We have spent the last week or so travelling around the south of India. The people are friendly, maybe less obsessed with the bike which is great… The food less spicy than I was hoping… And, at least on the west coast, a little more aware of the environment and keeping it clean… Clearly a big job still lays ahead for them though…
Riding through as many national parks and elevated areas as we could, we have seen some beautiful tea plantations (acres and acres, something like our vineyards at home), beautiful scenery and some wild elephants…. Completely wild… No sanctuary where tourists can ride them or clean them… Wild… It was really cool!
It’s so much nicer riding through the hills and is always a harsh jolt back to reality when we find ourselves back on main roads… I don’t think I need to go on about that anymore… My uncontrollable screaming at a bike who was unnecessarily smashing his horn this evening made me (and him!) realise that I may be loosing the plot so I’ll keep that to myself… The amount of middle finger jabs, swear words (sorry Mum) and violent kicks out to cars threatening to kill us is also another thing I am trying to find my inner peace with … It’s a challenge 😁😊😇🙏🏻😑
Mysore is where we are now…actually the first proper city we have been in. It’s actually pretty chilled, nothing much to see except a palace which is really pretty. There are more bars here which is nice 😊. The bars still make you feel like you are a dirty scrap of society that doesn’t deserve to be seen. All the bars so far in India are underground or on a roof away from the public in a dark dirty corner with no sunlight … They are a little better here, in the state of Karantaka… Some have a bit of sunlight allowed through some of the windows, but still pretty dingy…. We are however also a little desperate so we persevered and found a place which had sunlight AND fresh air and a SHIT load of westerners with the same scared vacant look that we had, grasping their gin/vodka/beer like it may evaporate. It was all very nice but I got a bit peeved when I was told that my daiquiri would be made with ice cream…
‘Ice cream??!! Can you make it without?’
‘No’
‘Really?! Ice cream?! Don’t worry about it then’
Even after a visit to the bar to personally speak with the bartenders and ask them if they could alter the recipe, I was rejected… I may have been dry for 3 weeks by now, but ice cream in a daiquiri?! I’ll skip thanks 😉
Anyway…. Patience… This is what India is trying to teach me!
We ended up at a bar with no windows, with cigarette smoke and rock music… Dean hated it for the first half a beer but after that he was head banging to the rock music, drinking more beer than I was margaritas and making DJ requests for ‘System of a down’ (and I was contemplating asking for Prince) …this is when I knew it was time to pull us away from the bar… He has now crashed out… Bless ☺️
