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.

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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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.

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 discovered a new and quite welcome philosophy prevailed at the Hotel Femina with regard to check out times. Here, the rule was that checkout occurred exactly 24 hours after check in. This worked perfectly for us, since we had an overnight train to Cochin that evening, but would be free to leave our things in the hotel room, and use it to clean up after the day’s wheel.

We breakfasted at a south Indian coffee shop, which we quickly found was a local institution. Its interior was well lit by skylights, and it was crowded with many, many people ripping into vadas, idilis, and dosas.

And well staffed by uniformed and quickly moving servers. The manager of the shop quickly noticed and greeted us, showing us to a table that had been vacated just seconds before. Our server, perhaps the only one in all of our travels in India who was a female, wiped our table down with water and an open hand.

We ordered a couple of idli and vada, a few dosas, and cup after cup of scrumptious South Indian coffee. Feeling refreshed, and quite content to be once again in a land of large portions, we hit the streets.

We wheeled north into the city, bouncing our way over crumbling concrete streets, which dissolved from time to time into gravel, dirt and sand. Our first waypoint would be a temple complex in the north of the city, but we were unsure of the exact route.

We knew that once we got close, we would be able to see the thing looming in the distance and chart from there, but first we needed to traverse the five or so kilometers of city, which lay in a tangled patchwork of poorly maintained streets between us and the northern outskirts.

We called a waypoint to consult a local street coffee vendor and sample his wares. Before we could even order coffee, we had a attracted a large crowd, all of whom were men dressed in a kind of man skirt called a lungi, most of whom where silently scrutinizing the speed TRs with hands crossed behind their backs.

One emerged from the crowd, explaining to us that he was the manager of a painting operation, which was at work next door slathering the interior of a shop with electric orange enamel. He asked us to survey his men’s work, and insisted on buying us coffee (which we nervously drank from a couple of sticky communal glasses).

He then commenced a long chain of introductions, first introducing us to  his team of laborers, followed by most of his extended family, who, for one reason or another, all seemed to be walking by at that time.

All the while, the crowd of people standing around us was growing larger and larger. They were ringing the bells on the Speed TRs and clicking the shifters. When we finally had gotten through the pleasantries and began asking directions to the temple, we hit a roadblock in communications, culminating with the painting manager insisting that he would travel with us on his motor bike to the temple. We did our very best to decline this offer graciously, tried to pay for our coffee, thanked the giant crowd for their kind attention, and remounted the cycles.

Through a system of extemporaneous field commands, we were able to make our way out of the city and into the farmland that encircles Trichy. Strangely enough, the roads actually seemed to improve out here, and as we rode, we waved and helloed with everyone we passed, young and old, even if they were in the distance, operating a piece of farm machinery. Speaking of the distance, there, in it, was the temple. Looming tall and ornate in the hazy pollution. We were certainly heading in the wrong direction, but we now knew where it was, and that was an important step.

We briefly entertained the idea of cycling along the outskirts of the city in order to reach the temple, but as it turned out, all roads lead into Trichy,  so we had to ride back into the city, in order to get out of it on the northeast side rather than the northwest. By now, we were beginning to know our way around, and made short work of the crumbling streets, sending up our own clouds of the red sandy soil of Tamil Nadu.

Suddenly a man ran out into the street, eyes wild, and waving his hands in the air at us as if to say “Stop the show! Hold everything!” We dutifully brought the speed TRs to a halt next to him, where he began to scream to us. “A great man! Only one great Man!” He then violently pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to show us a tattoo on his arm.

“Only one great man! M.G. Ramachandaran.” The tattoo was of a somewhat blurred male head with sunglasses. “One!” he screamed again, holding up one finger, “Only one Great Man!”

“We non-verbally agreed with him, and repeated the name, M.G. Ramachandaran. Upon hearing this he most vigorously shook both of our hands and we were off wheeling again. The extremes of experience indeed.

Here, dear reader, you might be interested to learn: MG Ramachandaran, or MGR as he is more colloquially known in Tamil Nadu was an actor, film producer, and politician. From 1977 until 1987 he was the Minister of Tamil Nadu. For more info, I highly recommend the wikipedia article on this fellow. We found it quite engrossing when we devoured it on the wikireader.

Back on the road, we found our way onto what seemed more like the correct route, marked by much more intense traffic, and a great number of tour buses. Like tributaries into some great river, we channeled from road to road, until we finally found ourselves joining a boiling mass of all types of traffic to cross a great bridge over a large dried out lake.

So intense was it that on the other side, we decided to stop for another cup of delightful South Indian coffee, and some small chocolate flavored shapes, designed no doubt by some chemist to remain unmelted even in the boiling south Indian heat.

Refreshed by our coffee break, we bid farewell to the small crowd which had once again formed around the Speed TRs, and pedaled toward the temple, which loomed larger and larger in the distance.

When we gained on it, we found the place to be much more of an elaborate conglomeration of structures than anticipated, with many ornate gates and sub-complexes.  I’ll let the photos below speak for themselves.

Wheeling around the complex proved to be laden with obstacles and activity.

Back on the road, it was nearing time to call it quits, lest the exertion and the intensity of the sun induce the kind of fatigue that brings with it imprecise and dangerous wheeling habits.  We looped back, passing schools and byzantine village paths.

To return to the city though, we needed to wrangle once again with some 5km of tangled, crowded, and crumbling roads.

At first, we found ourselves stuck in a massive traffic jam, sandwiched between giant buses, cargo trucks, and auto rickshaws in a great cluster of gridlock, but with our more nimble steeds, we were able to slowly make progress where others could not, and soon we had found our way to a great flyover, which allowed us to soar over the city on well paved, elevated, startlingly empty highway.

Why were the other hoards of traffic not taking this route as well? We may never know. But it allowed us to make very short work of the return. Taking us directly to the train station: an important waypoint for later that evening.

And from there, it was a short 5 minute wheel back to the hotel.

We enjoyed the last bits of our 24-hour stay at the Hotel Femina, lounging and working or correspondence.  The battery backup power supply provided ample current to support the blogging session.

As the sun set, and once again, the street vendors lit up their hissing gasoline lanterns, we climbed on our cycles, fully loaded down with gear, and made our way to the station. Our train to Cochin was easy to find, and in stark contrast to our experiences of India on the pilot study, essentially on time.

As the engines started up, and the giant iron snake began to hiss and squeal its imminent departure, we hurried to purchase some Lays Magic Masalla flavored chips (very highly recommended), some Indian spicy fried lentil snacks called Bhel Puri, and a few packets of Good Day Cashew biscuits.

Now, dear reader, I must note, we had no plan for how to deposit all our luggage onto the train. And as we struggled to enter the 3rd class A/C compartment fully loaded with packs and cycles, we made quite a spectacle of ourselves. Bubbling spurts of Tamil and Malayalam punctuated with the word “cycle” followed us everywhere we went. When we found our seats, there was certainly no place to store the cycles and almost too little space for our packs. Luckily, our fellow bunk-mates were quite friendly, assuring us that we would figure it out, and inviting us to sit down. The two fellows were traveling together to Kerala, and were just finishing a vast meal that had been packed by one of their wives. Seeing our sorry stash of Magic Masala chips and Good Day Biscuits, they began to quite vehemently offer us some of their food.

We, of course declined, though it looked very good. They countered with even more vehement offerings, and assurances that they were quite full (which I believe they actually were… it was a huge meal) and began to refer to a newspaper wrapped, twine-tied packet of “surplus chapati.” Well, I’ve never been one to look a surplus chapati in the mouth, so we accepted, found them to be warm, slightly crisp and some of the best chapati of our lives, and began to relax into conversation with these two fine blokes.

Soon a fellow introducing himself as the compartment mechanic, came over, followed by another who after some misunderstandings we confirmed to be describing himself as the Ticketeer. The mechanic offered us a solution to the cycle storage problem. For a small tip, he would allow us to store the cycles in a pile by the rest rooms at the very end of the train where, there being no further cars, the rear door was replaced by a the kind of roll-down security door used to close down shops in Greenwich Village at night.

This seemed like a good solution, so we did so and returned to find the Ticketeer still waiting, harboring little interest in our tickets, but much in our story. We chatted with him about AsiaWheeling and about his previous life as a field hockey champ until he was called away by the arrival of more passengers, namely two young water filter moguls, who demanded masala dosas and chatted with us late into the night about the Indian water filter business. Let me assure you, dear reader, the Indian water filter market is doing just fine.

As the train rattled on into the night, our bunk mates began to call their families to wish them goodnight. They then dutifully passed the phones to us, where on the other end I found myself chatting with the very small and adorable voice of Indian school-girls, who explained to me in English that she liked to sing, and that she was 10 years old. Finally, when we had all said goodnight — our bunkmates, their families, the Ticketeer, the water filter guys, the mechanic, and the drunk fellow who was seen frequently walking back and forth between the bathroom and his seat, we removed our shoes and set up the bunks. It was time to sleep.

And as the train rattled on into the night out of Tamil Nadu and into Kerala we slept the sleep of those who, more foolish, might think the deck was full of aces.

Our last morning in Malaysia began with a visit to the restaurant that had produced the delightful Nasi Lamak and coconut rice pancakes that Smita had brought back for us the previous morning.

The place turned out to be a splendid little roadside stall, a few plastic table s with an outdoor kitchen, a crack squad of fellows, yelling at each other, and some very serious dedication to the speedy delivery of Indian-Malay grub. It was Chinese New Years Day, and the city was pretty deserted.

Most of the clientele there seemed to have a celebratory Sunday out with the family feel. The coffee was incredible. The food was as good or better than we had remembered it. Ah, KL.

So splendid was the place, in fact, that we were tempted to linger there for some time longer than scheduled. Long enough, in fact, that we were rushing to purchase a few snacks at a local wholesale grocer, and wheel back in time to pack our things up for the cab ride to the airport.

We collapsed the speed TRs in the parking garage at Smita’s residence, taking longer than usual, as we were for the first time, using a set of foam protectors which Tan from My Bike Shop had provided us . Meanwhile, Smita sprung to action arranging and negotiating with the cab company. We were sad to be saying goodbye to Malaysia and KL in particular. Kuala Lumpur had earned a firmly applied asiawheeling stamp of approval. But the open road and the wonders of India beckoned, so we bid Smita a fond farewell, and off we went.

Our AirAsia flight departed from the Low Cost Carrier Terminal, which was some distance from the airport proper. The entire terminal, it seemed, was there primarily for AirAsia flights, and we struggled some time to find, in rather low light and among what must have been nearly a hundred AirAsia counters (some for check in, some for baggage, some merely staffed for the sake of staffing) the appropriate counter for our flight to Trichy. We were finally able to find our counter, which was behind another seemingly random security checkpoint, and made all the more obvious by the large line of Indians, sporting lungis and saris, which poured out from a small counter, that may have at one point proclaimed check-in for the flight to Trichy, but now just displayed a 404 Firefox error message.

Most of the line turned out to not be a line, just people standing around chatting, so we were able to work our way quickly to the front, where, in an act of great kindness, redeeming them from all sour feelings over miscommunicated departure times, minute portions, and confusing service personnel, AirAsia waved the “sports equipment fee” for our speed TRs, marking them as merely fragile luggage and sending us, smiling, over to the luggage loading booth, where we patiently waited for a group of young children to climb off the baggage conveyor belt, where they had been most violently enjoying themselves.  Where were their mothers at a time like this?

Luggage dispatched, we headed into the terminal and joined another large group of Indians masquerading as a queue, but were in reality, just chatting and passing the time.

After eating a few shapes, we perused the airport bookstore, which was chock full of business-guru books for middle managers like “25 Sales Habits of Highly Effective Salespeople,” as well as a selection of unsettling magazines.

After shuffling around in the waiting hall looking for power and discussing the feasibility of a high-design beverage business, we boarded the flight and were soon airborne.

As an American, one assumes international flights should be long.  So we were quite surprised when only a couple hours later we arrived in India.

Indian customs proved to be a painless and quick affair, consisting mostly of head wobbling, and then we were set free into the baggage area, where we were to spend the next couple hours, tortured by thirst, and waiting as a poorly designed, bent, and crumbling luggage conveyor suffered through many,  many bags.

The machine seemed to have been designed for maximum impact, taking the luggage and first hoisting it up a long ramp, only to send it tumbling down a steep but grippy conveyor which would halt from time to time, sending the luggage on it tumbling under its own momentum, end over end, crashing down to ground level again.

We watched with bated breath, hoping that the cycles could handle the descent. Our bags slowly arrived, tumbling harmlessly down the spout, but the cycles were nowhere to be found. We paced and waited out the agonizingly slow process. Finally we saw our cycles begin to climb the conveyor, then the system stopped. It seems part of the cycle must have been caught in the machinery, or perhaps would not fit through some bottleneck in the interior of the system. Whatever it was, it was in our great favor, as the attendants finally, got up from where they had been sitting observing the goings on, and climbed into the interior of the machine to retrieve the Speed TRs, laying them at our feet, safe and sound.

The airport was tiny, sporting only a short strip outside for both pick-up and dr0p-off. After changing our Ringgit into Rupees at a truly predatory rate, we found chartering a ride into Trichy reasonably easy.  Drivers were plentiful, and, of course, the Ambassador was spacious.

As we drove, Scott selected a hotel from the list in the Lonely Planet, and our driver made short work of the journey.  With all the swerving and honking, we were reminded that we were definitely back in India.

At first the Hotel Femina seemed reticent about showing us the room before we paid. This was, of course, unacceptable, but after some hemming and hawing outside, and consultation with the locals about other options for lodging in Trichy, they relented and showed us a roomy unit with its own private balcony and a serviceable bathroom. “Oh good, a shower and a little sit in the Condor’s Nest,” we thought, thinking back to the many fine hours we had spent on balconies and porches in Indonesia. So we pulled the trigger.

With lodging out of the way, we unfolded the speed TRs and took to the street, finally getting some much needed water, locating a much needed Automatic Teller Machine, and indulging in some incredibly affordable and much needed Indian food. All the while, as we wheeled from waypoint to waypoint, I found myself startled at the degree to which India was. Everywhere I looked there were people, transacting, yelling, sounding horns, working, chatting, spitting, urinating, littering, or just sitting and passing time.  At every corner, Tamil men would question us about the bicycles and interact in all manners of communication.

The traffic was much slower than any we had yet experienced, consisting of mostly auto rickshaws and large noisy buses. Trichy, it seemed, was a transit city, and as night fell, it did not let up one bit. Street lights flickered on, and street vendors lit up hissing gas lanterns, and the city just kept churning.

And it was loud. Rickshaws, buses, bikes, and people, everyone was honking, screaming, and clanging bits of metal together. The traffic whipped up a dust that clung my sweaty skin, and the smoke from engines burning oil, the spicy scent of street vendors stirring great pots of boiling liquid, and the sickening sweet smell of the open sewers all blended together into an invigorating potpourri.

Ah, India. The extremes of Experience at last.

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Our third morning at the Hutton Lodge began with us packing up our belongings and stashing them in the staff room at the hotel. Our mission for the day was to wheel south toward a much discussed snake temple.

It was, rumor told, filled with pit vipers that had come to the temple of their own accord (tired of the monotony of life in the jungle perhaps), where they were promptly sedated by a Chinese monk by the name of Chor Soo Kong, using a special blend of incense rumored to turn the deadly poisonous vipers into docile wall ornaments.  We pictured a darkened room billowing with clouds of fragrant and intoxicating smoke.  On the cold, clay ground, we envisioned gigantic pit vipers, their bodies arching and slowly writhing as if entranced by the burning herbs.  Get too close, we thought, and they may spit poison into our eyes and strike with vicious fury.  Sounded like the kind of place that might make a good waypoint, so off we went, wheeling hard southward.

We made our way down the coast, where we were soon able to leave the highway, and ride on a delightful wooded side-path, which snaked in between the highway and the straits of Malacca.

Our ride took us past a number of strange settlements and construction projects. When the hunger hit, we found ourselves outside a rather posh looking mall in a suburban district, and made our way inside to find sustenance.

We wandered the mall, looking for food, and spending quite a bit of time in a dried snacks shop, where I had the great misfortune of sampling a salted prune that rang throughout my mouth with a most vile flavor that refused dilution no matter how much water I drank.

An overpriced, but thankfully large meal of chicken and rice, and a cup of Joe at the local Old Town White Coffee shop later, we were back on the cycles with renewed energy on our mission for the snake temple.

We stopped at a large Chinese temple, which proved not to contain any snakes. Rather, we found an old man inside who directed us in half-words of English toward the water. He assured us that our destination was “na fa.” And though we were almost certain that we had completely failed in communicating anything to him about the snake temple, we decided it would not hurt to follow his vehement gesticulations in the direction of the sea.

We were glad we did, since, though there was no snake temple to be found, there was a large fishing dock, where men unloaded piles of glistening fish and a fellow was operating a strange garbage transport vehicle, which emitted plumes of blue smoke as it grunted up 45 degree inclines.

Back on the road, we decided to dart into the interior of the island, away from the sea in search of the temple.

Again and again, we would stop to buy water from a merchant of some kind, or at the very least, sweet soda served in a plastic bag.  It was quite hot, and we were sweating hard.  He or she would direct us very clearly toward somewhere in the midst of this vast industrial park. But each time, we were unsuccessful. We did enjoy a fine tour of the airport, and the local Penang free trade zone, but alas, no snakes.

We were enjoying a can of “100 Plus”, the local energy drink, when in desperation we asked a local Tamil truck driver who was refueling and purchasing snack food at a local convenience store one last time for directions. His response was so ridiculously hard to interpret, and spiced so heavily with head wobbling and the phrases “so simple” and “no anyway place” (which we took to mean one-way road) that we were torn between bursting into laughter and dutifully heeding his directions. So we decided to simply do both, and, low and behold, we found ourselves arriving at the elusive place.  We gave silent thanks to the Tamil driver and his wonderfully peculiar way of communication, and in we went.  We braced ourselves for the dozens of snakes writhing entranced on the clay floor, and the holy men who would have the no-doubt thankless task of sedating them.

I’ll be honest, the snake temple is nothing to write home about.  It seems as though the architects of this experience had read neither One Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights (كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة‎), nor had they considered consulting the temple’s design with children raised on Chuck Jones cartoons.

But there were some very drugged snakes inside, and plenty of incense, though not the billows we had expected. AsiaWheeling after all is about the journey, not the waypoints themselves.

So let it suffice to say: we were quite underwhelmed with the whole experience, and will dispense with all mention of the snake temple from here forth.  Back on the road, we wheeled hard back toward the city; traffic was thickening, and we were eager to get home before dark.

Famished from the day’s wheel, we made our way to another emergent-style Penang restaurant.  Scott had a powerful lust for fried oysters.  Coupled with egg, they made for a delicious appetizer.

Followed by banana leaf rice (pulut inti)…

and a healthy dose of chicken.

Now there would be just enough time to say our goodbyes to the friends we had made at the Hutton Lodge, take a few minuets to work furiously on correspondence before piling, cycles and all, into a taxi cab and heading for the bus depot.  The office was a hardscrabble collection of transport brokers, one with large tattoos on her arm that meant “nothing”.

We spent that night in an anti-anxiety medication induced half sleep, propped up on loudly patterned seats in a squeaking and yawing overnight bus to Malacca.

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