It certainly has been some time hasn’t it?

Last time we spoke, we had left your two intrepid explorers at the Incheon airport, in Korea, boarding separate flights into the unknown. Well, dear reader, much has happened since then. The unknown has blended with the known, and most importantly, AsiaWheeling has reconvened and is preparing for re-entry.

Yes, much has occurred.

• Scott has returned to the US
• AsiaWheeling.com has been redesigned (please let us know what you think in the comments)
• the 2008 content has been digitally remastered
• we have a new gallery
• we’ve formed a number of valuable partnerships
• we’ve hammered out the new itinerary
• the new and improved AsiaWheeling Board of High and Esteemed Advisors is gathered
• launch of the AsiaWheeling Executive Development Program
• and finally, I am pleased to announce, the first ticket of AsiaWheeling 2010 has been purchased, from San Francisco California to Jakarta Indonesia, setting our departure date quite firmly at Jan. 4th in the year of our lord, Barack Obama, two thousand and ten.

(more…)

Riding with a team of gentlemen (or ladies) on bicycles in a new city can prove hectic. On AsiaWheeling, the obstacles in these cities multiply: unpaved roads, conflicting street signs, vehicles ranging from fellow bicyclists to gigantic fuming buses, livestock, rickshaws, and open sewers. Often, we are without map or compass to sharpen our innate sense of direction and stimulate interactions with the local population.

So what keeps us unified and organized so that we may surmount the intricacies of the many metropolitan villages? The Wheeling Field Commands.

As you may be aware, the rider frontmost in the pack and closest to the flow of traffic is christened the bishop, or symply the bish. The bishop issues the field commands to the rest of the formation, including both formational and directional commands. The rider bringing up the tail is known as the anti-bishop. All field commands must be both verbally acknowledged and signaled with the hands. These field commands are as follows.

Directional Commands

Command: Rauschenberg
Abbreviation: “Rausch”
Illustration:

Required Execution: (1) Turn right at the next possible intersection. (2) May also be used as a signifier for right side.
Example Use Case: “A rauchenberg here will get us to the animal market” or “Peep this industrial wasteland on your rausch”

Command: Liechtenstein
Abbreviation: “Liecht”
Illustration:

Required Execution: (1) Turn left at the next possible intersection (2) Directionally, as used like rauschenberg above
Use Case Example: “Let’s take a liechtenstein to navigate this construction zone” or ” Lets pass this guy on his leicht”

Command: Gerade Aus
Abbreviation: “Gerade”
Illustration:

Required Execution: Continue wheeling in the forward direction. No turns should be made at the approaching intersection. Synonymous to “straight.”
Use Case Example: “The light’s still green, we’d better gerade aus”

Command: Waypoint

Illustration:

Required Execution: To stop your bicycle at a point of interest in order to gawk at a specific object or otherwise dismount for pedestrian activity. Most commonly used here at AsiaWheeling Global to purchase bottles of water from street vendors.
Example Use Case: “There’s a market selling eels and crustaceans to our liecht. Waypoint! Waypoint!”

Command: Highway Speeds

Illustration:

Required Execution: To pedal at maximum velocity for a sustained period of time.
Example Use Case: “We’re entering a raging tunnel bridge. Highway Speeds!”

Posture: Rough Rider

Illustration:

Required Execution: To grip the handlebars and remove one’s behind from the bicycle seat to hover above the back tire. In the case that the back tire has a fender, one rough riding may sit on the fender and pedal.

Example Use Case: “Low hanging trees. Better get down. Rough Rider!”

Posture: Forward Position

Illustration:

Required Execution: To grip the handlebars and place feet firmly on the pedals. Stand up and arch chest forward with chin up. Thighs should touch handlebars or be as near as possible. Field of vision should exclude any parts of one’s bicycle.
Example Use Case: “I can’t believe we’re wheeling so hard in Tienanmen Square. Forward Position!”

We hope you find this post helpful and that you may utilize it in your daily lives. Remember: Signal your intent and wheel safe.

Attention: For maximum viewing pleasure, listen to this song while reading the post below.

Then we were wheeling. And, dear reader, Kashgar is a great city for wheeling. It felt good to move after being cooped in the sweaty train. We, however, had been deprived of electricity during that journey, and so we must regret to inform you, there is no GPS data for this first day of wheeling in Kashgar. But trust us, we wheeled hard. Our first stop was a local Uighur breakfast joint, where we got a bowl of pilaf, the standard Uiger breakfast dish, and a piece of nan.

The nang was hard and old. Thus continued our quest for the perfect nang. The lore described it as a delicacy, but we had as of yet only had the old hardened version. Nourished none the less we hit the road.

We stopped at a ridiculous public exercise park, with bizarre painted metal equipment, all in various states of disrepair, some with dangerous metal shards protruding. After a brief test of the machinery (I give it a C-), we wheeled by the location of tomorrow’s giant sunday market, past mosques and blocky soviet buildings, up the only hill in town. The road was lined with endless melon sellers. Each had a giant pile of the fruit, shaded with a mixture of beer umbrellas and rigged together tarps.

Over the hill, we wheeled on to visit a local Uighur housing development. It consisted of large concrete buildings, with playgrounds in between. Not bad at all, Kashgar. We stopped to pick up some water at a local shop, where they spoke no english and no chinese. The proprietor, who may be well described as a large  white guy, asked to take my bike for a test spin. He spoke in approving tones, riding around the road outside his shop, and lifting a foot off the ground, then dropping it. He approved of the bounce hight to noise ratio.

While our shop-keep administered tests to the cycle, other members of the community began to appear from the woodwork. Soon a crowd had formed. We gave then our business cards and a couple of asiawheeling stickers, though they could read none of it. Then the shop-keep began entering negotiations with your humble correspondents, wanting to purchase the bike. We were able to communicate that it was a rental. He asked how much we were paying, and sputtered in laughter. And with our bottles of water, tube of ridiculous toothpaste made in Dubai, and a tip of the Panama hat, we struck forth once again.

We continued to wheel through the expanse of Kashgar. It is not so large a city, and we traversed a good chunk of the downtown section. Everywhere we saw new chinese bank buildings and China mobile shops. And everywhere they were building.

The sun blazed, dust swirled, and women walked around in full muslim garb.

We entered an older part of town where the steel concrete buildings gave wat to mud structures. Stands sold wooden trinkets, nan, and a likely deadly yogurt and ice drink. The sellers of this drink had only 3 or 4 grubby cups, which sat on a wooden board spanning a central a central vat, in which a large and solid chunk of ice bobbed. From time to time they would dump the current cup and refill it and replace it on a wooden plank, hoping to entice people with the freshly sweating cups. Poeple would walk by, pay the man 10 cents, and drink a glass right there and then. A second later, the same glass was refilled and returned to the wooden plank, where it sweated with its brethren.

And the sun blazed. The people of Kashgar lazed in the shade of umbrellas, trees, or whatever they could find to break the sun. They played cards, mahjong, and chinese chess. The more we rode, the more be became certain that Kashgar was a very special and fascinating place. Also, coincidentally, it is a land of Panama hats and two wheeled vehicles. I cannot say that we fit right in. To be honest, everywhere that we rode, we were met with stares, pointing, and not uncommonly laughter, but something felt right about the place, and we seemed to make friends easily there. Bikes and mopeds easily outnumbered cars and trucks, and one did not have to look more than twice before finding an old Uiger fellow, raging along in a savage Panama hat and giant reflective sunglasses. So you, dear reader, will find it no big surprise, that we found ourselves at a stand which sold some of the most raging Panama hats conceivable by the human mind. While I have been quite happy with mine (credit must be given here to Marshall’s), Scott’s (hmm… Target) had proven all too prone to misshaping itself and proved a poor ventilator of the cranium. In short, Scott was in the market for a new one. And buy one he did. Submitted for your approval, Scott’s AsiaWheeling Panama Hat 2.0.

Exhausted from the wheel, we stopped back at the hotel and collapsed. Three or four bottles of water later, we headed to Altun Orda. The interior of the restaurant was even more baroque than the exterior. Everywhere we looked there were layers of hand made complexity: on the walls, the ceiling and the dishes off which we ate. We once again ordered way too much food. We simply asked the waiter for two of the finest vegetable dishes and two of the finest meat dishes. What came was a savage plate of sheep spine meat, 2 kabobs, a chopped lamb dish, a plate of marinated chickpeas, and some of the most succulent eggplant I have ever experienced. “And you want yoghurt right?”, the waiter said in Mandarin. Oh yeah we want yoghurt. Once again I was blown away by the intricate flavors of Uighur food. The yoghurt was a perfect accompaniment, served room temperature with a thick layer of yellow cream on top. We sat on the the third floor of the large restaurant. On the floor below us, a trio of Uighur instrumentalists raged on traditional instruments. After we were well beyond sated, we ventured down for a closer listen. The stuff was great. Much like what accompanies this post.

Once again bursting at the seams, we walked back to the hotel. Back at the Seman, we found a giant red tour bus full of germans. “Rondel Tours,” it said on the side. We wandered over to investigate further. The tour company, we found, offers savage tours through some 50 of the most fascinating parts of the word in a giant red bus. We sat down an were introduced to a couple of retirees: an airplane parts broker from Lufthansa and a film graphics producer. As the sun set, the two regaled us with tales of airplanes and german history until we all knew we had better retire. We had to wake bright and early the next day for more wheeling at the sunday market.

It was once again 5 am in Dali and we were peeling ourselves out of the starchy comfort of our beds. By the time I had pulled open the curtains, Scott too was awake and hard at work assembling some Necafe packets of coffee into hot sticky drinks. At the Dali bus station, we found our assumptions about bus times had been quite wrong and we had awoken too early. Rather than waste time, we quickly set into intense negotiations with one of the many Cab drivers who were already hassling us. Within ten minutes, we were speeding along through the Yunnan countryside and listening to the same music which you, dear reader, were exposed to in the previous post.

As we drove and listened, our driver warmed quickly to the music, and in the end was singing along. Also, curiously, the more time we spent with the fellow, the more he grew to resemble Woody Allen. We’ll let you be the judge.

When we reached Lijiang, we gave the disc to our driver as a parting gift, and set out into the old city. Then we about faced and returned to the main road while the driver returned to bring the GPS device which Scott had left in the car (a vital component of AsiaWheeling). Again we set forth.

The Lijiang old city was quite striking, with sloping clay roofs and seemingly endless meandering streets. Our hotel was once again, alarmingly cheap and pleasant. This hotel, however, took the cake, with large shuttered windows, which could be opened wide, onto a little private courtyard, meticulously clean rooms, friendly staff, and dirt cheap laundry service.

First thing is, as always dear reader, first. Bicycles. (more…)

I awoke still somewhat under the influence of the anti-anxiety medication I had taken to help me sleep on the bus. It was 5am in Dali and we were being told to vacate. Feeling goofy and unfazed, I donned my pack hopped in a cab. I woke up 6 hours later in a very nice hotel that Jie had gotten for us at the tremendously low rate of 50RMB ($7) per night. We locked our luggage in the room, and took to the streets, a savage Chinese meal for breakfast and a can of Nescafe later, we were on a bus to the old city of Dali.

(more…)

I awoke, still feeling the last sniffly bits of the cold which had followed on the coattails of the E-Coli. It was a sunny morning in Kun Ming. Jie and Scott were already diving into putting the day together. We took the elevator downstairs (past the mysterious brothel floor) and met up with a fine gentleman who explained to us that he ran the only licensed bicycle rental shop in all of Kun Ming. Whatever this meant, we expressed gratitude and interest in cycles, and followed him on foot to the city gymnasium complex. It was covered with Beijing 2008 olympic paraphernalia, as Scott assured me would be the norm all over china.

We stood and frowned at the cluster of bicycles presented to us. They were very new, all tiny, and most were mountain/stunt jobs, with funny attachments, mudflaps, and no bell. Shrugging these drawbacks away, we climbed aboard and were off. The things were very small. Good for stunts and going over curbs, hard on the knees.

(more…)

With Scott back to life, and one day left in Varanasi, we realized we were well over-due for some bicycles. On recommendation of an American girl working at the ashram, we headed to the restaurant at the Haifa hotel, towards the city center. We caught two bike rickshaws (the vessels themselves are too small for even our conniving minds to squeeze 3 humans aboard) and off we went. The city was already well underway towards its many mysterious tasks. And the streets simply boiled with fascinating activity.

At the hotel Haifa, Scott and I decided to split one order of the “American Breakfast” and one “Indian Breakfast.” Indian breakfast was a healthy stack of savory lentil pancakes, stuffed with spiced potato and a bowl of unsweetened yogurt to dip them in. The American breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast, and oatmeal. The food was quite tasty, but arrived one dish at a time and over an excruciatingly long period of time. Made all the more confounding by our being one of only two occupied tables in the restaurant. Two hours later we stepped out into the burning heat of the day, and strode next door to the bicycle shop.

The proprietors were a little wary of us at first, demanding weighty deposits and mysterious unwritten contractual obligations. By the end of the discussion, Nikhil secured a fair deal and we were off. Little did we know, Varanasi is great for wheeling. As intense as the streets were, Nikhil deftly took bishop and lead us through the madness, Scott and I ringing our bells and he simply shouting his presence as we barreled through the tumult. We visited first a great red temple, into which only Nikhil was allowed. He purchased a coconut at a nearby shop an went in while Scott and I waited. After very little time he emerged with the coconut split in half and a decent quantity of sticky red powder, which he used to place a dot on each of our heads. The same man who sold the coconut cut it into pieces for us to eat later.

We then wheeled to the Banaras Hindu University campus, in the center of which there was another temple. This one we were able to enter. We dropped our shoes off at a station and walked barefoot on the hot stone floor. At the entrance to the interior of the temple was a great bell, which hung over the threshold. Nikhil invited us to ring it as we walked in. The act was strangely satisfying, loud and low, echoing for some time throughout the temple. Outside the temple, lassi was for sale, served in clay bowls, made by people in the surrounding villages, which were simply discarded after consuming the sweet yoghurt inside. We were wary, fearing for out intestines. Nikhil, though, bought one and drank deeply, finishing the bowl and commenting of how very tasty it was.

After some more wheeling around the vast campus, noting the marked focus on agricultural sciences and technology, we exited the gate of the university and took off back across Varanasi to another temple. As we rode things became more and more hectic, and soon the pedestrian traffic was so dense, that we had to walk our bikes. We stopped at the main section of ghats, and paid some gentleman to park our bicycles in a large expanse of crumbling concrete. We then ventured down the steps of the ghat. The steps were filled with people and we reached a landing half way down where Nikhil said “I am going to get a head massage; I hear they are very good here.” So with Nikhil getting the rubdown. Scott and I found no excuse not do the same.

The man who was massaging me was not terrific. –he was more just rubbing his hands all over me, than really digging into my muscles– but he did have some tricks up his sleeve. The most interesting of these was one in which I closed my eyes and he began to vigorously shake the skin of my face around, causing the sunlight that shown trough my eyelids to flash dramatically and produce some quite beautiful colors. Also, he went to town, as they say, on my scalp, prodding and rubbing my scull in a most delightful way. Some of the delight was diminished when he started softly whispering in my ear bargaining for the reimbursement.

But this minor displeasure was completely forgotten when I look up to see that an Indian television crew was videotaping us. After the massages were done the fellow from the crew moved in closer and explained to us that they were in a new Indian station, and set up to interview both Scott and I regarding our experiences in Varanasi. **Stay tuned oh valued reader for we will post this footage as soon as we can get our hand on it.** Then we were off towards what, Nikhil explained to us, is one of the most holy places in all of the Hindu faith. In order to get in the the temple we had to present our passport photocopies, and swear that we had no beef with the Hindu faith.

My passport copy had become very wet with sweat and almost unintelligible during the wheel, but it seemed no problem (with Nikhil fighting on our side) and after some slight paperwork we took off our shoes, rented a locker from a stand outside the gates to stow our our cameras and anything else which could possibly be used to taint the experience of the temple, and were admitted to the first round of frisking and metal detectors. The savage security which abounded at this place was due to the threat of terrorism (how dare I assume that islamic terrorism was a unique American problem) and necessitated redundant screening. Only some months before our visit there had been bombings of temples and tourist locations.
Security was high. But we got through, and soon we were inside the temple. There were monkeys leaping from spire to spire and people everywhere. In order to reach the first holy place one had to fight through a dense crowd of sweaty people. At some point Nikhil placed a clutch of leaves in my hand and I squeezed into the front.People were placing their offerings (in my case the leaves) into a pool. There was a holy man sitting nearby arranging the flowers and leaves and every once in a while acknowledging a particularly big offering of cash money with a sage glance. I placed my leaves into the pool and leaned over the railing to touch the rock in the center (since this seemed to be the next step). As soon as I had done that, I was spit from the crowd like a watermelon seed.
We proceeded through the temple, observing similar rituals taking place all around us.The temple itself was covered with ornate engravings and the floors were cool marble, glistening with what may very possibly have been monkey dung. All around us there were workers building some additional structure onto the exterior of the temple. At some point, we became attached to a fellow who either was asked by Nikhil of or elected himself our guide throughout the temple process relevant specifically for Brahmans. Through a gaping hole in the ceiling (which may have also been a skylight), we could see an adjacent mosque. This new guide of ours explained that at one point this spot fell into strict Muslim rule. And part of the temple was leveled to build this mosque.
We were then lead to another holy place where we we gave put a few hundred rupees in a pile and we asked to repeat a prayer, would by word, then lean over and ouch our heads to the golden toe of a statue. We had just finished this and were still staring dumbfounded at the intricacy and richness of the environment around us, when our guide exclaimed, now we must go the the most holy place of all. With that, Nikhil took my hand and I took Scott’s and we began to rush in this great daisy chain through the crowd, half running, barefoot down the narrow ally to another entrance. Inside the floor was quite wet with a brown mush, discernible amidst the slime were very discrete piles of monkey dung. I barely noticed it at the time, though, so entranced was I with the surroundings.
At the direction of our guide, we sat down with a holy man, crossed legged in a tiny, well lit stone room in this section of the temple. In exchange for some offerings which Nikhil provided, and some pretty hefty monetary donations extracted from Scott and myself, the holy man walked us through the ceremony, allowing Scott and I to repeat prayers after him, and giving out us a mark of bright dust on our foreheads. We were given each a dense flower blossom and told to take it to a wall, and with it write the names of our family by smudging the yellow blossom on the stone wall. I did so, and was then directed to another locus, at which I was taught (by yet another fellow) a prayer to be said following the names of family which i wanted to send good fortune and love to. I did this for some time, marveling at the simplistic gravity of the ritual, finding it very hard not to tear up, before I was once again sent forth towards a woman in a booth where I was to take my now quite disheveled flower.
Before I could give this to her though, I was told by another fellow to return to the room of the fellow who had taught us the first blessing, again I repeated some more prayers in hindi and was asked for 1000 rupees. I had no such bills in my wallet, but gave 100 of the 150 rupees which remained. Then it was discovered that I still had the disheveled flower in my had and I was whisked back to the woman who’s business it was dealing with those. She also asked me for some rupees and I put my last 50 in her pile. She gave me a ladleful of water, much like the one Nikhil had partaken of so many time on the day before, and, under the scrutiny of all these holy people, I slurped a little bit the brushed the rest into my hair the way Nikhil had done.By this point I had broken from Nikhil and Scott and I slid back across the drizzles brown floor of the room to where they were gathered around yet another statue of a god. They had just finished offering some foods to the god and I was handed a little puffed grain ball, which I then ate and was still chewing on as we left the temple and put our bare feet on dry pavement once again.
Sadly, it was nearing time for us to end our time with Nikhil, and for us to leave this strange and wonderful city. Back at the ashram we packed and paced around the room, feeling the voltage of the eminent departure. Some 20 minutes before he needed to leave, I was looking through our silk purchases with Nikhil and we discovered, despite drastic searching through the room and our luggage, that the filthy silk merchant had simply stiffed Nikhil on one of the silks that he bought! The garment, though paid for in full, was no where to be found. So, dear reader, let this be a lesson to you as well as us. Varanasi is a great place to visit, but keep your wits about you. Even a chief snake charmer can be bitten…

After our splendid lunch at the Indiana Multicuisine Restaurant, we walked back to our jalopies, feeling quite sated and a bit shaggy around the ears. In order to rectify the latter, we struck up a conversation with a cab driver who called himself Mr. Bom. Mr. Bom wore an immaculate white uniform and spoke very good English. When he asked us if we would by any chance be needing his services, we were unsure, but we asked for his number. “No mobile” he said, “I had once a cell phone, but I was drinking too much whiskey one night and smashed it.” “Like, in a rage?” I pantomimed, “Oh, yes, too much whiskey very risky” he replied.

With that sage wisdom under our belts, we inquired as to the location of a fine hair cutting establishment in a not to distant place. He instantly gave us directions to the very shop where he himself got his fine looking hairs cut. “30 rupees for a cut, 10 for a shave. Tell him Mr. Bom has sent you. The man’s name is Kalwa.” Great. We took off.

When we arrived, we called forth Mr. Kalwa and one of the two men inside the little shop perked up. Do you know Mr. Bom the driver? Heads nodded. So in we went and down I sat. Soon a little crowd had formed outside the restaurant, consisting of locals who wondered why these two white fellows in panama hats where getting their hair cut at the local dive barber. It was after a sheet had already been elaborately wrapped around my body and tied at the neck that Scott turned to me from his barber seat and said, “did you ask the price?”

“100 rupees.” I tried to communicate once again Mr. Bom and the good price, but now, it seemed, the two hair cutters knew no Mr. Bom and were very confused. We decided that $2.20 for a haircut and $0.83 for a shave was only mild highway robbery. Lay on McDuff.

The crowd of locals grew larger as the haircuts proceeded to expertly administered straight razor shaves. We parted the crowd and left the haircutter , remounting the rusted corpses that were our bikes and rode off into the Agra heat, though it was not quite as bad, with freshly sculpted UP hairdos, and baby bottom faces, burning with aftershave from a bottle advertising the “ax effect” (no charge).

Feeling cheerful and relaxed, fueled by our extended stay on the Grand Trunk express, we exited the train to find ourselves surrounded once again by a crowd of people, offering all manner of goods and services to us, not the least of which was the opportunity to provide them with handouts. We quickly found ourselves walking next to a fellow who wished to drive us to our hotel. Though we had not yet determined where we were staying (despite much hacking at the internet cafe in Chennai, and much calling from our stateroom on the Grand Trunk), we felt optimistic about the fellow and decided to trust him. We haggled a little with him, got what we thought was a decent price (only 5 or 6 times what an Indian would pay) and we were off. We looked though our notebook and chose a place. The driver informed us this as a bad place. So we chose another. he seemed to like that one much better, and in no time, a tall man in a turban was opening the door to the Hotel Amar for us.

The joint looked clean and there was a fellow savagely raging away on the internet right in the lobby. So we asked to see a room. 3500 rupees, the fellow said. We frowned and gesticulated about the expense, so the man (who later turned out to be the manager) asked us how much we wanted to pay. We said 2000.

“You are my first customers of the day… so you may have it for 2000.”

This meant two things: 1: We could probably have gotten the room for 1000, and 2: Things were going just fine.

First thing is, as always, first: bicycles. So we consulted the scanned copies of lonely planet that we had obtained through inter-library loan, and set out for Raja bicycle shop. During the walk we were averaging one solicitation for a ride on a bicycle rickshaw for every 15 steps, all manner of traffic –car, bus, sheep, bicycle, camel, bullock cart. But we strode unfazed. Why were we so cool headed? Were we beginning to develop the savage asiawheeling mind like water? Were we becoming the masters of our own destiny. Or had we forgotten to take the Malarone pills? As you, dear reader, have no doubt guessed, it was the latter.

We arrived at Raja Bicycles and found it to be quite literally a crumbling hole in the wall. Inside which we found Mr. Raja himself, presiding over a pile of rusting bicycles. We (admittedly weakly) tried to haggle, but Raja stood his ground. So 100 rupees later Raja had pulled a rusted and dilapidated hunk from the pile. This bicycle’s bent frame was held together with bits of string and was it first so malformed that the wheel would not even spin. Then, before our very eyes, he produced a giant wrench. He did not use it for wrenching, rather he set upon the bike with a furious beating, attempting to align the wheel and pounding the heads of the breaks back into position. Before 2 minutes had passed, he had produced two somewhat ridable bicycles. They, however, had no bells. Bells had been so vital a part of our previous riding that we were instantly uncomfortable. Also, as we rode away on the bikes, it became obvious that the fixes that had just been performed were of the most temporary nature.

On our way back to the hotel for that so pleasantly forgotten Malarone, we passed a stand selling water, cigarettes, and little packaged snacks. The owner was a vast man in an impressive black garb. His outfit, however, was only a dim glimmer in relation to his great beard, which was flecked with red hairs. He apparently took a liking to us and asked us to have a seat with him on the plastic chairs outside the stand. We sat and drank water while he smoked bidis. We spoke of AsiaWheeling, the disrepair bicycles we had just purchased and he even brought up Barack Obama. Perhaps the first time on this trip that I have even considered the notion of a small world.

With bellies full of Malarone, we remounted our medium-faithful steads and took off for the Taj Mahal. The streets of Agra were quite different than any we had yet navigated. Agra is in the province of Uttar Pradesh, and being a poorer province than where we were in the south, the ratio of cars and auto-rickshaws to beasts of burden: camels, bullocks, horses, and humans straining away on bicycle rickshaws had increased sharply. As we rode to the Taj Mahal on our crumbling bicycles, we passed one bicycle rickshaw after another, and while we had been offered rides (for 10 or 20 cents) it became clear that giving tourists rides was unfortunately not the main focus of these fellows careers. Most had been hired by other Indians to carry obscene loads of metal, towers of water bottles, or clusters of 3-4 50 gallon oil drums.

Since pollution from cars and auto-rickshaws has begun to dull the white marble of the Taj, we soon crossed a barrier past which nothing but cycles, camels etc. were allowed. We rolled to the parking lot where we were given conflicting instructions and a number of slips of paper. In the end we gave some person 10 rupees to stop hassling us and locked the bikes to a metal fence.

The Taj Mahal was, of course, amazing. I’ll let the pictures speak.

After hours of ambling through the Taj, Scott in particular was boiling over. So we exited the palace and sat outside a water kiosk, collecting ourselves. On the advice of our bearded friend at the water and cigarette stall, we set out on the cycles once again, all manner of traffic whirring abound us, in search of a restaurant called Indiana. The front rim of Scott’s Cycle, which had to this point been held on via an ancient length of what appeared to be a twisted and woven plastic sack, broke free of it’s proper place and began to ride gratingly on the front tire. We stopped to fix it with a length of garbage that we found in the street. Immediately we were surrounded by beggar children vying to give us a hand with the repair. As Scott fumbled with the bit of garbage, 3 more hands with alternative bits of garbage appeared on either side. Finally, we relinquished the task and gave the fellow 10 rupees. This act brought on an onslaught of solicitations, more vehement than any we had yet endured. Despite the cold pit which had replaced my stomach, I climbed back on my cycle and attempted to coax motion from its sickly frame.

Exhausted and fully aware of the fact that we had not eaten all day, but had walked around in the glaring sun for 5 hours, we wheeled our jalopies into the parking lot of the Indiana, hidden at the end of Fatehabad road, behind the hotel Ratan Deep (in case you are ever in Agra). We parked our bikes outside and immediately ran into the manager, just leaving. He said he thought we were perhaps the first customers he had ever had who arrived on bicycles. And such tattered bicycles.

We grinned and entered the restaurant. The it was cool and dim, smelled great. We were seated at a table which was so high that our lamb and cheese tandoori, palak paneer, and grahm rotis came, they hovered a mere foot under may face (the better to eat you with my dear…). When we got the check there was a 20% discount: “for arriving on cycles it said.” Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking dear reader: a more foolish man would think the deck was full of aces…

We awoke this morning earlier than we would have liked after a charming evening with two ravishingly capable Indian women. I mean, of course, the lovely Mendakini and Jagruti, newly christened members of the AsiaWheeling team, and official Pondicherry field command. So you, dear reader, may find it no great surprise that we were awaking at this ungodly hour to have a fine breakfast with those same two women to commemorate our last moments in beautiful Pondicherry. By the time we got a call from Jagruti, we were sipping strong south Indian coffee, chasing it with Malarone, and reading the newspaper in the courtyard of the l’Orient.

We parked our bikes outside a french restaurant, just as the two of them arrived on motor bikes. We dined like imperialists, with more strong coffee, soft-boiled eggs and homemade bread with rich butter and jam. We dropped off the bikes with some tinges of sadness. They had served us well in this city and we would surely miss them. Who was to know what unruly, or easily spooked cycles might lie in our future? We rode back, the four of us, on the women’s mopeds. It was not the first time that I thought it might not be so bad to simply spend the rest of my time on earth clinging to a hurtling chunk of metal, piloted by a beautiful woman. But nay… there is more more wheeling to be done before I sleep.

We packed quickly, and, in my case, somewhat frantically. Both Norton and I have been paying no small attention to the mounting evidence that malarone has a somewhat jittery anxious effect of the psyche. We settled the bill and made sure to leave our mark in the guest-book before we went outside to meet our driver.

The cab company, Selvi Travels, is was started by Scott’s former colleague Maran (we thoughtfully approve if his lack of a last name) so we were given a king’s treatment. It was our first time in an AC cab, and to be honest, I prefer to sweat, windows open, and feel like part of the world which I traverse. Regardless, it was the safest I have ever felt on the insane, lane-less roads of Tamil Nadu. On the way, our driver, a tenacious man named Shiva (the name of our last driver also… more data needed before we draw conclusions here, though) pulled off at a ruined temple complex, which had turned into a tourist bonanza. The temples themselves were stunning, and Shiva walked us to the beach via a secret back rout, so as to avoid paying the 250 rupee entrance fee. Instead we made our way to a beach where a little bazaar had been erected, and a a crowd had formed around the shore where largish waves crashed, disrupting the trajectories of the many swimmers which chose to enter those treacherous waters.

This was also my re-introduction to the world of panhandling children. In my time in Russia, I had developed some utility in the navigation of aforementioned emotional and delicate situation. But these skills had all but disappeared and I found myself heartbroken and guilt-ridden as we were pestered by adorable starving children. Shiva did his best to keep these children at bay, but as we left, a child was still tapping on the window of our cab, and a thin woman was begging at Scott through the glass. It was about then that we realized the aforementioned drug interaction –perhaps between Malarone and caffeine?– was in full engagement. The two of us began to get nervous (about getting sick: India is many beautiful things, hygienic is not one of them), finding a place to stay in Agra, the looming vastness of the trip, our own fortitude. We stopped for a thali at a vegetarian restaurant by the side of the road, and Scott and I sat at the table, gripped by the mild, but persistent hysteria, and ate giant piles of rice.

A full stomach was no solution, though. What we needed was progress, a feeling of accomplishing something, of bending just some modicum of the randomness of infinity to our will. We needed the internet.

So we asked Shiva to take us to an internet cafe in Chennai. Though, he spoke essentially no English, the man was able to communicate to us that he had no knowledge of Chennai and wouldn’t know the first thinga about finding an internet cafe. Our cell rang and it was our good man from the clock and breakable nick-nack shop, calling to tell us that our Jaracks (the card proving that we had a residence and some legitimacy in India) was not 2 sided, and necessitated our return to his shop for some reconnoiter of the situation.. This, we attempted to inform him, was not possible due to our imminent departure on the grand trunk express towards Agra and the Taj Mahal. Upon hearing this he promptly hung up. At this time we still know not what the situation is with the insufficient jaracks, and whether at any moment, Airtel may simple cut our service. Please, dear readers, pray with us that this does not happen. For our mobile is our only lifeline to Tamil, Hindi, and Bengali speakers that may approximate directions to our motorized vehicle drivers and paternalistic civil authorities.

As our cab drove deeper and deeper into the throbbing and scattered nervous system Chennai, Shiva began to pull over and roll down the window, asking people in Tamil/Hindi/English where we could find an internet cafe. We asked pedestrian after pedestrian, each giving us uncorrelated directions. Twice we arrived at a cafe only to find it closed on Sundays. At our wits end, we finally rolled into Chennai’s swankiest, most sprawling, most confusing, beehive of a mall.

Inside the mall we found a microscopic version of the days earlier meanders. Shopkeeper after shopkeeper pointed us in conflicting directions, across multiple floors and “phases” (your guess is as good as ours) of the mall. Finally, though, we got there. It was like a drink of cool water after days in the heat of the desert.

Refreshed and re-fueled by the interwebs, we bid Shiva farewell at the Chennai train station, tipping him a sum that must have been close to his monthly wages, just as a 10 minute summer monsoon began to pour down in heavy curtains over the expanse pavement outside. We ran through the liquid onslaught and into the station. Indeed it too was a sight to behold, and another chance to sharpen my tolerance and composure under the assault of heartbreaking child beggars. As Scott once, I believe very wisely, said “giving money to panhandlers supports the market for panhandling.” Put another way, if one wants to help those less fortunate than he, that person is much better off giving money to an organization whose business it is to redistribute, invest, and create wealth, than to attempt to do such a fragile operation at the random whim of your choice. Such a philosophy seems sound to me, and paired with the fact that, once you have given a rupee to one child beggar, you are soon swarmed by the all the rest in sight, becomes attractive enough to simply embrace.

Now, laden with 1 box of English digestive biscuits, 4 huge bottles of water, 1 Sprite, 1 Pepsi, 2/5 bottle of Indian scotch whiskey, 10 pounds of digital technology, and a 1st AC room on the Grand Trunk Express, we are settling in to blog, rage on php/kml/css, eat the Indian snacks that are being sold by fellows wandering the train, and engage in our own special blend of railroad intrigue.

What are we listening to? Scott’s digging Luke Harris’ Day for Night Mix and Woody’s chiefing out on Cha by Steven Bernstein. Oh and of course our Tamil Classics.

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel