Day 4 : Palolem to Murdeshwar (Thursday 29th Jan)
The beach at Palolem looks very different in the light of day, whilst last night it looked like a twinkling paradise, although the views are still stunning, the beach itself is really dirty. I'm starting to regret going for a dip now ! I was woken this morning by a woman shrieking "There's a frog in my toilet !". The beach huts that we stayed in really were very basic and pretty open to the elements and the local wildlife. One bloke was shown to his hut to find 2 dogs enjoying themselves rather a little too much on his porch. It was 2 to a hut last night, so I had the pleasure of sharing a double bed with Tony. Really nice bloke, a microbiologist and ardent Chelsea fan (booooooo), but after a long days riding the news that we were sharing beds didn't go down too well. There wasn't a full on mutiny, but quite a few people weren't too chuffed. I went with the flow, I would have preferred my own bed, but I threw up my mosquito net, jumped into my sleeping bag liner and we made it through the night with no spooning incidents !
I'm starting to get into a bit of a routine now in the mornings. Shower (if available), pack my luggage and drop it by the luggage truck, breakfast (if available), throw on my kit, down to the park ferme to start the bike and check it over, and then spend some time going over the route for the day and working out mileages in the road book so we don't get (too) lost. Then there is a briefing from the team on the upcoming days riding. Culture, important parts of the route and a roundup of the previous day and nominations for Dick of the day and the Skidmark award. (More on these in future posts)
Breakfast in Palolem consisted of 2 slices of limp toast, so with my stomach rumbling I headed to the park ferme. Bessy started first time. A cockroach jumped out of the engine of the guy's bike next to me .. yet more indigenous wildlife. With all 105 bikes up and revving we headed out of Palolem on our way to Murdeshwar. The morning section took us through a very busy and industrial port area with hundreds of trucks to negotiate our way past, and loads of fish oil covering the roads making them really slippy. The truck drivers really take no prisoners. There appears to be a couple of rules on Indian roads. 1) The person in front has priority 2) Size matters - if there is a head on situation (of which there are plenty), the smallest vehicle needs to yield.
After lunch we stopped at a river to watch all the locals washing themselves and their clothes. One guy seemed to take to the camera and proceeded to lather himself up and give us a little Bollywood style boogie in his underpants ! Another guy came up and was asking us if we had brought any wines from our motherland with us, he seemed a little dejected when all we could offer him was a warm and flat bottle of coke.
The afternoon saw us climbing upwards through winding roads to a little stop where we took the opportunity to have a chai and some bananas. There were loads of monkeys there whose sole purpose seemed to be to try and steal the bananas hanging up from the little shop keepers hut. Wave after wave of stealth monkey missions finally paid off when one of them made off with a clutch of bananas. On realising this, the shopkeepers wife reached for her catapult and started firing a barrage of stones at the culprit. I don't think any of them hit the mark. So Monkeys 1, Shopkeeper 0.
We rolled into Murdeshwar at about 3.30pm, checked in with the crew, reported any problems with our bikes and shot up too our rooms to get out of our kit. Dinner wasn't until 7.30pm, so I used my SAS skills to put up a washing line, washed all my kit which was covered in red dust and headed into town for a mooch. Whilst wandering down into town, Joel told us that Mike had fallen asleep in the room with the key, so he told reception, and a bellboy was dispatched at pace. The hotel didn't appear to have a spare key or didn't seem to want to cut another, so the bellboy opened up the room next door and before Joel could interject proceeded to climb from one balcony to another. Bearing in mind that the room was on the fifth floor, it's unbelievable what lengths some of the people here will go to. This lad literally risked his life to open the hotel room door.
As the seats on the Enfields are pretty unforgiving, we thought that it would be quite amusing to get some cushions hand made. Tim spotted a little shop called Cushion World (result), We picked out the most distasteful fabric possible, but after much mime and gesture and despite being assured that they would be ready in 2 hours, we really weren't sure exactly what we'd be getting .... so we headed off to grab some grub. 3 of us enjoyed a 3 course meal at a vegetarian restaurant for 165 rupees, which works out at just under 3 quid.
On returning to the Hotel, rumour on the grapevine had it that there were still 8 riders who hadn't returned. It was dark by now, so I really didn't fancy there chances of making it .... the roads are dangerous enough during the day, and if they couldn't navigate during the day, there was no chance they would be able to do it at night.
On heading back to the room, I realised there was no way all my kit was going to dry, it was far too humid, so we hooked up a couple of bungee cords to the overhead fan, attached my kit, hey presto an automatic dryer.
The beach at Palolem looks very different in the light of day, whilst last night it looked like a twinkling paradise, although the views are still stunning, the beach itself is really dirty. I'm starting to regret going for a dip now ! I was woken this morning by a woman shrieking "There's a frog in my toilet !". The beach huts that we stayed in really were very basic and pretty open to the elements and the local wildlife. One bloke was shown to his hut to find 2 dogs enjoying themselves rather a little too much on his porch. It was 2 to a hut last night, so I had the pleasure of sharing a double bed with Tony. Really nice bloke, a microbiologist and ardent Chelsea fan (booooooo), but after a long days riding the news that we were sharing beds didn't go down too well. There wasn't a full on mutiny, but quite a few people weren't too chuffed. I went with the flow, I would have preferred my own bed, but I threw up my mosquito net, jumped into my sleeping bag liner and we made it through the night with no spooning incidents !
I'm starting to get into a bit of a routine now in the mornings. Shower (if available), pack my luggage and drop it by the luggage truck, breakfast (if available), throw on my kit, down to the park ferme to start the bike and check it over, and then spend some time going over the route for the day and working out mileages in the road book so we don't get (too) lost. Then there is a briefing from the team on the upcoming days riding. Culture, important parts of the route and a roundup of the previous day and nominations for Dick of the day and the Skidmark award. (More on these in future posts)
Breakfast in Palolem consisted of 2 slices of limp toast, so with my stomach rumbling I headed to the park ferme. Bessy started first time. A cockroach jumped out of the engine of the guy's bike next to me .. yet more indigenous wildlife. With all 105 bikes up and revving we headed out of Palolem on our way to Murdeshwar. The morning section took us through a very busy and industrial port area with hundreds of trucks to negotiate our way past, and loads of fish oil covering the roads making them really slippy. The truck drivers really take no prisoners. There appears to be a couple of rules on Indian roads. 1) The person in front has priority 2) Size matters - if there is a head on situation (of which there are plenty), the smallest vehicle needs to yield.
After lunch we stopped at a river to watch all the locals washing themselves and their clothes. One guy seemed to take to the camera and proceeded to lather himself up and give us a little Bollywood style boogie in his underpants ! Another guy came up and was asking us if we had brought any wines from our motherland with us, he seemed a little dejected when all we could offer him was a warm and flat bottle of coke.
The afternoon saw us climbing upwards through winding roads to a little stop where we took the opportunity to have a chai and some bananas. There were loads of monkeys there whose sole purpose seemed to be to try and steal the bananas hanging up from the little shop keepers hut. Wave after wave of stealth monkey missions finally paid off when one of them made off with a clutch of bananas. On realising this, the shopkeepers wife reached for her catapult and started firing a barrage of stones at the culprit. I don't think any of them hit the mark. So Monkeys 1, Shopkeeper 0.
We rolled into Murdeshwar at about 3.30pm, checked in with the crew, reported any problems with our bikes and shot up too our rooms to get out of our kit. Dinner wasn't until 7.30pm, so I used my SAS skills to put up a washing line, washed all my kit which was covered in red dust and headed into town for a mooch. Whilst wandering down into town, Joel told us that Mike had fallen asleep in the room with the key, so he told reception, and a bellboy was dispatched at pace. The hotel didn't appear to have a spare key or didn't seem to want to cut another, so the bellboy opened up the room next door and before Joel could interject proceeded to climb from one balcony to another. Bearing in mind that the room was on the fifth floor, it's unbelievable what lengths some of the people here will go to. This lad literally risked his life to open the hotel room door.
As the seats on the Enfields are pretty unforgiving, we thought that it would be quite amusing to get some cushions hand made. Tim spotted a little shop called Cushion World (result), We picked out the most distasteful fabric possible, but after much mime and gesture and despite being assured that they would be ready in 2 hours, we really weren't sure exactly what we'd be getting .... so we headed off to grab some grub. 3 of us enjoyed a 3 course meal at a vegetarian restaurant for 165 rupees, which works out at just under 3 quid.
On returning to the Hotel, rumour on the grapevine had it that there were still 8 riders who hadn't returned. It was dark by now, so I really didn't fancy there chances of making it .... the roads are dangerous enough during the day, and if they couldn't navigate during the day, there was no chance they would be able to do it at night.
On heading back to the room, I realised there was no way all my kit was going to dry, it was far too humid, so we hooked up a couple of bungee cords to the overhead fan, attached my kit, hey presto an automatic dryer.
Posts
