Che Guevara and roads were painted with marxist slogans. Which all seemed slightly incongruous alongside the luminously coloured mansions that lined the palm fringed roads in one of India's wealthiest states. We were passed by buses painted in psychedelic colours and driven by lunatics as we cycled into the coastal city of Kannur where it was 40 degrees and 90% humidity and the food was as spicy hot as the weather.

We went to Chembilode to watch a Theyam ceremony at their village temple amongst the coconut groves. Theyam is an ancient form of religious folkdance where the performers dress in fantastic costumes and make-up. During their ritualised dancing to frenetic drumming the performers take on the form of gods, local people then seek the advice and blessing of these gods. The villagers were wonderfully welcoming to us and we stayed for the whole ceremony which lasted from 7pm until midday the following day. It was an amazing and surreal experience.

We had been trying, unsuccesfully, to find a way out of India for several weeks and had, via email, found a sailing company that would take us from the Andaman Islands to Thailand but the Indian Port Authorities had other ideas. We killed time waiting for the outcome and the heat seemed to melt the days together in a procession of cold showers, laying under the ceiling fan and raging war on the invading ants and mosquitos. The matter was not resolved but it seemed pointless to continue south on the highway in the heat so we took a 14hr overnight train across the Indian peninsular to Chennai on the east coast to see if we could influence things. We travelled 1st Class but only in the warped bureacracy of India is 1st Class actually 3rd Class.

There are thousands of people living rough on the streets of Chennai and thousands more in makeshift slums and the city stinks like an Indian public toilet. We joined the massive crowds lining the sandy seashore for the cooler, fresh air blowing off the Bay of Bengal and we looked hopefully eastwards towards Asia.

On the road in "Incredible India!"

Outside of its wonderful temples, wildlife, beaches and diverse landscapes we found that India can be a hot, filthy, noisy place with distressing social and environmental problems and some terrible roads - what has made cycling in India such a fantastic, eye-opening and at times frustrating experience has been the antics of the Indians themselves. Some of the amazing things we have seen as we cycled 1800 miles from Amritsar in the north to Kerala in the south:

• A man sleeping amongst a rat warren where people put food out for the rats.


• Sikhs drinking water from the lake around the Golden Temple - the same water that people were bathing in.


• A man stood in a lake washing his arse with his hands after having crapped - pointing his glistening buttocks straight at the road (and me) so I could see his balls as well.


• At railway crossings vehicles line up on both sides of the road on both sides of the crossing. When the barriers come up there is an almighty scrum of vehicles and pedestrians that takes 10 minutes to disentangle itself into a semblance of order. This happens at every crossing.


• Jeeps and carts piled so high that they either fall off the road, wheels fall off or the axle breaks.


• Cows are undoubtedly stars of the show. They are sacred to the Hindus of the north. Male cows roam the streets eating the rubbish and crapping everywhere and are allowed to do whatever they want. We saw cows sneakily stealing food from veg stalls, cows grazing on fish put out to dry, cows eating plastic bags, cows sunbathing on the beach, a cow bumping a child and stealing its ice-cream, a cow charging tourists who were shaking their sarong on the beach unaware of their matador-like actions.



• Women in full regalia - bangles all the way up their arms, brightly coloured saris, jewellery on hands, legs and faces - working on road construction sites, digging holes and carrying rubble on their heads. They were often assisted by their children and get paid about 1 pound 50p a day.



• Goats with bags tied over their udders to stop people stealing their milk.


• Tracey getting caught up in a herd of buffalo while cycling and being herded off the road with them.


• A man carrying 3 sheep on his motorbike.


• Barbers cutting hair and shaving clients in the dust and dirt by the side of busy roads.


• Buses, motorbikes, autorickshaws all driving at night on unlit roads without any headlights.


• We went to catch a train to Jaipur from Jodphur and were told it was running 7 hours late.


• 2,000 people leave the cinema during intermission to find 1 bloke serving drinks.


• Watching appalled as an old man opened his 2nd floor window, hacked up a huge greeny and spat it out into the street below and onto my parked bicycle.


• Despairing hand labour - everything in India seems to be built by hand by gangs of workers in bare feet toiling away in the dirt in the heat of the day. We saw work gangs building roads by hand and even a gang of men trying to reduce blocks of pink granite with hammers and chisels.


• Village women standing under a tree to cut a big branch which then nearly fell on them.


• A circus girl performing by the road, balancing on a bicycle wheel on a tightrope 2m above the ground with silver jugs on her head and no safety net - and the crowd was more interested in us.


• A mouse crawling up the inside of my trouser leg and then making its home in Tracey's pannier bag.


• A temple to worship rats. There are so many rats that many are dead, diseased or deformed. Worshippers must enter the temple barefoot and walk over the rat shit and have rats run over their feet and then eat food that rats have been on.



• A stray dog meandering up to a female tourist sunbathing on the beach and cocking its leg on her.


• On the Konkan Coast at dawn every day there is a line of fishermen on the shore seemingly crouching in prayer to the sea, but on closer inspection all doing a dump on the beach.



• Shoes have to be left outside temple complexes and many shops. Emerging from an internet cafe I discovered that my expensive Haviana flip-flops had gone and that I had been left a pair of cheap Indian ones several sizes too big. Half-an hour later the owner of the shop returned puzzled at the commotion I was causing when I noticed he was wearing my flip-flops.


• Monkeys attacking tourists to rob them of their food and drink.


• People going to sleep by the side of busy roads in the middle of the day with their heads inches from the tarmac.


• Bare-faced lying. Indians will tell you anything even when you can both blatantly see that what is being said is not true.


• A man storing his rupee coins in his ears.


• A free hair in every meal and if you are really lucky a bit of insect as well.


• Women wearing black bhurqas and veils in 40 degree heat. Black sheep in 40 degree heat.


• Farmers washing their cows and buffaloes by hand.



• A truck full of seemingly precariously balanced coconuts bouncing along a bumpy road with a man asleep on top of them.


• Dogs eating roadkill dogs.


• A group of women trying out combs by brushing their hair with them and then putting the combs back on the shelf.


• The sound of India is the sickening "KKHHHRRRRRUUUUKKKK, KKHHHRRRRRUUUUKKKK, HYACKKK" of men and women clearing their throats and spitting phlegm. At any time you are no more than 10 metres from someone performing this act.
  
• A camel cart travelling along the road while the "driver" was asleep in the cart.


• Goats painted pink grazing in a field.


• Naked holy men wearing only peacock feather fans.


• School walls with cartoon-like pictures to educate people, that include pictures of people squatting and doing a dump.


• Dodgy fireworks that only ascend 20m into the sky before exploding and showering the onlookers with flares, one of which knocked a man over a wall. (Nick does this sound familiar!!).


• Public affection between men and women is frowned upon so you will never see couples kissing or even holding hands in public. On the other hand it is totally acceptable and common to see male friends holding hands or arms around one-another - army men in uniform do good impressions of Village People!


• India's National Highways are not for the fainthearted. We read an article in the Goa Herald from 10th Feb entitled "Mandur resident injured in mishap:villagers stone bus" which seemed to better capture the madness of Indian Highways than we could ever describe: "A 35 year old man from Mandur was seriously injured in a mishap involving a van and a bus on the Pamjim Highway on Monday morning. According to witnesses a bus was overtaking another bus when it hit the van. The bus driver and conductor fled the scene. Angered by the accident, the agitated crowd stoned the bus which was parked along the road. Old Goa Police who rushed to the site were helpless to remove the damaged vehicles as they had no crane and had to wait for one to arrive from Panjim. A case of rash and negligent driving has been booked against the bus driver and the conductor."


• Street children playing with a dead rat as a toy.


• School children rummaging around in the litter on their way to school and playing with a hypodermic needle they found.
• The vagaries of Indian bureacracy that meant I had to hide behind a wall while a total stranger bought kerosene for our stove, even though it was completely obvious that it was for me.

4500 - 5400 miles: Lahore to Mumbai

We had the shits within 24hrs of being in the city but we had a great time in Lahore and stayed a week. A city of 7 million people, there was no electricity or water for half the time, it was horrendously polluted, so much so that at times it felt hard to breathe and I developed a painful sore throat. Everywhere there was chaos, noise and filth - we could hardly walk on the pavements for the turds. Women were almost absent from whole districts creating a strange male dominated society with odd scenes such as ice cream parlours full of grown men eating brightly coloured desserts. The bazaars of the old city were still medieval and magical; as we squeezed through the narrow dirty streets, overhung by cables stealing the intermittent electricity, past auto rickshaws, bicycles and motorbikes and thousands of people, the street vendors amongst the filth were chopping off the head of a fish or a chicken, blood spurting onto passers-by.

The handful of travellers in the city were staying at the Regale Inn, amongst them several other cyclists and we enjoyed swapping tales of stone throwing children, unpaved roads and scary dogs. The Regale also takes guests to see sufi drumming, dancing and worship on Thursday nights - which consists of well over 1,000 Pakistani men and boys literally crammed into the compound of a famous sufi's mausoleum and getting completely stoned out of their heads on cannabis while two brothers drummed fantastically for hours on huge drums hung around their necks. For our own protection we were seated in an alcove of the shrine to witness what was one of the most otherworldly events I have seen in my life.

We left the city via the Grand Trunk Road which was lined on both sides with thousands of goats, sheep, cows and camels for several miles. Many of the animals were painted or decorated and canvas covers had been temporarily erected to give them shade. It was an incredible spectacle that seemed like it had been played out for centuries - animals being sold for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, when they would be slaughtered to commemorate the prophet Ibrahim's readiness to obey God, even to the point of sacrificing his son.

It was only 20 miles to the India/Pakistan border and we followed in Michael Palin's Himalaya series footsteps and stayed the night to watch the famous Wagah Border closing ceremony which was great fun - and with added spice as the two countries fronted up following the Mumbai terror attacks. We cheered for Pakistan - although we had only been there a short while we thought the country was an amazing experience and were it not for the security situation we would have loved to have spent more time there.

Our first taste of Indian bureaucracy was the two hours of form filling for endless customs and immigration officers to get into the country - though none of our bags was even looked at. It was another easy 20 miles to Amritsar. We had left the muslim world after four months and the head caps and white shalwar khameez of the Pakistanis gave way to the brightly coloured turbans and saris of the Sikhs. We visited the famous Golden Temple several days in a row it was such a beautiful, peaceful and fascinating place, thronged with thousands of Sikh pilgrims. Like most Indian cities Amritsar was dirty, noisy and polluted and in addition a power shortage means no electricity during the day so businesses were running petrol powered generators adding to the din. Still nursing our Lahore colds we pedalled south out of the city through the chaotic Indian "wacky racers" traffic of rickshaws, bicycles, motorbikes, autorickshaws, cars, trucks, carts, cows, dogs and pedestrians all going in all directions at the same time - it was an amazing sensual overload - and out into the paddy fields of the Punjab.


Something I hadn't considered before we set off was that as the world around us has slowly become more exotic so we have become more exotic to the world around us. We set out to see the world, we hadn't counted on the world wanting to see us! It seems that cycle tourists are fairly rare outside Europe so we have become used to curious people staring, waving or yelling at us, but I don't think anything could have prepared us for our first week in rural India.

Every time we stopped in a village or town we drew crowds of males who just stood staring at us, there were rarely less than 20 people, sometimes over 50. (The women and girls were too busy cooking, cleaning, washing, collecting and carrying huge loads of firewood on their heads, collecting water, working in the fields, on construction sites or at crafts and bearing, having and rearing countless children). The crowds would stand motionless watching us do whatever inane thing we were doing - having a drink, buying some food, eating a snack - and no-one spoke english or was too shy to try. It was unnerving and freaked me out. There were times when people were running towards us before we had even come to a stop so we changed our minds and kept cycling. Even on the move we couldn't escape them - Indians would be pulling up alongside on motorbikes or in cars, even a school bus full of children to stare at the James & Tracey freak show (i will admit that we probably do look a bit ridiculous compared to our surroundings).


We did get some amusement from Indian cyclists though. As we passed swiftly along we would overtake the local cyclists pootling along on their rusting, black steel, no gear Hero bicycles. A few minutes later we would start to hear squeaking/creaking noises that indicated an Indian bicycle in hot pursuit. The squeaking would get closer and closer until they were in our slipstream where they would remain noisily until they neared their destination, whereupon they would cycle past, pedalling madly, for a close look before turning off, sweating and panting with a big smile on their faces. It was a scene that was played out in exactly the same way countless times every day - I confess that in moments of boredom we sometimes sped up to amuse ourselves.


I am not exaggerating when I say that Indians were taking more photos of us than we were of India (the curse of mobile phones). It was like being famous but with none of the perks. Tracey though has been the unwitting star of the show - something made clear when a motorbike passed us and pulled over ahead to get another look; Tracey cycled past them and they drove off after her for another look before I even got there!

It was a flat landscape of bright green paddyfields and tree lined roads. The winter sun was warm and the skies were blue. It would have been tranquil and perfect cycling were it not for "horn ok please". One of the most infuriating Indian idiosyncrasies is that no-one uses rear view mirrors (and in fairness camel/cow carts don't have any) so if you want to overtake you have to blast your horn so that the vehicle/cycle/cart/pedestrian/stray cow you are about to pass does not swerve out and cause an accident (all Indian trucks have "horn ok please" painted on the rear of their trailers). In short, every vehicle that passes us blasts their horn at close range. In cities the din of horns is almost unbearable and we have noticed autorickshaw drivers wearing earplugs! We quickly went in search of the quietest roads we could find.


The Punjab countryside was intensively farmed and the only uncultivated land was housing some of India's millions so we slept mainly in cheap hotels in small towns but often felt imprisoned, too tired to leave the hotel and face the curious staring crowds. After 5 days of flat, flat, flat we reached a slight undulation which was the start of the Great Thar Desert and the paddyfields and Sikhs were replaced by desert scrub, camel carts and the wrapped turbans and superb moustaches of Rajastan. We were sad to leave the Sikhs - I have always found them to be welcoming, honest and dignified people.

We camped in the desert and woke to a thunderstorm that turned into a day of constant rain. Cycling along with plastic bags over my shoes I contemplated how it could be that in a desert in the dry season, where it barely rains in the monsoon it was pissing down. After 50 miles we arrived very wet, in the small town of Lunkaransar where the unpaved roads had turned to slippery mud and the power was out. There was only one place to stay and on the day before my birthday I found myself squashing cockroaches in the bathroom by torchlight. Next day the rain had stopped and with a backwind we cycled a swift 43 miles to Bikaner and for a birthday treat Tracey paid for a night of luxury and we stayed in the maharajah of Bikaner's palace - it was bliss.


We decided to do the next leg of our journey by camel. Our bikes were strapped onto the back of a camel cart which contained all of our bags, 7 days supplies of food for us, 3 camel men and 3 camels and the cooking and camping gear. Tracey and I rode a camel each and the third camel pulled the cart which the camel men sat on. It was a fantastic journey and one of the highlights of the trip so far. After the noise of the road it was so peaceful to plod slowly along through the silence of the desert, the only sounds the bells on the camels, occasional bird song and the chatter of the camel men. For us it was also luxury - the men cooked us tasty breakfast, lunch and dinner, we had an A-frame tent with clean sheets and lots of blankets for the cold nights and a bowl of warm water for washing each morning. We were served lunch on a blanket in the shade of a tree and at camp there were stools, a table and a campfire to keep warm while watching the fantastic starry sky. It would have been romantic were it not for the constant farting of the camels!


We passed through small villages and lonely farmsteads of round mud buildings with thatched roofs and there was no electricity or running water, brightly dressed women carried firewood and water on their heads - it was a landscape that you would associate more with Africa than India. We rode through fields of harvested millet, desert scrub and sand dunes with herds of small wild antelope and the occasional indian fox. Many of the tribal people were living on the margins of what desert land can support, though in a few places irrigation brought splashes of bright green. We camped wherever we happened to be when the sun started to set.

For two people with saddle sore arses it was a questionable venture to set out on and I got a bum blister on day one. We were sore for a few days but eventually got the hang of it. On Christmas Day we got the camel men to decorate the camels with tinsel we had brought with us and we had veg curry, lentil dahl, rice and chapatis for Xmas lunch. We got quite attached to the camels and got to know their different personalities - we named them Binky (the female and Tracey's ride), Sniffy (so called for his ability to smell out female camels and inflate his mouth palette as his mating call) and Lippy (after his inability to control his drooping lower lip). Each of the camels was owned and looked after by each of the camel men. We were both sad to reach the village of Keechin after a week and to have to say goodbye - we also felt a little bad that it would take the camel men 5 days to travel back to their families in Bikaner.


We cycled a short distance to the town of Phalodi and gave ourselves a Christmas treat and stayed in the Lal Niwas Heritage Hotel, a beautiful restored haveli (old decorative merchants house). It took us 2 days to cycle to the blue city of Jodphur. Village children begged for "one pen" as we passed, signalling that we had reached the touristy part of Rajastan. We really liked Jodphur. It has an amazing fort and palace perched on a clifflike plateaux above the city, whose buildings are painted pale blue and langur monkeys leap from roof to roof across the narrow streets of the old city. Our guesthouse had a rooftop terrace with a fantastic 360 degree view of the city. We were also really thrilled to meet up again with Annette, Joerg and Elmar, three Germans travelling from Munich to Sydney by motorbike - who we had first met in Turkey. We spent a great New Year with them at an Indian NYE party and Tracey and Annette got dressed up like the locals. Check out the photos on their blog http://weltreise-aje-der-weg-ist-das-ziel.blogspot.com/2009/01/bollywood-silvester-bollywood-new-years.html


From Jodphur we made a 200 mile detour east by bus to Jaipur to collect a parcel my parents had sent there and to have a look around for a few days, though I had been there on holiday 5 years before. The highlight was a trip to a huge wedding cake styled cinema to see the latest Bollywood release which was a fantastic cultural experience. I couldn't help smiling at the din made by the audience - Indians must be the loudest people on the planet.

We returned to Jodphur and cycled south. Having been cycling East - South-East almost continuously since leaving home we found cycling south in India into the low winter sun somewhat dazzling and also resulted in a silly sunglasses tan. Tracey bought a sun-visor to help but now everyone thinks we are Americans.

We were still in a dry desert-like landscape and I enjoyed seeing wild antelope, black buck and blue bull roaming in crop fields alongside domesticated animals. In this area they are protected by the Bishnoi tribe who have strong environmental principles - I couldn't help but think that here was a model for conservation in an increasingly crowded world.


The tyres on our cycles are designed by Schwalbe to be puncture resistant - Tracey's pass a "drawing pin test". We have not found them to be exactly puncture proof but in 5,000 miles across some rough terrain we had only 5 punctures between us. We decided to camp in some desert scrub one night and by the time we had pushed the bikes to a secluded spot the acacia thorns had given us 13 punctures that we spent the whole evening fixing - and we had to carry the bikes back to the road next morning.

We were cycling along small rural roads which at times were glorious and at others real ass breakers - Indian back roads are easily the worst surfaced of the trip so far. Our main problem though is that all the road signs are in hindi but our map is in english (it is a road atlas that the editor - the Surveyor General of India - admits contains many errors and he invites users to contact him with corrections. If we were to do so we would need to redraw most of the atlas!) - so at every junction we have to wait to flag someone down to ask them directions. As hardly anyone in rural India speaks english and we no hindi this in itself is not always straightforwards. It is also compounded by Indians preference to have a wild guess rather than to say they don't know. So we have to ask several people to make sure and we are often told different things - at times it feels like one of those game shows where 3 people tell a story and the contestant has to guess who is telling the truth. We get lost and regularly find ourselves cycling on roads that do not exist on our map, not really knowing where exactly we are - but we get there in the end and have a great time in the process.
After 4 days cycling from Jodphur we were ready to make our assault on Mount Abu, only the road up from the west on our map was in fact a pilgrims footpath up the side of a mountain so we had to detour 25 miles and then start the 14 mile ascent. The scenery was fantastic as the forested mountain rises straight out of the plain. In the evening light troupes of monkeys lined the road watching us sweating our way slowly to the top. Unfortunately we ran out of daylight and legs before we reached the summit and hitched a ride in the back of a truck for the final 3 miles to the hillstation resort at 1200 metres above sea level. It was really cold at night and even in our room we slept in woolly hat and longjohns. Two days later the descent down the mountain was great fun and we rode nearly 80 miles before finally finding a scrap of uncultivated field to pitch our tent in as it got dark. As the full-moon rose in the fields all around us Hindus started tuneless chanting, singing, banging and periodically howling at the moon - a pagan din that went on all night and terrified Tracey. If the Great Wall of China is visible from space then astronauts must be able to hear the billion people of India!

The following day we crossed into the "dry" and largely muslim state of Gujarat. The landscape flattened into desert which would eventually become an enormous salt plain - the Rann of Kutch, where we went on safari to see Asiatic Wild Ass and flamingos. Almost overnight we left the cool winter of northern Indian and met the heat and humidity of the south. At this point my friend Sean's imminent arrival in Mumbai on business interrupted our plans and we cut short our tour of Gujarat and made our way to Ahmenabad. While wandering a bazaar in the muslim part of this city I noticed Black Kites swooping down into a dingy narrow lane. The filthy, pungent street was awash with live and dead poultry and the various parts of in various states of decomposition in dirty wicker baskets for sale. Vendors were periodically tossing unwanted parts, such as chicken heads, into the street and the large birds of prey were flying down and picking them up. I got my camera out to try and capture the scene and a chicken-head thrower tried to help by tossing heads into the street near me - but the birds were too close and fast to photograph. The chicken-head thrower though had realised that if he threw the heads by my feet I was nearly knocked down by the birds and thus I found myself playing a bizarre game of kick the chicken heads as he lobbed them at me like a tennis ball machine and Black Kites swooped around my feet.

From Ahmenabad we caught the Gujarat Mail overnight train 300 miles south to Mumbai to meet Sean as we could not have cycled the distance in time. Miraculously our bikes emerged largely unscathed from the luggage coach and we ventured out into the muggy dawn of this city of 22 million people. I had imagined Mumbai to be like a nightmare union of Tehran, Lahore and Sau Paulo but as we cycled down the clean, wide, tree lined streets with civilised traffic I could not have been more wrong. The British left a legacy of colonial era buildings in the city but it seemed that their values of order have also persisted and it hardly felt like the India we had been cycling through. It was also surprisingly touristy given that there are not many sights.


It was really lovely to see a close friend after 8 months and Sean's legendary hospitality was in such contrast to our budget travel that I was almost overwhelmed eating cheddar cheese and Tracey was grinning from ear-to-ear at the sight of a dozen mini wine bottles.

It was the week-end of the Indian release of Slumdog Millionaire and the media was full of commentary on the movie and what it said about Mumbai and India, which made a change from the constant coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks and their aftermath, which the city seems as yet to come to terms with.

We said a sad farewell to Sean and laden down with goodies and new kit we caught the ferry from Mumbai harbour, 15 miles south across the bay to the village of Mandwa and the start of the Konkan Coast. The sun glistened on the Arabian Sea, it was hot and humid and there was not a cloud in the tropical sky.