Back at the Hotel Nippon, our return was met with resounding glee by the three women who worked at the front desk, and an inexplicable coldness from the manager. We had been so happy with our last room at the hotel, which, we could plainly see from the key hanging on the wall, was not occupied. So we asked for it back. But it seemed the room had magically transformed itself into an A/C room during our time in Kandy, and the manager refused to give it to us at the previous rate.

Fair enough. So we asked to be shown to a new room, after which we threw down our baggage and were preparing to relax when we noticed that not only was this room carpeted in filthy red fabric, lit only by a small greasy window, and featuring a truly unnerving cockroach infestation, but the toilet lacked the sprayer that we had come to know and love as a standard component of AsiaWheeling’s lavatory experience. This was simply too much. So we demanded a different room.

The new room was much better, with the standard tile floor rather than a carpet, and we celebrated by wiling away the rest of the evening working on correspondence, waking up the next day to bright sunlight pouring through all four of our windows, the last fragment of an Indonesian style anti-mosquito incense curl still smoldering in the room’s ashtray. Feeling so great that we dared venture out before coffee, we strode downstairs and hopped on the cycles. We were interested in buying the latest issue of The Economist, AsiaWheeling’s favorite publication, but unfortunately it was Saturday, and the only shop in Colombo that carried the magazine was closed. Switching gears, we decided that coffee and food would be vital to our continued existence in this city. So off we went, searching for a place that looked reasonably affordable, sanitary, and open for business.

Somehow, we ended up on a street full of jewel and precious metals merchants, which was protected from all non-two-wheeled traffic by a large security gate. The guards were not interested in AsiaWheeling, though, flagging us right through. Inside we found a strange little hotel (which is what they call restaurants in Sri Lanka). We entered and immediately the owner pushed the normal waiter aside and insisted on serving us himself. We ordered two coffees and two chicken and rices.

When the owner asked whether we wanted large or small coffees, though it was the first time we had been asked such a question in Sri Lanka, we thought of how hard it had been up until this point to get properly caffeinated, and responded “large.” And while the large was quite large, it was positively too sweet to drink, and gave only the weakest signs of containing coffee.

Vast quantities of sugared milk aside, the meal was incredibly tasty. I am quite sure we paid a pretty hefty foreigner tax, but in return we were given a steaming plate of freshly fried biryani rice, topped with succulent, juicy roasted chicken, with a papery crisp skin clinging to it. Ah Sri Lankan food…

As we were leaving, I noticed my bike was making some strange noises, and I wheeled back to the shelter of the hotel’s awning to investigate. As I stared into the depths of the rear tire, the owner and a few of his waiters came out to assist. It turned out to be a rock, glued by street grime to the inside of my rear fender. Easily removed. In exchange, the owner of the restaurant asked us whether we could sponsor a visa for him to come live and work in the USA. We told him that we did not know whether or not we could help, but gave him our cards and told him that if he sent us an email, we would see what we could do (unfortunately, we have yet to receive an email).

Quite satisfied despite the marked lack of caffeine, we hit the road and began wheeling hard for the outskirts. I do believe this is evidence, dear reader, that during our time in Sri Lanka, the AsiaWheeling team was actually beginning to wean itself from its coffee addiction. We had not even had a cup of java yet, and we were wheeling hard, with almost full lucidity.

Scott and I made our way out of the city center and into what turned out to be the Muslim quarter. We attracted a significantly higher number of looks, but none of them were threatening, and the roads were still quite good, so we wheeled on. We wheeled past the port of Colombo, where the air reeks of rotting fish, and large concrete barriers hide its inner workings from the prying eyes of roving adventure capitalists.

We stopped for a cup of Nescafe at a small bakery that appeared to be constructed mostly out of broken mirrors. The owner was happy to chat with us, but suffered from some strange eye ailment, which caused each of his eyes to wander in meandering and completely uncorrelated ways. It was one of those bizarrely unnerving situations in which one feels both compelled and dissuaded from looking.

Back on the road, we picked up a fellow wheeler for a bit, when a young Sri Lankan pulled up on his Chinese mountain bike. He gave up when we decided to tackle a large uphill and disappeared without a goodbye. Wheel safe brother. On the other side of the hill, we found ourselves at a security checkpoint bridge, on the other side of which was a totally different world, which one might call rural Sri Lanka. As we pedaled onward, the roads dissolved into crumbling pothole-ridden obstacle courses, and sported, for one reason or another, huge piles of rock spilling onto the road at regular intervals . Perhaps these were the leftovers, or the groundwork for some vast repaving project.

We had made our way pretty far from the city, and even the roadside goods sellers were beginning to peter out.

We used the vast grid-work of irrigation/sewage canals that seem to cover this whole region to help us navigate, for the roads would often wind this way and that, or simply peter out.

Our water was getting very low, and we began searching for a beverage seller, but there proved to be none around. We were driving by a large construction site, when I spotted a kind of dilapidated stand that had been erected there presumably for the purpose of selling food and beverages to the highway workers. As we wheeled over to it, a large crew of workers were finishing their cigarette and Coca-Cola break.

Without using any words that the woman who worked behind the counter could understand, we asked if they sold water. No, she replied, but they had coconuts. We looked to our left, and sure enough there was a giant cluster of golden coconuts hanging there. We ordered two.

The coconuts in Sri Lanka are perhaps a different species than we had found elsewhere on AsiaWheeling,  for they invariably appear a bright golden color. Any more data on the Sri Lankan coconut situation is more than welcome in the comments.

The coconuts were about 15 cents each, and we settled into a couple of plastic chairs to sip them through two neon straws. It seemed from the insignia on the signage and the uniforms of the employees that this was a Chinese-run construction project here to develop infrastructure by the port and expand an expressway in Sri Lanka. Just as we were speculating about the nature of the project, a van full of workers arrived, and their Chinese boss climbed out. He was on a mission to get coconuts and cigarettes for his men,  but was not in so much of a hurry that he could not spend a little time speaking Chinese with Scott. The man seemed quite thrilled at our mission, and confirmed our suspicions that they were building a highway. It was in fact a highway from the airport to the center of Colombo. As the Chinese man climbed back into his van, we slurped the last of our coconuts, reveling in what a great waypoint that had been.

From there we made our way back toward the main road that connects Colombo with the airport.

We knew its general location now, from the fact that we could see the direction of the new highway that was being built to replace it. Back on the road, we were finally able to buy water and a few snacks at a giant grocery store called “food city.”

The snacks were just barely enough to fuel us all the way back to Colombo, where we found ourselves badly in need of a savage meal. The solution presented itself as we rode past a middle eastern restaurant, which promised us that fantastic dish known as shawarma. We even made the foolhardy decision to purchase a Greek salad from them. This was of course wilted, sandy, and tough on the guts. But whatever…we were thrilled. It had been a great day, a savage wheel, and we were content with the world.  If we had been in an overly celebratory mood, it’s possible we would have purchased a four pack of The Happiest Drink in the World, “BabyCham”.

We were standing outside the train station in Kandy, Sri Lanka, when Scott agreed to continue fielding questions from the crowd of cab drivers and touts that had formed around us, drawn in by the allure of discovering the retail price of the Speed TRs, so that I could go inside and attempt to purchase another couple of tickets back to Colombo.

Unfortunately, all the seats in the Observation Saloon had been sold already, so we were forced to purchase second class seats, which were about $2.45 as opposed to $3.50 cents. Perhaps these train tickets can serve as an indicator to you, dear reader, why the $4.00 breakfast at Rodney’s seemed so expensive to us at the time.

Regardless of the expense, we had indulged in it once again that morning. However, having for the last couple days endured the giant pot of weak coffee that accompanied it, we had this morning asked to enter the kitchen and supervise its fabrication. In the kitchen, we observed, as we had feared, that no more than a tablespoon of actual coffee was added to the giant over-sized pot of water. However, now that we were in the kitchen, we felt comfortable rattling the pots and pans a little and requesting an increase in the strength. It was like night and day. Our entire experience was transformed as lucidity once again returned to AsiaWheeling.

So great was our feeling that before heading to the train station, we indulged in a little high-speed wheel down the road in the opposite direction of town.

It proved, as with all of our other experiences in Sri Lanka, to be more beautiful and less uphill than we had expected.

While in the other direction, the road headed down the mountain and into town, this one just skirted the side of the mountain affording us a glorious view of the jungle, rich with hidden waterfalls, little villages, and people in brightly colored clothes tending to rice and palm fields.

We made sure to stop for water along the way, at a very interesting roadside general store, where we met an old Sri Lankan man who was thrilled to chat with us in his native tongue, somehow conducting a full conversation without any overlapping vocabulary. This old man is the perfect example of a phenomenon that is becoming ever more apparent on AsiaWheeling: successful communication requires primarily only the will to communicate. Many times, when we are most vexed by an inability to communicate, it is because the other party is not willing to engage, not because we lack the means to convey information.

We stopped for lunch at the Old Empire Hotel for some delicious Sri Lankan fare.

Meanwhile at the train station, it was time to get the heck out of Kandy, and when we were confronted by the baggage personnel clucking at the bikes, we assumed that the same maneuver we had used in Colombo might serve us well here. But this time the baggage handlers refused to be subdued by the folding action and insisted that we load the bags into the baggage car. Despite our many protests, we were brought first to one luggage processing room and then deeper into the station to yet another. In each we were confronted by a different man, asking for a different amount of money, and offering a different answer to the question “will we be able to take the cycles on the train with us?”

Finally, Scott became exasperated, as our train began to blow its whistle, and demand justice. Meanwhile, I was attempting, with no success, to bargain the man down from the $8.00 per cycle that he was asking.

Finally, with only five minutes left before our train was to leave, we paid our $16 and followed a man who lead us through the turnstile and to the 2nd class car. Inside the second class car, we once again saw that there was decidedly no place for the cycles, and thought the fellow seemed to be indicating that we should just climb on, we insisted that he talk to the analogous fellow in the Observation Saloon and secure us a spot in the baggage compartment. Our baggage charging guide seemed a little reticent, but when we entered the Observation Saloon’s baggage car, the fellow inside seemed satisfied enough with the gigantic and now sopping wet $16.00 receipt, which I waved at him, sending little droplets of redissolved ink to and fro. He smiled and allowed us to lock the cycles to a piece of chain that dangled from one of the walls.

Now quite covered in sweat and totally sapped of all energy, we thanked the baggage team as though they had just delivered our son and collapsed into our seats. In no time the train was moving again, shrieking deafeningly against the rusty tracks, and cutting its way into the sunset.

Arriving in Colombo, we mounted the cycles and headed back to the trusty Hotel Nippon.

AsiaWheeling is pleased to announce the launch of a much discussed and long awaited piece of functionality. We are speaking, of course, about AsiaWheeling’s Project K9.

But what is Project K9, you ask? Well, there are some things we can tell you, and some that will have to remain secret for now. To give you a basic idea, Project K9 is a treasure hunt, taking place all across Asia, the middle east, and Siberia, and we want you to get involved.

From now on, AsiaWheeling will be exploring cities not merely in search of the extremes of experience, but also in search of treasures that have been requested by our readers. Still a little confused? I understand. Perhaps an example of one such treasure would help to shed some light on the subject.

Scott was catching up with Gabriel Lepine (pictured left) over cocktails at the Macao Trading Company in New York City. As the two discussed AsiaWheeling’s new treasure hunt initiative, Gab became intrigued. He immediately put his order in for something to grace the wall of his Tribeca apartment. The request? A wooden mask. The price? About $100. A simple request and the perfect challenge for AsiaWheeling.

From there, we ventured off to the east in search of such a mask. We were to find it two weeks into our journey in Yogjakarta, Indonesia, the Javanese cultural capital. The masks felt sturdy and robust. Together, the pair consisted of a king and queen. It seemed like the perfect fit for our man Gab.

We made our way to the Indonesian post office, wrapped it in newsprint, burlap bags, fibrous twine, and brown paper, and sent it on its way to the Big Apple. Corresponding with Gab, we showed him the map below which documents its discovery location.

“I love it, it’s great.” Gab exclaimed upon receiving the masks. Soon, we’ll post a photo of the masks on the wall in their new home, though for now, the loot is pictured below.

Want to place an order in the Project K9 system? There’s still plenty of the trip left and we welcome you to challenge us with requests. Just fill out the request form here, and we’ll follow up over email seal the deal.

True it was astronomically expensive, but the convenience of eating breakfast before wheeling all the way down the mountain in the city of Kandy was too much for us, so we made our way once again up to the rooftop restaurant at Rodney’s Viewpoint, and consumed that watery pot of coffee and two spicy pepper omelets before climbing onto the cycles again.

The day’s wheel was to take us up into the famous Ceylon tea country, which lay in the highlands above the city of Kandy. We were not sure how to get there, but knowing that it surrounded the city in just about every direction made navigation less of a big deal.

After making our way down the mountain and into the city, I called a random lichtenstein, which sent us climbing uphill. The road continued uphill and so did we, soon pouring sweat even more furiously than the day before. We stopped from time to time to drink more water and coffee, only to return to the endless uphill climb. Soon my ears were popping and the temperature was falling.

The new cool breeze felt icy as my soaking wet shirt flapped against my back, giving me a mighty chill.  Kandy was spreading out beneath us, shrouded in that strange cocktail of clouds and smog. We were well out of the confines of the usual tourist zone, and were quite a sight for the children and tea plantation workers whose homes dotted the roadside. Soon the foliage around us began to change from thick tropical jungle to tea plantations, and with it, the temperature fell even further.

We rode higher and higher into the clouds. Now the air was downright comfortable, and dry enough that our sweat was beginning to evaporate faster than it was being produced. It felt great.

At one point, we stopped for a rest and I wandered off into the tea fields. The smell of the tea plants was strong, but not necessarily analogous to any smell I had until then associated with tea.

We continued to climb, wheeling by the Ceylon Tea Museum, outside of which we were harangued by a group of school children on their way, in a great uniformed hoard, presumably toward the bus stop. Traffic  thinned so much that we would ride for five to 10 minutes at a time before we were passed by an auto rickshaw or delivery truck. All the while, the view around us grew increasingly dramatic, made all the more so by the polarization of the Maui Jims.

Finally, after a couple hours of climbing, we reached the highest crest of  the road. Ahead of us, the wild unknown of Sri Lanka spread in its jungled mystery, while behind us the city of Kandy looked like a tiny smokey pile of pebbles, which had collected in the midst of these great green mountains.

We locked the cycles to each other amidst the tea fields that spread out on either side of us and decided to go for a hike. We were at a place where two steep peaks met in a pass. First we made our way a mile or so along the side of one of them until we came around a corner surprised suddenly to hear music. A few more curves later on the stony path, we found ourselves in a small village. We wandered along, taking in the small concrete homes, all of which appeared to be empty (their owners presumably at work in the tea fields), including the one which emitted the music. We were just about to turn around, when we ran into a man in a lungi walking along the same path. We stopped to greet him and exchanged a few words. He welcomed us to the mountain, and inquired as to where we were going. He seemed sort of confused that we would come all the way up here just to turn around. Obviously he had no idea in how worthy-of-sightseeing a place he lived. This was working out to be one of the most glorious wheels of my life.

We made our way back to the cycles, and after taking stock of our diminishing supply of water, decided that we had just enough to climb the remaining peak (the taller of the two). The path up was originally or had long ago become a drainage channel for rain coming off the mountain. It was the dry season, so we did not have to deal with mud, but we were sent scrambling a few times as the steep, dry earth of the trail gave way underfoot.

When we finally reached the top, we found it to be covered with a kind of highland prairie, most of which had been recently burned, with the telltale  strips of unburned stomped grass, and hastily dug trenches running through it that suggested the fire had been deliberately started and controlled by people.

We wandered through the ashes and I took a moment to explore a long unvisited memory of accompanying my father to a prairie burn in Iowa. It had been a startlingly hot, loud, and generally intense experience. I could barely imagine how much more intense such an endeavor would be on the windswept top of this mountain.

Having submitted, we made our way back down to the cycles, which we found had been moved by someone, to a lower spot some 15 feet over. We thanked the powers that be that the move was not into the back of someone’s pickup truck never to be seen again.  Before heading down, we stopped at the Ceylon Tea Museum for a cup of the stuff, but they had none to serve.  Instead, we used their restroom and avoided a gigantic swarm of gnats that buzzed in the carpark.

The ride down was a high voltage exercise in proper breaking technique, for had we not paid careful attention, we could have easily either melted our break pads, wiped out taking a turn too fast, or a fearsome combination of both.

Back in town it was high time for a feast, which we found at a local buffet-type restaurant, at which we were thrilled to consume a fragrant  local brown rice.

Now, you dear reader, might think that after such a savage wheel up a savage mountain  we might be tired, sweaty, reeking of endorphins, and generally more beast than man. And you would be correct. But if you think we were about to go take a shower and relax, you’d be dead wrong. You see, AsiaWheeling had, in its supreme ignorance, scheduled only a week for the whole of Sri Lanka, and there was no time to waste being civilized.  We now sought directions for the next waypoint.

We needed to visit the Temple of the Tooth. And so we did, or at least the surrounds.

We parked the bikes outside of the temple and locked them to a couple of bright yellow riot barriers, which were in and of themselves quite interesting, being essentially large walls of spikes with wheels on the bottom of them, presumably to be used in forcing large groups of people into a predefined space. Raw indeed.

Nearby the riot walls, there were a great many tour guides and taxi fellows who were very interested in AsiaWheeling Global Enterprises, the Speed TRs’  estimated value, and in providing us with services during our time in Kandy, and more specifically, at the Temple of the Tooth. We were, of course, not interested in purchasing any services, but being exhausted and rather cracked out on endorphins, we were more than interested in socializing. So it was with a small entourage that we approached the Temple of the Tooth, informing our new friends only once we entered the security checkpoint that we would not be requiring any services beyond our recent conversation. It was visibly heartbreaking, but as far from a result of animosity on our part as possible.

As the heavily armed guard frisked Scott he asked him in very good English, “Were those men giving you any trouble?” “No. No. Not at all,” Scott replied. And we made our way into the inner courtyard of the temple.

It was quite beautiful. And we were thrilled to be strolling in the sunlight.

We circumnavigated the temple, taking in the many carvings and interesting buttresses that kept the elaborate tiled roof in place. As we made our way around, we found ourselves suddenly in a rather forgotten and none too often trafficked courtyard. We looked to one of the many guards with AK 47s who were lazing under umbrellas, but they met our gaze only with smiles and waves, indicating that we had not strolled into any kind of restricted zone. Perhaps just the post apocalyptic zone.

As we made our way around, the amount of trash on the ground grew, and a number of open sewers appeared. Soon we could hear a very strange sound, something like the wet crack of a femur breaking, again and again, followed by the clatter of chains.

Haunting, I know. And no less haunting was the sight that we found when we turned the next corner. It was a large a very scarred elephant.

Both of its back legs were chained to a wall, and it shuffled from side to side in an alarmingly deranged way, as it munched on a large pile of palm trunks. Extreme.

Feeling like we’d had about enough of the Temple of the Tooth, we made our way back to the riot wall and the cycles.

From there, the sun set on Kandy,  and our stomachs were filled once again with Koththu before a night of fitful sleep in Rodney’s Viewpoint.

I awoke somewhat disoriented in our room at “Rodney’s Viewpoint” and spent a while battling with the mosquito net that emerged from a single point above us and had somehow enclosed me in a meshed chrysalis. As consciousness worked its way to the forefront of my brain, the task became easier and easier until soon I was free. I immediately made my way out onto the balcony for a bit of air, where I found the view to be, as we had suspected, quite tremendous.

Rodney’s hotel was literally clinging to the edge of a cliff-side road, and below our balcony the ground fell away rapidly.  The misty or perhaps smokey air hung low around the valley, and gave the surrounding mountains a distant magical feel. We could hear monkeys and birds screeching, and, after being polarized by our new Maui Jim sunglasses, the sun played most dramatically over the forest of palms spread below.

We decided that while the dinner at Rodney’s was simply too expensive to indulge in, we might be justified in supporting the man with our breakfast patronage. So when Scott awoke, we made our way to the rooftop restaurant, where we found a room full of empty tables. It felt like we were the only guests, though some noises last night had suggested otherwise. A team of three fellows perked up on our arrival and quickly showed us to one of the many empty tables. We ordered the $4.00 (expensive) omelet breakfast and were quite thrilled to see one of the waiters arriving with a truly giant pot of coffee.  Our elation was only slightly dampened when we found the coffee to be mostly hot water, with a tablespoon or so of coffee grounds sloshing around in the bottom of it. The milk was undeniably delicious, however, sporting that thin film that accompanies the recent boiling of milk.

The omelets were also delicious, packed with scallions and hot peppers, and the toast plentiful. And when we left Rodney’s to head into town we were only a few cups of coffee and a solid wheel away from true bliss — which is damned close. The sun was bright and it was quite hot, despite the rise in elevation relative to Colombo.

The wind in our hair felt good and we pedaled hard down the winding road that lead from the high mountainside into the city of Kandy, where we commenced a meandering wheel, taking turns bishoping until we found ourselves quite lost. Traffic was surprisingly thick, but at 11:30 am, it could not be attributed to any kind of rush hour.

We stopped for lunch when we passed a restaurant, which proudly proclaimed in large yellow painted letters “eat me.” With Lewis Carroll in mind, we decided to heed its advice. The joint proved to be a tasty egg and chicken curry place, with a few branches around the greater Kandy area.

The egg and chicken curry was not only the signature dish, but also the only thing on the menu that was actually available, so we ordered it along with coffee and a locally produced chocolate milk, served in glass bottles which were all, for one reason or another, only filled three quarters of the way.

With eating once again temporarily out of the way, we climbed back on the cycles and continued to wheel through the sweltering heat. We were sweating hard, and needed to stop for water often. One of our water stops placed us across the street from a very interesting looking multi-level temple.

We decided we had better go explore. The top floor was at the street level, but much like Rodney’s Viewpoint, it clung to the side of a cliff and extended for a few floors downward.

We took a moment to enjoy the many small oil lamps and candles which proclaimed the long existence or at least the heavy use of this place.  We then made our way through a lion’s mouth door down into the basement where we found a group of workmen building an extension to the more conventional temple complex. They paused from their work only briefly to acknowledge us, before inviting us to move on and explore more of what may or may not have been appropriately called part of the temple.

Downstairs we found some evidence of older iterations of this place’s religious usage, now cracked and broken, and what appeared to be the administrative offices of the whole operation. One more floor down, we found mostly mud and garbage, but also a rewarding view of the river that ran along the bottom of this particular small valley.

Back on the road, Scott and I were climbing over a number of hills, first sweating our way up, then bombing down the other side, attempting to optimize between the degree to which momentum would help us climb the next incline and the increased danger of riding at high speeds in thick traffic. A few hills later, we were forced to call a waypoint when we passed the Sri Lankan National Botanical Gardens. We had read that these were quite amazing, and Scott seemed to remember that we might even be able to wheel through them. In a fit of excitement at that notion, I dove right into buying tickets without even asking whether the cycles were permitted. They were of course not, and so we found ourselves suddenly strolling. And what a stroll it was.

As you, dear reader, already know, AsiaWheeling is none too keen on attending tourist attractions during this trip, preferring to leave them up to the Flickr crowd. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and this, was a most wonderful one.

The Sri Lankan National Botanical Gardens are quite a sight to behold. And though they are designed much like  western botanical gardens (they were, as I understand it, originally done by the British during colonial times), unlike western botanical gardens, the patrons are allowed to wander freely amidst the foliage, as opposed to being bound to the paths.

We visited the orchid house,

wandered across a suspension bridge,

stopped for tea in a giant open field,

and strolled through an area that must be home to most of the bats in the greater Kandy municipal region.

Feeling very satisfied, very high society, and rather colonial, we hopped back on the bikes for a little reality check on the boiling, traffic jammed, reeking and smokey streets of Kandy. At one point traffic was forced to part, making its way around the body of an old woman who lay in the middle of the road. Whether she was alive or dead, I will never know. But as I wheeled by I could not help but think to myself “what is my responsibility here?” Can I just wheel by? Should I cause more of a traffic jam by stopping to investigate her condition? Were I to discover the worst, what was the next action? It is a difficult situation, the type that points directly at one’s inhumanity. Regardless, I rode by. And soon enough, was once again consumed in the act of preserving my own life amidst the thick traffic.

In an attempt to avoid the snarling and deafening traffic jam that now revealed to us that indeed there was a rush hour in Kandy, meaning the previous nightmare had merely been the default level of madness, we made our way up a steep side street and promptly became completely lost again. Realizing we were running low, we called another water waypoint at a local roadside joint.  The place was filled with a number of Sri Lankan workers. Most were covered in dark filth, and eating boiled sweet potatoes. They were very interested in AsiaWheeling and our strange folding cycles. The first question was, of course, how much do they cost, but after that we began a rather interesting emergent conversation in which each question or response on their side would require the full brainpower of all involved to come up with English words with which to construct an answer. After a bit, they insisted on buying us a few boiled sweet potatoes, which were presented to us in a searingly hot metal bowl, and eaten along with a condiment not so unlike an extra-hot Pace salsa.

Though it burned our fingers, we ate this with gusto.

Finding our way back to town proved not too difficult. On our way back to Rodney’s Viewpoint we stopped at a local grocery store called Cargill’s Food City and wandered around for a bit enjoying the air conditioning.

Finally, we finished the evening with another feast of Koththu.

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We awoke with plenty of time to buy our tickets back at the train station and do a little exploring on the streets of Colombo. We breakfasted on a kind of Koththu-house variant across the street from the Hotel Nippon and attempted to consume coffee, but were only successful in being served hot sweetened milk and aptly named “rock” style cookie.

Still badly in need of caffeine, we headed for the clogged snarl of traffic that marked the entrance to Colombo station. We managed to buy the last two tickets in the Observation Saloon on the 3:35 train to Kandy and a couple of sticky white plastic cups full of Nescafe. With that were set free to wheel.

We decided to wheel south in search of a leather goods retailer, which Anu had mentioned the night before. You see, dear reader, our humble Mr. Norton’s shoes had reached the point of reeking tatters and he was badly in need of new footwear. However, as the sun beat down, we wheeled on in search of the place to no avail. Scott has the mixed fortune of a size 13 foot, which makes shoe shopping on some parts of Asiawheeling rather difficult. Finally, we started stopping at random shoe stores, and requesting giant shoes, and after a few failures were rewarded with a choice between two styles. The final selection was a pair of smart-looking Greco-Roman sandals, which you may see handsomely modeled below.

The old tattered shoes were promptly jettisoned in the shoe shop rubbish bin.

Back on the road, it was time to eat again, and we quite randomly made our way to a Sri Lankan fried rice place, where we purchased a half chicken and a large pile of rice, filled with freshly chopped vegetables. It was delightful, but not cheap. As we were quickly learning, food in Sri Lanka was significantly more expensive than in India. Also, here too we would from time to time find ourselves paying the “foreigner tax,” an inflation in the price of the meal by a few times to account for our apparent wealth and ethnicity.

After the meal was done, we wiped our hands with newsprint provided in lieu of napkins on the table.

Stomachs full, we wheeled back to the Hotel Nippon, and we were greeted warmly by the staff and the owners of nearby businesses. So warmly in fact, that we were not able to leave for the train station without letting a local electronics merchant take a quick ride on a Speed TR.

He gave us his  two cell phones as collateral and grabbed the bike for a joyride.

At the train station, when we attempted to wheel the speed TRs onto the platform, it had the unintended consequence of creating quite a bit of ruckus. A group of fellows, in varying levels of official looking garb were motioning us into the baggage room, but we were resistant. We wanted to keep those cycles as close to us as possible, and the thought of kissing them goodbye in some dark boxcar at the other end of the train was none too palatable. Instead of going into the luggage room, as the many fellows around us seemed to be motioning for us to do, we decided to entrance them all with a demonstration of the folding action. As we had hoped, the act of watching the two majestic steeds collapse into neat little folded metal shapes left the luggage attendants, station officials, and a great many passers-by quite docile and grinning. We thanked everyone for their attention, and moved on down the platform.

As we walked, we found ourselves accompanied by a fellow advertising hotels in Kandy to us. We did our very best to politely ignore him, but he was vehement, and soon was joined by another fellow who introduced himself as Rodney. We were not sure where our platform was, and these two fellows were quite kind in showing us the way. As we walked, Rodney and his lackey explained to us that they ran a very affordable and beautiful guest house, and began showing us a book full of comments from other travelers, pointing in particular to a letter written by two Swedish tourists claiming “this fellow is not a tout, he really does run a beautiful guest house. Thanks Rodney!”Hmm, I thought, a bit inconclusive.

We were still feeling a little dubious of these two chaps when the train arrived. And, with it, we had to focus on other issues. Fitting the bikes into the Observation Saloon would be tough. It was packed with people, lacked air conditioning or active fans, and was so sticky and hot that breathing inside took considerable effort. Rodney came into the car like superman burst from a telephone booth and began bustling around, making noises that might be confused with assistance, but really just continuing to work on making a sale. We did our best to explain that this was a bad time to discuss lodging, as we were quickly asphyxiating in the Observation Saloon, with our belongings piled in our seats, leaving us nowhere to seek shelter from the torrent of nervous sweaty tourists becoming militantly overheated and pacing the aisles of the observation car in frustration.

Rodney, in an attempt to help us out, motioned to the back of the car, where there was, in fact, a large and empty room behind us marked “luggage.” He even ventured as far as to go back there and converse for a bit with the guards who were lazing and smoking cigarettes therein. Unfortunately, after this conversation, he  returned with mumbled apologies, informing us that we could not use that space.Why? We were not sure. It was part of the Observation Saloon, and marked “luggage.” Rodney just kept apologizing, interspersing some key facts about the superiority of his guest house.

AsiaWheeling was ready to suspend ourselves from the ceiling by our feet, hanging like bats, keeping one eye open to ensure that our bags and bikes stayed safe when it occurred to Scott that another, more personal, request to the luggage attendants might solicit a more favorable response, and as the train was whistling its imminent departure, he headed back to begin negotiations. He reappeared shortly, all smiles, despite his soaking shirt and red face. We would be able to store the cycles in the luggage room, but we needed to hurry. The train would leave any moment. And so we hustled down the platform, handing the cycles up to the guard, and climbing in after them just as the train started moving. We locked them to a bench and shook hands with the guards. We made our way back into the Observation Saloon just in time to see the many tiny fans which hung from the ceiling spin to life, sending a blessed wind throughout the compartment.

We bounced on very springy chairs as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. We climbed out of Colombo and into the sweltering mountainous jungles of Sri Lanka, past terraced rice fields and tiny villages. We wiled away the train ride, watching the scenery go by, working on correspondence for you, dear reader, and chatting with our fellow passengers. One was an American, who had so furious a case of the traveler’s nerves, that he quite effectively transmitted them to me. He had been living abroad for many years, working in Indonesia, India, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Sri Lanka. He was a government contractor for the U.S. (or The Empire, as he called it), working with SMEs, as he referred to them. His outlook was one of the most pessimistic and jaded I have yet encountered. I found myself, as we spoke with him, beginning to fear that AsiaWheeling was one big mistake. As he explained to me how he refused to reveal his nationality to the locals for fear of violence, I began to question my own representation of myself. I felt a cold ball of fear growing in my stomach as he went on about how the people one meets while one travels may seem friendly, but many of them want to kill you.

Of course this is malarkey, dear reader, but perhaps you might be willing to forgive me for exiting the train in Kandy in somewhat of a nervous state. The sun had just fallen behind the tea plantation-covered mountains, and we found  ourselves face to face once again with Rodney, who was kicking his pitch into overdrive. He was offering us free transport to his place, and I was beginning to have visions of makeshift operating tables, organs preserved on ice, and rusty IVs snaking their way into coconuts. Scott, on the other hand, had taken a look at the brochure, haggled a little over the price and was ready to climb in the car. I explained to Scott that he would need to handle this, and that I could not be trusted. So despite my nerves, we climbed into a very tightly packed sedan. It seemed Rodney had wanted to accompany us in the car, but it was all we could do to fit the cycles, our packs, Scott, the driver, and I into the car. So Rodney took a cab, and we made our way to his hotel.

To Rodney’s credit, the place was quite nice, his driver a great chap, and the price quite affordable. To his discredit, his marketing was way too intense, and the place was a decent ride (uphill) from the town of Kandy. An uphill ride that was just fine for two strapping young AsiaWheelers, but certainly not an accommodation to recommend to the very old or very fat. To reach the place, we needed to drive around a great lake, which partially surrounded the central attraction in Kandy, the so-called “Temple of the Tooth.” The temple of the tooth is a large Buddhist temple that houses what is purported to be a tooth of Buddha himself. It unfortunately, had been a target of the Liberation Tamil Tiger’s of Elam during the insurgency, so the main road which ran alongside it had been closed indefinitely, open only to pedestrians and official traffic. All other traffic had to snake around the lake. This, it seemed, had been a boon for the many businesses that had spring up along the far side of the lake. While not as many as in Colombo, here too, we saw many, many heavily armed soldiers and military checkpoints dotting the roadside.

Our room at Rodney’s Viewpoint was clean and fresh, with a nice balcony that promised a truly stunning view come sunup. It’s also true that the walls were made of thin sheets of corrugated plastic, that the toilet emitted onto the floor a little squirt of foul and reeking water each time you flushed it, and that the door to the balcony was designed to lock one outside, but we were overall quite impressed. This little hotel perched on a hill overlooking Kandy would be a nice place to stay for a few days.

We were introduced to the staff, who engaged in some very hard selling of startlingly expensive dinners in the restaurant upstairs, which we were finally able to politely decline.  To top it all off, the sign on the door of our room, was like a piece of psychedelic, non sequitur contemporary art, especially when photographed in low light.  It reads (when viewed from within the room) “Please lock the door,  you are not in the room.”

We paid them for the next few nights and hopped on the cycles. The ride down into the city was invigorating and decidedly downhill. Traffic was light, and we took the opportunity to really let the speed TRs eat some road. The city of Kandy spread out below us like handful of glittering gems nestled in a jungle valley. It was high time for some more Koththu.

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The Sim City 2000 theme poured out of my cell phone, calling us to rise once again at 4:45 am and head to a new country. This we did, bidding our new friends at the Mass Residency farewell and climbing into another of  those fantastic metered cabs. Bangalore was slowly waking up around us. We could see women sweeping the streets and vendors setting up their stands. The sun shone in long golden rays, which transformed the choking smoke of the streets into a cool jungle mist.  The sky lit up in deep oranges and pinks and we settled into that feeling of motion. Ah, morning:  So ripe with possibility.

And Sri Lankan Airlines… so delightful an airline. The line to check in was long and snaking, but moved quickly. It was mostly full of Sri Lankan traders pushing luggage carts piled high with boxes of Indian goods, wrapped in bright blue tape. When we came up to the counter, the fellows seemed relieved to be interacting with a passenger who was not fiercely bargaining over his charges for excess luggage. They were quite happy to take the cycles and our packs with none of that nonsense about a “sports equipment charge,” happily plastering the Dahon bags with fragile stickers, and dispatching a squadron of uniformed fellows to handle our belongings. Our luggage reduced to merely a couple small packs and a ukulele, we enjoyed strolling through the clean, air-conditioned, metallic space.

On the other side of security, we purchased a couple of espressos and a couple of Badam milks.

Badam milk turned out to be a kind of nut-flavored milk, into which we poured the rather acrid and overpriced espressos. We were feeling quite awake and excited about Sri Lanka when we climbed onto the plane. The seats were large and comfortable and the flight attendants very friendly. Each was dressed in a very brightly colored traditional Sri Lankan sari, printed with a vibrant peacock feather pattern. It seemed no sooner had we finished breakfast than we were landing in Sri Lanka.

We had no idea what to expect from Sri Lanka. We knew that it had recently made the transition from developing-country-hampered-by-fiercely-violent-civil-war to developing-country-bolstered-by-floods-of-foreign-investment. From the exterior, the airport looked not unlike that of Milwaukee, except that it was nestled amidst lush tropical foliage. Inside, the facility was clean, small, easy to navigate, and quite welcoming. We waited in line at the passport control counter, which was covered with glowing back-lit imagery of men and women in traditional Sri Lankan dress welcoming us to the country. The border official greeted me with a giant smile and promptly stamped my passport, welcoming me in English. We waited in the baggage area, while endless amounts of imported Indian goods wrapped in blue tape were unloaded. I kept an eye out for our cycles and bags while Scott went in search of the oblong items counter, where we had often found the cycles in the past.

Here in the airport we had our first encounter with what was to become a constant theme of our time in Sri Lanka: heavily armed military personnel. While he was searching for the oblong items, Scott had gotten a number of guards with large machine guns interested in our case, and they were now throwing their own heavily armed efforts into the hunt for the cycles. The last of the blue tape-wrapped boxes were being piled up and pushed to the side by the time we finally found the cycles, now quite hidden behind a large square pillar amidst the sea of unclaimed baggage. We thanked our new friends and headed through a set of hospital style swinging doors out into the main hall of the airport.

It was well-lit and heavily air-conditioned, sporting some thirty counters, with large glossy signs advertising services to tourists. I had asked a fellow on the airplane what the current exchange rate was and armed with only that data and a hand full of local currency we had recently gotten from the ATM, we poured headlong into negotiations with all three of the taxi companies that had booths there. All seemed strikingly expensive, and we thanked them for their help and began to consider wheeling ourselves into town. Our questions about the distance into town had provided us with a wide range of answers, but perhaps it would be worth risking it, given the high price of a cab. We even got as far as stocking up on some ominously overpriced baked goods filled with green onion and egg to help fuel us on the ride before we realized that we had better, just to be sure, re-confirm the exchange rate.

It turned out that all costs here in Sri Lanka to date had in fact been about 40% of what we had thought. It was a great feeling. Something like winning the lotto. We strode victoriously back to the taxi stand and asked their finest driver take us in their cheapest cab into the city of Colombo. And that they did. Thank goodness we had not wheeled for it proved to be a 35-kilometer drive. We stopped part way through the trip with our driver to eat a little rice and curry. The spot he chose was delightful, affordable, and spicy like nothing we had yet eaten. This meal of rice, egg, and chicken curry, was to become one of the staples of our time in Sri Lanka, and I was thrilled.

It was so refreshingly different from the food in India, and almost as inexpensive.

While our cab driver ordered a single cigarette, which arrived on a yellow plastic plate along with the bill, he motioned to the ukulele, and asked whether I would play a bit. So I took out the Uke and played a little while he enjoyed his cigarette. The other patrons of the establishment perked up a bit, taking the time now to stare a bit at the strange foreigners in Panama hats, one of which appeared to be playing a King Crimson tune.

We had chosen, more or less at random, from the very short list of Colombo’s cheap hotels.  When asked how much we wanted to pay, our driver assured us that there was no way to get a room for 2,000 rupees. But when we strolled into the Hotel Nippon, the gods of wheeling must have taken pity upon us, for that was the asking price for a non-AC room.

Unfortunately, something about the way we had conducted the transaction had deprived our cab driver of his cut of the hotel rate, and he was distressed. He explained this to us in so many words, and quite bluntly asked for an extra 200 rupees (about $1.80). We liked the guy, and this seemed fair enough. So we paid him and parted on very good terms indeed. The hotel clerks were three very friendly middle-aged Sri Lankan women.

They seemed truly thrilled to have AsiaWheeling staying at the Hotel Nippon and made sure we had a nice safe place for the speed TRs beside the giant arching hardwood and marble staircase that led upstairs.

The Hotel Nippon was something like the kind of hotel depicted in old-time western movies, with green and yellow stained glass, leather upholstery, a piano in the lobby, and plenty of wood paneling.

That said, the Nippon had certainly seen better days, as evidenced by the price tag. The marble floors were now cracked, and most of the hotel was caked with a good amount of dust. Grit had collected in the corners and brown stains discolored most of the carpets. Exactly our kind of place.

We happily threw off our packs and climbed onto the speed TRs, heading for the train station. We had very little time in Sri Lanka, only about a week, so we wanted to get the next train to the mountain settlement of Kandy. Our Sri Lankan bureau chief, Daniel Brady, had spent quite some time there, and the city came very highly recommended. As we rode, we could not believe the military presence in the streets. There seemed to be a checkpoint every block or so. And the cops were pulling over cars at random to inspect their papers. These were not your relaxed Indonesian checkpoints either. Each one was complete with a machine gun nest, strangely festooned with advertisements for the local business that had presumably funded the building of this little in-case-of-urban-warfare unit.

We had no problems with the police, however, as it seems two white fellows on bicycles do not exactly fall within their profile for terrorists. To the contrary, it seemed Sri Lanka was enjoying an economic boost from western tourism. While it was nothing like Singapore, Malaysia, or Bali, we saw a surprising number of white people strolling the streets. Everywhere, people seemed to be building things, doing business, in a hurry, and generally exhibiting momentum. Sri Lanka is going places, that is for sure.

We locked our cycles to a fence, where they instantly began attracting crowds of people, and headed in search of a ticketing agent. When I finally found the appropriate line, something seemed wrong, for the clerk was just lazily counting money, which was in stark contrast with the other fellows beside him who were furiously selling tickets like hotcakes to crowds of people. He explained to me that there were tickets left for the train, but that sales for the day were over. It was 3:30.

In hopes of finding a work-around, we made our way into the tourist information booth, a strange, dark and frigidly air-conditioned space. We proceeded to have a very uncomfortable conversation with a fellow who was interested in selling us all kinds of additional and very expensive services. While the conversation left both Scott and me in a very strange place, a few good things came of it. This first is that we realized that the tickets to Kandy would be about $3.00 for a ride in the first class observation saloon, assuming we got to the station early enough to nab two of them. The second is that the tourist informant helped us to defuse a situation with a few cops who had become wary of our cycles and where we had chosen to park them.

So while we did not have tickets in hand, we knew when and where to get them the next day. And with that out of the way, we dialed a Ms. April Yee. She was a friend of a friend of ours who, we had recently learned, was only in town for a night.

She told us to meet her at the Galle Face Hotel, probably the most famous and most imperialist hotel in the city of Colombo for a sunset cocktail.

We were more than happy to oblige, relaxing, and discussing the ins and outs of South Asia as the sun disappeared behind the horizon.

As we enjoyed the sunset and our drinks, we were introduced to her friend, a local Colombodian, Anu, a gentle, considerate fellow. Anu in turn introduced us to one of the most fantastic things in Sri Lanka: Koththu.

Koththu, as Anu described it to us, is a kind of Sri Lankan Pad Thai. It is made by taking a number of roti and chopping them up into little strips. These strips are then fried with egg, vegetables, cheese, and meat, and “gravy” to produce a kind of stir fried noodle-esque dish.

Koththu places are easily identified by the deafening clang of the chopping, which happens at a furious and piercing decibel level, well into the night. The place he took us was one of the more famous Koththu places in town, and even though it was well after dark, it was packed.

The owners of the place were nice enough to let us back stage to witness the magic.

We finished off the dinner with a nice cool glass of iced milo.

Full of Koththu and feeling positively ecstatic to be in Sri Lanka, we piled back into Anu’s car and dropped Ms. Yee at her hotel, which sported delightful interior design, as evidenced below.

We had taken a bit of anti-anxiety medication in order to aid our slumbers on the night bus from Karwar to Bangalore so we found ourselves, once again, the last to wake up and exit the bus, and doing so in a quite relaxed and unhurried manner. It was cold outside, maybe even as low as 60ºF. After all the boiling and sweating of the trip hereto, we savored the chill.

The Speed TRs had suffered no damage on the ride, thanks to Scott’s careful negotiation and generous tipping of the baggage handlers; they were waiting for us in a neat little pile by the bus. So relaxed were we, that the normal barrage of touts, cab drivers, auto rickshaw wallahs, goods sellers, and con artists failed to even slightly miff us. We joked and giggled with them, eventually parting like old friends and wandering across the street to buy some coffees from a stand.

We had booked accommodation at a local hostel by the name of Mass Residency, and they were kind enough to give us the number of a metered cab company that was more than happy to send a man to pick us up and take us to the hotel for only a fraction of what it had cost us last time we arrived in this city.  The owners of the Mass Residency were two fantastic blokes, who were glad to serve us coffee, learn about AsiaWheeling, and show us to a very affordable, clean, and comfortable room on the 4th floor of their most comforting guest house.

We could smell the ink from the AsiaWheeling seal of approval already. The day was still quite young when we climbed on the cycles and headed in search of breakfast.

Shortly into the wheel, we realized it was Holi in Bangalore. Holi is the Hindu spring holiday, and a celebration of color. One of the main modes of celebration is the tossing of colored liquids and powders onto one another. So in our search for a restaurant, we stopped to ask some very colorful fellows for a recommended dosa house.

And by golly, did they deliver. They directed us to a local institution by the name of Maiya’s, and dear reader, if you are ever in Bangalore, you must visit this place and have one of their vegetable-stuffed dosas.

They were prepared much like a traditional South Indian dosa, but the potato filling was replaced with a rich blend of vegetables, and the accompanying coconut chutney was delicately spiced and bright green.

We also sampled their rice porridge and their vadas, which were delightful.

The coffee was strong and hit us with the caffeine blitz in a refreshingly manic way. Renewed and refreshed, we climbed back on the cycles and took a circuitous route back to the Mass Residency. Many of the shops in Bangalore were closed for the holiday, and the sight of fellows covered in spatters of neon color was quite commonplace. It must be noted, however, that Bangalore is one of the most tame places to experience Holi. In many cities in North India, we would not have been able to wheel without battling huge crowds in the streets, and getting soaked ourselves with color.

We got back to the Mass Residency with just enough time for a little furious working on correspondence before meeting with our dear Mr. Kulkarni for a quick bite to eat and to thank him for his most gracious services at the India Bureau. Nikhil came in the door bearing a very exciting cardboard package. It was our Maui Jim’s. Maui Jim, as you, dear reader, have no doubt already read on our partnership page, is our sunglasses partner. However, through a series of miscomunications, we had not been able to pick them up before leaving for the trip. Since then we had been hoping to receive them in various cities, but each time fate stepped in the way.  Finally, we were able to arrange for a direct transfer between the Maui Jim India Bureau and AsiaWheeling’s similar entity.

With the solemn intensity of Indiana Jones recovering a long lost artifact, we tore into the packaging and removed two cases, which appeared to be made out of pressed bamboo, but had the weight of steel.  We opened the cases with gentle creaking noise and there they were, gleaming with perfection, nestled in tropical patterns. Some serious AsiaWheeling spectacles.

With the previous day’s unwelcome return of the starvation crazy hour, we decided we had better eat a couple of overpriced fruit salads and drink a few cups of Nescafe at the Cozy nook before heading out.

We then checked out of the hotel, stashed our bags in the sandy back room of the little straw beach shack that served as a front desk for the place, and unlocked the speed TRs. We pushed them toward the sea until the sand became crusty enough to ride, then hopped on board, pedaling down the beach, past all kinds of sunburned merrymakers, and dismounted once more to mash them through the expanse of mounded sand that separated us from the rest of Goa.

We headed away from crowded streets and tourist-centric businesses of Palolem Beach heading south, climbing up into the hills. The sun was bright and the road quite smooth.

Outside of town, we stopped for a more legitimate breakfast of dosas and vadas and began to truly lay into the Speed TRs. I was getting used to riding with the bend in my chain ring, and found that some gears could still provide me with smooth riding. The sun burned the mist off, and the temperature rose as we climbed up into the scrubby coastal hills.

As we rode farther from the sea, the touristy joints became fewer and fewer, and the more familiar Indian roadside stands began to dominate. At one point, we stopped for a bottle of water at a little cluster of painted yellow cinder block shops near the arched entrance to an invitingly remote mountain road. There was a large circular sign proclaiming this way to a “protected site.” What that meant, we were not quite sure. One thing we were sure of, however, was that we had begun to sweat so profusely that both of us looked like victims of a drive by water-gunning. After drinking two bottles of water, we purchased another two and strapped them to the backs of the speed TRs before heading into the protected zone.

We followed the road to a large temple, which warranted a short stop, before a right turn onto an even more remote mountain road called us deeper into the Goan high country. Now we were well into the farmland. The air was dry hot, and ground was cracked and speckled with crusty senescent vegetation. Despite this fact, the vast majority of the farms appeared to be rice paddies, indicating that Goa is not always as dry as we had the pleasure of encountering it.

Onward and upward we wheeled, taking the occasional side road which petered at a little farmstead, at which point we turned around, heading back to the main thoroughfare. By the time we crested the highest point in the road, it was well after noon, and time to turn back. We could not resist the temptation to take a brief detour onto one of the pounded dirt paths that wound its way between the smaller rice paddies.

At one point we found ourselves in a strange area where a matrix of new roads had been recently built, but it seemed the project had since then been aborted. It now lay as a naked grid-work of poured concrete, awaiting houses and businesses to flesh it out. All it got, that day at least, was two fellows on folding bicycles in Panama hats, rolling from the concrete matrix onto the packed earth farm paths and eventually back onto the main road, toward town.

We were able to stop for a quick Indian haircut at a roadside shack;  the haircuts did not result in the desert of flesh favored by barbers in Uttar Pradesh.

We had enough time for a late lunch/dinner at one of the myriad seaside restaurants that flank the white swath of Palolem Beach. It had been a hard wheel and we were tired and hungry. When I wandered to the back of the restaurant, I noticed how at home I had become with the Indian style of urinal. Here, as in many places, the bathroom featured a normal urinal, but with only half the usual amount of plumbing, with a working flusher, but a drain that just emptied onto the sandy concrete at one’s feet. Having been here for some time, I found myself easily engaging in the necessary dance to avoid peeing on one’s shoes and returned to find Scott in the restaurant, our meal steaming before him.

We dined on biryani, fried fish, palak paneer, dahl makhni, and tandoori roti. The sun sank toward the water as we discussed India, and the strange cocktail of stresses that it put on us.

As the sky became orange, we left and walked down the beach to arrange for a taxi that would drive us across the border into the state of Karnataka, of which Bangalore is the capital, and from which we would catch a bus. When we arrived to meet our driver, there were a thoroughly disconcerting number of bait and switches with different models of cabs and different drivers, as they presumably struggled to figure out which cab would accommodate our cycles. Being old hands at packing the speed TRs into even modest cabs, we assured them that any of the wide arrange of models that had trunks would work. Finally we all agreed on a particular driver-cab combo and were off.

Crossing the border into Karnataka required the payment of a little baksheesh to police who were controlling the border. Our cab driver had already alerted us to this, and, in fact, included it in the price of the cab. So Scott and I were none too surprised when he slowed the vehicle down as we approached border control, scrolled down his window, and handed a wad of cash to a cop in shiny aviator sunglasses.

It was night by the time we got to the bus station in Karwar. The bus would have no bathroom, so I dashed off to purchase snacks and urinate one last time, while Scott began negotiating with the bus operators to secure a safe spot for the speed TRs in the belly of the bus. The street vendor that I selected had plenty of biscuits, little bottles of fruit juice, and Magic Masala chips, but was short on change for the 12 rupees he owed me. So we negotiated a rate and he agreed to pay my change in bananas. Laden with biscuits and bananas, I made my way back to the bus where we climbed on to find it very clean and comfortable, equipped with bunks rather than seats, and while there was no A/C, we were able to open a long thin window to let in enough air to allow us to sleep.  The quarters were close, but with the exhaustion of the day, we were able to sleep soundly on the upper bunk double bed that had been reserved for us.

Before we knew it, we were back in Bangalore.

We awoke to the sound of the surf in our delightful little bungalow at Cozy Nook. Ours was a little stand-alone hut that hovered about three feet in the air on a set of stilts, and was built from all kinds of found materials – mostly second-hand bits of wood and plastic, with a number of plastic and canvas tarpaulins spread over the top.

Inside there were a few cobbled-together solutions meeting the need for cabinetry, and a large bed in the center, with a vast blotchy expanse of mosquito netting. There was a little outdoor bathroom tacked on the back with a cold water shower, a toilet, and a chipped green wash basin. The place was just dripping with character and quite comfortable. There was even a single outlet for charging our various machines.

We drank our first cup of coffee in the Cozy Nook restaurant. It was Nescafe, so it was decent, but nothing to write home about. Nescafe is sort of like the McDonald’s of coffee. It’s quite easy to find, and always can be relied on for consistent mediocrity. From there, we made our way to the cycles. It had probably been a poor decision, leaving them locked at the entrance to the beach. Certainly, the crowd of locals who formed to chat with us and ask the cost of the Speed TRs thought so. We just thanked goodness they were safe and sound. We asked for a breakfast joint recommendation only to find that there was no option in our current town for local breakfast food. It was too touristy. We would need to wheel to the next city over, about  four km away.

We were beginning to get hungry, and all that Nescafe on an empty stomach was beginning to get uppity, but four km on the Speed TRs seemed manageable, so we took off. Immediately, as I began to pedal, I noticed something was wrong with my bike. I looked down at my chain and grimaced as I saw what the issue was. It seemed that the ring had been quite ravaged by the baggage handlers at Go Air, leaving it bent to such a degree that the wobbling in the chain threatened to shift the rear gear with every rotation of the pedal.

This would need to be dealt with. But first: food. It was then that we realized we were also out of money.

The hunger began to lay in more strongly, as we wheeled in search of an ATM, the damage to my cycle fed into the downward cycle of blood sugar, no money in the wallet, and mounting despair. When we finally located an ATM, we were nearing the point of madness. I was able to get some money, and we should have just eaten at the nearby south Indian coffee house, but when we looked inside, the madness took hold, and we became scared that the place was not clean enough.

So we wheeled on. The next city we came to was filled with uniformed Indian school children, clogging the road, screaming at us, and scurrying to-and-fro in beige pleats. All of them, it seemed, were recently let loose for a lunch break, and we were barely able to wheel through the crowd. We did somehow, and finally made it the rest of the way through this city, but still were unable to find a restaurant that looked like it would not give us cholera. Both of us were becoming frantic and jittery. My stomach was a churning pit of coffee that sent electrical shocks through my body, and my grip on logic and reality was getting quite tenuous.

We turned around and decided to take a random turn through the midst of the crowd of children, toward a spot where a number of streams of traffic seemed to be originating, honking and belching smoke. We wheeled on while the children called out to us, one of them grabbing at my rear rack as we rode by. On the other side, we were able to find a very crowded and decidedly filthy restaurant. We were quite delirious by this point, and parking the bikes proved a harrowing experience, with shop keepers coming out and scolding us for parking, telling us to move on farther down the street. We finally found a spot; it elicited some minor complaints but not enough to raise the shop keeps from where they sat, so we locked the bikes and went into the restaurant.

It was crowded and steaming hot inside the long narrow space. No one seemed to be smiling and we were forced to yell over the clang and hiss of the kitchen. We sat down, but no one came to take our order. The other clientele frowned into their food, hitting us with darting scowls. I have no idea how long we sat there. It could have been three minutes or 30. But finally we just got up and left, climbed back on the cycles, and rode wordlessly back to the original restaurant we had seen near the ATM.

It proved to be delicious. We ate a giant meal of two dosas each followed by more cups of milky sweet coffee. The feeling of blood sugar returning to my system was glorious.

Back on the road, we decided to wheel north, through the beautiful Goan countryside.  We climbed over large hills, the tops of which were covered with senescent vegetation, and the cracked mud of long forgotten rice paddies.

This arid desolation was put in stark contrast with the deep green jungles that lay in the valleys spread out in the mists below us.  We took a few detours to explore the surrounding towns.

Very much unlike the town we had visited before breakfast, these were all tourist industry towns, sporting endless rows of little restaurants, guest houses, and liquor shops. Also of some interest was the prevalence of signs in Hebrew and Russian, indicating that tourists from such places were common here. The road quality had diminished greatly from the impressively smooth main road, and we clattered over potholes and stretches of course gravel, my wounded Speed TR performing admirably.

After a brief waypoint at a nearby beach, we pedaled back to the main road, which was refreshingly smooth. We followed this uphill for quite some time, until we reached a kind of arid highland plateau. The heat and the climb were getting to both of us, so we paused here to purchase refreshments from a bright blue concrete shop, and take stock of our situation.

We finally decided to turn back for the day, lest we be trapped on the other side of this great hill, with little want for the massive climb. So back we went.

It was certainly time to eat again, when we passed an interesting feminist restaurant/commune/shop. We decided to eat there, and support the cause.

We were far from disappointed at the decision. They served an interesting organic take on the classic Indian thali, with beet relish, and a rich fresh vegetable raita.

These were by far the freshest vegetables we had eaten in a meal for all of our time in India. It felt good to put something other than fried batters, potatoes, lentils, and rice into our gullets. Unbeknownst to us, I think the Indian diet was wearing on our systems, for this meal sticks out quite starkly in my mind as one that fueled and improved me significantly.

We wheeled the rest of the way back to Palolem Beach at a lazy pace, as we discussed the finer points of international marketing strategy after re-joining with our friend Sam, whom we had originally met in Cochin.