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.

Our flight to Goa was not until 3:00 pm, so we were able to indulge once again in the comfort of Win’s apartment, rising late in the day to be greeted by Win’s staff who were quite eager to make us a traditional Indian breakfast, followed by a few cups of that, now oh so familiar, sweet milky Indian coffee. Win had arrived home very late the night before, and though we had done our best to communicate to the servants that it would be okay for them to go home, the entire staff had stayed the night, setting up beds on the kitchen and living room floors. At one point I found myself apologizing profusely when in the middle of the night I had tripped over one of them on the way to find my cell phone charger.

We resisted departure as long as we could, feasting on the abundance of Internet, filtered drinking water, and cups of coffee which Win’s staff so generously gave to us.

When the time came, we hauled the bikes downstairs to the courtyard, where we began to pack them up.

We could not do this, however, until one of the security guards finished taking a ride around the building on the Speed TR. This he did with much gusto and a huge grin, taking quite a few victory laps on Scott’s bike, while I headed out along frontage road looking for a cab.

When I finally made it to the intersection, I found myself confronted with a fuming, deafening gridlock of black and yellow cabs, all honking and screaming at each other. Most of these had fares and were too locked into the mayhem for me to attempt to make contact and initiate bargaining. On the other side of the raging gridlock, I found a number of cabs that all seemed to be lorded over by a central character, a large fellow in the flowing white gown and cap which advertised his religion. He had a number of cabs and rickshaws. The cabs all seemed unable to go to the airport, and a rickshaw was too small to fit ourselves and our luggage. For one reason or another each cab driver I spoke to seemed unwilling to go to the airport. Finally I was able to find a driver in one of the small van taxis they call “Omnis” who seemed interested in driving us to the airport, and though I was making good progress in nonverbal communication with him, the white gowned fellow came over and began to play translator, taking the opportunity to work out some sort of profit-sharing deal with the driver. Soon we had agreed on a price, and our man was jamming the Omni into gear, suspension lurching and belts squealing forward into the steaming gridlock that separated us from Scott and the bikes.

Some 10 minutes of horn honking and traffic jam aggravating later, I pulled up to find Scott smiling at me from behind his sunglasses. All our bags were packed up and piled neatly in a corner. The staff had lined up to shake our hands, as the security guard who had ridden the bike started to give us the hard sell on why we should just leave the Speed TRs with him, since we were, after all, going back to America, where folding bicycles grow on trees.

Wrong on both accounts, we assured him. And with a tip of the Panama hats, we were back on the road. The van had no third gear, so the ride to the airport was very loud. But soon enough we made it. Negotiation of the domestic part of the Mumbai airport proved quite simple. It had been remodeled since we visited it during the pilot study, and it now gleamed with all the new wealth of India.

I went off in search of some Vadas to snack on while Scott waited in a vast and snaking line to take advantage of our free coffee coupons (Thanks Go Air). I was just returning when I heard Scott scream out in pain, “Aye! Aye! Aye!” It seems that just after his long wait was finally over, he was proudly returning with the scalding load when a small portly woman, in an attempt to traverse the massive the line, ducked and wove behind him, scuttling through Scott’s legs and popping up at precisely the right moment to spill boiling hot boiling milky brew all over the two of them. I hustled to grab napkins and Scott and the woman began a fierce bout of apologies.

Later on, Scott was running his arm under cool water. “We just can’t seem to execute a domestic Indian flight without some mishap,” he observed. Would it really be India if we could?

Onboard Go Air’s flight from Mumbai to Goa, we found some subtle increases in the pricing of on-board snacks compared to the Bangalore-to-Mumbai leg, but for the most part were once again quite impressed with the airline. We also had the great pleasure of sitting next to a beautiful young architect from Goa by the name of Anna, who was happy to sit in as a surrogate member of the AsiaWheeling advisory board for the flight, explaining to us that travel back to Bangalore would be much easier by bus, and showing us on a map how we could take a cab to another city in the nearby province of Karnataka, and catch a bus from there to Bangalore.

Very much in Anna’s debt, we exited the airplane into the fresh air of Goa, which we savored for only a second before being herded into a bus and transported to the airport’s interior. Goa is certainly a tourist destination. The airport was like a less organized, less expensive version of the one in Bali, with many tropical potted plants, beach imagery, and figurines depicting men carrying loads of coconuts and scantily clad women whipping their shawls around in the sea air. We couldn’t wait to do the same, so we quickly piled into a taxi and headed south toward our hotel, a place that had come highly recommended by our friends in Mumbai, by the name of Cozy Nook.

It was in a place called Palolem Beach, in the south of Goa. And when our driver finally got there, we were not only quite hungry but surprised to find that our hotel was only reachable by walking down the beach. Rather than deal with that on the cycles, we locked them to a pole with a large “no parking sign,” which was being widely ignored by the locals, and headed down the beach.

It was a bit of a trek, and gave us the chance to take in the world around us. It was a nice white sand beach, covered completely with inns and restaurants.  Everywhere we looked there were white people, mostly in the sort of hippy-esque Indian influenced garb that is oh so common among those post-army-service Israelis who seem to be spread all over India and south-east Asia, spending a little time traveling and relaxing after what was no doubt an extremely intense experience. These made up the majority of the vacationers, but the group was also spiced with large numbers of older, more affluent looking European and Australian types, bathing in the greenish brown opaque sea, playing Frisbee on the beach, or strolling and attempting to fend off the many begging stray dogs which scurried everywhere.

We were almost to the Cozy Nook when my stomach suddenly tensed into knots. I had forgotten my Ukulele back where we parked the bikes! “Sorry, Scott,” I said “You’ll need to haggle for the room and check in alone. I need to run back and see if it’s not too late to save my baby.” So I threw down my pack, took off the Panama hat, and began to sprint down the beach. A couple of stray dogs joined me at first but soon lost interest. My legs began to throb and demanded I slow down, but I refused them. Finally panting and wheezing, I scrambled up off the beach and across the concrete parking area, but my uke was nowhere to be seen.

My heart fell like a stone into a frozen abyss of defeat. How could I have been so stupid? How was I supposed to sit by the beach here in Goa and strum Jimmy Buffet’s Margarittaville without my trusty uke? What an idiot I was… Ah, cruel fate.

Just then I heard a fellow call over to me. It was our cab driver. He was sitting at a nearby Chai stand, sipping tea and in his hands… my ukulele!

I ran over to him with tears in my eyes and took the instrument. I looked down at it. Not so fast, I thought, there are still a few more places we need to go together.

We awoke, for what might easily turn out to be the last time during the entirety of the trip, separately, in our rather sprawling flat at the Diamond District Serviced Apartments. I could hear voices in the hall and walked out the door of my room to find Scott struggling once again to communicate with a group of three fellows who had appeared at our door. Somewhat earlier, it seems, Scott had woken, phoned down for breakfast, and these three men had arrived quite flabbergasted and confused. For you see, dear reader, at some point earlier that morning, while we still slumbered, some fellows from the serviced apartments had crept into our room and deposited two cups of coffee, a loaf of white bread, and a cylindrical Indian schoolchild’s food storage container filled with what later proved to be spiced omelet in the dining room.

Not for the first time, we found the presence of the fellows to be an uncomfortable one. They moped around the room, making strange gestures that were perhaps solicitations for tips, and spent much time looking at our belongings, at us, and at each other sheepishly. Finally one of them worked up the nerve to ask whether we’d like him to make toast. We happily agreed and attempted to emanate positive energy into the icy room while heartily laying into breakfast. We were making what we believed to be a concerted effort, but the fact that they had unlocked and entered our room while we were sleeping, needless to say, was also disconcerting, hampering our ability to connect with these people on a human-to-human basis. I doubt thievery was an appreciable threat, but our privacy certainly felt violated. And now, with the inarticulately justified presence of these fellows, we found it quite hard even to enjoy our now cold and many hours old breakfast. Considering this was the most expensive accommodation of the trip to date, why were we not basking in splendorous joy and luxury?

Though lines of communication were still quite frayed, in the time since the arrival of the service crew, we were able to order two more cups of coffee, which were made in some far away place and delivered in more Indian School children’s lunch equipment, appearing downstairs with all our luggage only some five minutes after the scheduled check out time, which in India is early.

We stowed our belongings in a spare room that seemed to play the role of servants’ quarters at the Diamond District Serviced Apartments, and soon found our man Nikhil wheeling his way across the sprawling interior courtyard of the Diamond District toward us on his Hindustan Hero bicycle. “I trust you have slept well?” he asked. All unauthorized entries aside, we had, and soon the street was whipping comfortably underneath us.

Nikhil needed to eat, so we stopped into a local South Indian coffee shop, and had another couple of cups while Nikhil dug into a huge pile of honeyed grains with dried fruit in them and a big puffy fried poori.

Our first waypoint was a local market district, which jostled and smoked beneath the stern facade of a looming Catholic church. We parked our bikes outside the church, where a large crowd of children soon gathered to ring the bells, shift the gears, and ask us where we were from.

By now we were completely used to this type of behavior and simply let it occur, making a mental note not to pedal too hard right after remounting the cycles. Inside the church, we watched as hordes of Indians walked through the well lit halls, some of them sporting a cross painted over their third eye, stopping occasionally at enclosed glass cases, pressing their hands against the glass, and peering in fiercely at the mannequin icons of saints inside, before closing their eyes and praying a bit.

Back in the market, we wandered around peering in at the various wares; some of the market was conventional shops, but much commerce took place in outdoor, mobile stalls, or laid out on large tarpaulins.

We called a waypoint during the stroll to purchase another bike lock, bringing AsiaWheeling’s grand total to two.  With newly doubled security, we piled back on the bikes toward the corner of Mahatma Ghandi Road and Brigade Road, where we were to meet the lovely Shivani Mistry, whose name, which may have come directly from an Ian Fleming novel, made us all the more intrigued.

She was suffering from some navigational and logistical troubles acquiring a cycle, but promised to be arriving shortly.

We sipped coffee at yet another startlingly posh (and dare I say escapist) recommendation of Nikhil’s, where we quite surprisingly ran into a couple of Brown University graduates, who were living and traveling in South India (escapism pays dividends sometimes). No sooner had we finished our coffee and chatting, than we found ourselves face to face with Ms. Mistry herself, armed with a flashy mountain bike, purportedly the personal cycle of the owner of the bike shop, which he had provided upon finding his rental supply depleted.  Photo below courtesy of Shivani Mistry.

Next order of business was finding a South Indian Coffee Shop to fix the starving problem, and throw a little more caffeine in the system. When cycling in hectic Indian traffic, I’ll take all the lucidity I can get.

We acquainted ourselves with Shivani over the meal, and spent some time showing off the many feats of The WikiReader.

The coffee shop was great. Serving slightly greasier than usual, but extra tasty dosas and vadas, plenty of coconut chutney, and strong sweet coffee. Perhaps even better than the substance was the decor, which featured a number of strange tilted mirrors, lots of hand-painted labeling, waiters in strange white and red traditional suits, with giant belt buckles resembling huge polished seat belts, and plenty of vintage posters from the Indian Coffee Board.

Back on the road, we found that although it was Ms. Mistry’s first time wheeling the Indian roads, she was quite the natural, with lightning fast reflexes, an open mind, and a knack for signaling her intent.

We made our way back across the city toward that flawed Diamond District, which we happily overshot, instead opting to explore the old Bangalore Airport.

We approached it on a semi-closed, palm-tree-lined road, and there we found the old airport itself to be completely closed down. Ms. Mistry happily rode up the handicapped access ramp and down the deserted walkway, while we looped through the parking lots.

Soon we saw our female compatriot re-emerging, somewhat flustered and grinning, followed by an Indian serviceman with a rifle. The armed man wobbled his head in a way that decidedly communicated “not okay for wheeling.” Fair enough.

Cycling back, we saw two eerie images adjacent to one another.  One public service announcement next to a biscuit ad made for quite an unsettling combination.

Traffic sped up, and we continued on.

After a brief stopover at Nikhil’s residence, a delightful apartment on a sleepy street near the old airport, we were back at the Diamond District Serviced Apartments, where we collected our belongings.

They had been moved around a bit, but still seemed to contain all our important or valuable belongings. My ukulele had quite obviously been removed, de-tuned, and replaced in its case, but “no harm no foul,” as they say.

Nikhil began a series of phone calls with his cab company of choice, inquiring as to why the 6:00 pm cab that he had arranged for us was nonexistent, while we collapsed the speed TRs and discussed the finer points of AsiaWheeling and Yoga with Ms. Mistry.

It was not until around 7:00 pm that our cab finally arrived. The driver immediately began to demonstrate negative characteristics, attempting to re-haggle an already more than reasonable fare, showing a total lack of connection to the machine he was piloting (marked initially by an inability to open the trunk), and generally exhibiting glassy eyed dopiness. We were a little worried, but thought back to that old Jerry Seinfeld bit: “after all, the man is a professional,” so we took the keys from him, opened the trunk ourselves, and loaded the cab.

We waved goodbye to both Mr. Kulkarni and Ms. Mistry as the cab eased its way somewhat confusedly around and out of the compound. I must say here that we, for the first time on this trip, must publicly bestow the AsiaWheeling stamp of disapproval on the Diamond District Serviced Apartments. A lack of understanding in the departments of service, communication, and price performance, left us with a resoundingly sour taste in our mouths. A taste made only more sour when we found ourselves having to notify our driver that though it was night on the unlit side streets of Bangalore, he had neglected to activate his headlamps. The taste grew downright acidic when the fellow took a startlingly long time to locate the controls to activate the lamps.  We were now on full alert.

It was no more than 10 minutes into the drive, when our driver pulled into an intersection, while merging, and crunched into a small blue Tata that was driving in the lane to our left. Scott and I thanked God as our dumbfounded driver successfully avoided a concrete barrier in the center of the street, and popped the car over the edge of a walkway, narrowly avoiding a large river-like open sewer, finally navigating to the side of the road, as a hissing of air concurred with the right side of the car lowering a few inches closer to the ground. At the end of this, he turned to us with the same glassy eyes and said “tire puncture.”

“Damn straight it was a tire puncture!,” we voiced in exasperation. And a whole simultaneous harrowing experience to boot! As the driver got out of the car, and began furiously arguing in Kannada with the fellow he had just crunched into, we bust into action. No one appeared to be injured, and the damage to the two cars appeared to be minor enough. You see, dear reader, we had a plane to catch in less than two hours and we were in the middle of the smoky highway during rush hour at night in Bangalore. Scott began to work on flagging a new cab, and I called Nikhil. No answer.

In the meantime, a large cop in a wide brimmed hat, one side of which was pinned to his head by his badge, was pacing and surveying the scene. Finally, I was able to ring Nikhil, and the phone was passed from the cop to our driver to a fellow in a black shirt who had recently joined our small crowd in the middle of the highway, seemingly with the sole intention of stirring the pot. I’ll never be quite sure what they were all talking about, because just then Scott hailed a cab, and we began the hurried process of haggling and moving our luggage out of the wounded and crumpled cab.

Much to our delight and relief, we secured an even better deal with this cabby, who appeared quite alert, drove a registered airport taxi, and was all ready to rejoin traffic and help us make our flight, when the traffic cop came over. Our cabby began to look very worried, and spoke to us in whispered tones… “There was no accident… This police man. Nothing happened. Okay? 100 rupees there will be no accident.”

So there it was: the first bribery solicitation of AsiaWheeling. The total was about $2.50. Scott and I looked at each other, I looked at my watch, and we handed over the rupees.  Talk about innovation in Bangalore…

Back on the road, the intensity of what had just happened began to wash over us. Our new driver darted expertly through the traffic, but we were rattled, and with each move I clenched the ukulele like a long lost friend and babbled, unloading my anxiety in a verbal torrent on Scott.

We reached the airport, and paid our driver, rushing to the counter, and pacing like crazy people, both tortured by a terribly vocal need to urinate. In order to enter the airport and reach the bathroom, though, we needed to get our tickets, which meant waiting in line. What seemed like an eternity later, we were exiting the bathroom. And heading towards the Go Air Counter.

After congratulating the Go Air employees on one of the best attempts to upsell us to business class that we have ever had the pleasure of experiencing, we were given free coupons to get some hot tea from a nearby vendor. As we drank the tea, we finally began to relax.

Security was surprisingly tight, though we were able to stroll through sipping our tea. All our unchecked belongings were thoroughly inspected, detected, and returned to us bearing numerous stamps. We then made our way into the terminal. It seemed so clean and organized, with many little tidy western looking shops, free drinking water, and some delightful and shockingly expensive restaurants. When our flight turned out to be delayed, we decided to indulge in a little of the over-priced food, digging greasily into big plates of parathas and gravy. Beer was being sold at over $10 a can, so we sorrowfully refrained.  That was one culinary escape we couldn’t quite afford to make.

As the night wore on, the flight became increasingly delayed, and with it our fellow passengers restless. By 11:00 pm, though there had been no alert to queue for boarding, many people were crowding around the ticket counter. The stench of anger was beginning to fill the room. Meanwhile we were happily working on correspondence, drawing in the kind of zen approach that business travelers acquire in order to deal with the American air travel system.  About the time that we were taking a break from correspondence to chat with a segment director for Slumdog Millionaire, the crowd became quite angry, necessitating the dispatch of armed guards.

When the equipment finally landed and boarding appeared to be beginning, we were quite flabbergasted to find that the crowd was refusing to board. Their argument, it seems, was that the plane was so delayed, that they were so wronged, that at this point they would rather not board, and fight on. Having been hardened by the American system, and quite used to absurd and offensive delays, we made our way through the crowd of furious Indians, feeling not unlike scabs, and somehow simultaneously chagrined and guilt-ridden, we boarded our flight for Mumbai.

When we landed in Mumbai, we were happy to find our cycles and baggage arrived as well, all in fine shape. We were unhappy to find that the prepaid taxi counter had closed down, necessitating the arrangement of more unregulated transport. As we made our way toward the crowd of taxis and drivers that were lazing in the heat of the Mumbai night, we soon attracted a great crowd of fellows around us, engaging in some truly despicable maneuvers, all designed to induce panic and confusion.

However, we had been through so much that day that we were completely unflappable.  Scott responded to the crowd that encircled him, all speaking at once in frantic tones, by squealing the old playground vocalization “Nananananananana!,” closing his eyes, and pushing the cart forward.   I turned to the fellow next to me who had been screaming, touching my arms and chest, and attempting to whisk my luggage cart away toward his taxi. I put my hand on his shoulder: “Relax,” I said. “Everything is okay.”

We made our way over to the cluster of taxis and began fiercely bargaining. By now it was about 3:00 am. Finally, we found a likely 16-year-old young man who was willing to drive us the 20 minutes to our man Win’s house in Bandra for a price that might be considered merely over-paying, rather than being robbed blind, and we took off.

Not long into the drive, we realized that our man spoke no English, and also had no idea where we were going. But in a shining act of navigational prowess, Scott used some notes he had made from a previous phone call with Win to navigate us close enough to his building that we could ask a fellow who was wandering the streets in a long flowing white robe for the remaining directions.

We were quite thrilled to finally make our way into Win’s luxurious apartment. The journey had taken us to the extremes of experience and back again into the comfortable womb of good fortune. Win had arranged for his staff to leave meals out for us, and we happily dug in. The fates had made a concerted effort to keep us out of Mumbai, but we had foiled them. Here we were. We looked out over one of the biggest cities in the world, re-playing the intensity of our day. Part of us was exhausted, but another part was wired on the madness.

We made it. That was the last thought I had before exhaustion took hold and I collapsed into the clean, sweet smelling sheets.

Well, dear reader, as you may have noticed, we’ve been wheeling around Bangalore with our dear India Bureau Chief, Nikhil Kulkarni, conducting a special report on entrepreneurship and innovation in that most interesting Indian city. And while we’ve been sharing those reports with you, we are also quite aware that many of you rely on AsiaWheeling as a source of data on interesting Asian foods. And, as you won’t be surprised to hear, we’ve been doing plenty of research on that as well here in Bangalore.

In fact, before we share some of those experiences with you, it might be relevant to mention an interesting phenomenon that we have been experiencing while eating and relaxing with our friends living in India. Namely, that many of them practice something I will define here as culinary escapism.

Culinary escapism, for the purposes of this piece of correspondence, is the propensity of an individual to pursue culinary experiences with the aim of escaping from his or her current surroundings. This can manifest itself in a few ways, but in AsiaWheeling’s experience it almost always means expensive food. Be it Indian or of some other ethnic variant, we have found that all of our friends in India use meals as a means of temporarily relieving themselves of the many stressful jolts that spice this country.

We, here at AsiaWheeling, being in pursuit of the extremes of experience and generally agreeable fellows, have been happy to follow suit and engage in, even foot the bill for, some quite flagrantly escapist meals. So, dear reader, you may find the following series of images to be startling in their lavish nature. We did too.

We have little need for culinary escapism here at AsiaWheeling, since the local cuisine refreshes itself every few days, and we are, after all, in search of, among other things, presence and lucidity within our surroundings (hence all the coffee).

Nonetheless, this phenomenon is worth taking a second to discuss, because it plays a very important role in both the lives of wealthy expatriates and anyone else here who can afford to eat food from a different culture. I imagine most of the non-immigrant clientele at an Ethiopian restaurant in Boulder, Colorado are practicing (an albeit diluted form of) culinary escapism as well. I dare say even many of you out there, dear readers, engage in a little bit of it while reading AsiaWheeling.  Of course, one may even argue that AsiaWheeling’s entire gastronomic adventure is an extended bout of culinary escapism.

What makes it so particularly interesting here in India is its prevalence and its intensity. As we dine with our friends here, we are without exception, also engaging in some of the most extraordinary escapism I have ever seen.

Is it India? Is it our friends? Likely a little of both, but while our budget for Bangalore lies in tattered rags at our feet, rejoice with us in the myriad of interesting places where we joined our friends to seek shelter from the reality outside.

All around town, we had been seeing billboards promoting Ask Laila, a mobile, local search engine.  Now we were lucky enough to be ascending the staircase in an office building on one of Bangalore’s happening roads to the very office of this firm.  Nikhil, our Bureau Chief, checked us in at the front desk and we entered a room of work spaces.

It was well past 6:00 pm on a Friday, and the engineers were hard at work in front of computer terminals running command line scripts.  We were warmly greeted by Ask Laila’s CTO, Birla and his team, and seated in a corner conference room.

He began by explaining that Ask Laila was a tool for individuals to find local resources, such as hardware stores, plumbers, and restaurants, from their mobile phone on the go.  The service, he explained, is also popularly accessed from the web, as 60% of web search traffic is looking for local results.  Ask Laila can also be used as a tool for business owners, who can claim their listing, keep it up to date, and populate it with information that may ingratiate it in the eyes of potential customers browsing lists of results.  In these ways, Birla explained, the model is comparable to Yelp in the U.S.

However, as we learned from Indus, Birla reiterates that creating something like Ask Laila in India isn’t as simple as porting over the Yelp model.  For example, in the United States, one can purchase a vast index of businesses, addresses, and phone numbers akin to a digital yellow pages to incorporate into a local search engine.  In India, this did not exist until Ask Laila painstakingly located, called, and catalogued the businesses into their own proprietary database.  Furthermore, while there is a large group of users searching on their mobiles, as well as searching on the web, it’s more difficult to reach out to business owners to populate their profiles and keep them current.  Such shopkeepers and business owners are not generally web savvy, and especially outside urban areas do not have immediate access to a computer.

The technology must also accommodate users whose first language is almost certainly not English, which creates non-standard spellings of words as search inputs.  For example, the name Nandani, a girl’s name in India, may be spelled in a variety of ways illustrated below.

Ask Laila’s team has created a series of rules for grouping these non-standard spellings of words to produce the intended search result for the user, even if the spelling is not exact.  This allows people to search naturally and find what they are looking for.  Additionally, this series of relationships has not been catalogued as of yet and could prove both useful for other web search businesses, as well as fascinating for linguistic studies in the country.

But the tall tasks Ask Laila has had to take upon itself have placed it in a rarefied competitive position. Ask Laila now powesr mobile local search for AirTel, one of the India’s (and the world’s) biggest mobile phone providers.  This partnership has allowed Ask Laila to scale its technologies and optimize its search rules, like the one illustrated above, with a vast number of users.

The engineers at Ask Laila were sharp as tacks, and impressed us both with their understanding of the business and product, as well as their love of cycling.  At the onset of the company, they bragged that 50% of the employees cycled to the office, as it was much faster than facing traffic in a car, bus, or motorcycle.

After learning about their projects in greater depth, we bid farewell and safe cycling to the team and set off on the road for dinner.