After seven months of saying ‘ tomorrow we start early!” we made it for the first time that day. And it was so rewarding. Not only to avoid cycling the 75km back to Villapuram in the heat, but also because at 6 in the morning India is still a bit sleepy. The frantic hello! hello! what is your name? which country? (head wobble) that we usually get got replaced by simple smiles and curious looks…light and soft!
We cycled back to Villapuram because we could not put our bicycles in the train from Thiruvalamalai to Pune ( no parcel office). We were told we could do so in Villapuram, for sure. You guess what follows: arriving at the parcel office there we heard : “no bicycles on this train! not possible!”
Now, if you want to travel deep into the world of confusion, of alien logic, of enigmatic chains of thoughts, here is the gate: go to India and just ask why?
We quickly gave up trying to understand and just booked our bicycles in the following train, 12h after ours. Much easier than “why?”
To reach Pune it took 27h hours in an air conditioned sleepers car with 4 other people sharing our little box. Meditation was limited by the height between two beds but the journey went quite fast after all! We arrived at 2am and tried to find a place to sleep. No hotels would accept foreigners around the station (remember: don’t ask why!) and Maia was ill. She managed to sleep through fever on the floor of the noisy lady waiting room until 8 am where we finally could book in the National hotel hidden on the other side of the street. A lot of sleeping happened in the following 24h!
National hotel, hidden pretty garden, no so pretty rooms
As the sun rose a second time in the city of Pune, Maia gathered enough energy to cycle 12km through Indian traffic ( incredibly brave) to meet our first warmshowers hosts in India, Jay and Geeta. We will tell more about them in the next post but we can already say that we had the most touching encounter and unforgettable stay with them.
On the first evening we had an improvised birthday celebration for Maia. Geeta opened the little glass doors of the temple they have in the kitchen – it has to be situated in the north east corner of the house, beside the kitchen and besides the entrance door always orientated towards the east. She recited a couple of mantras while burning incenses around Maia’s head and upper body. Then they exchanged goods; for birthday it is not only a one way offering in their culture. After a few hours we were in their house, we were already family.
The following morning Jay drove us a mesmerising place of Pune: the flower, fruit and veg market, the biggest in Asia according to a young passer-by!
Tenths of thousands of people go there everyday to buy millions of greens to then sell them on a little trolley at each and every corner of the city.
Hills of coriander
As we were leaving at 9am, there were still hundreds of bikers trying to get into this parking lot. If you can you spot a free space, let us know!
Dharma bums on bikes 