Fri 7th October, 2005 Had planned to get
a fairly early start, but by the time we had found somewhere
open to buy a map, it was 10am. I suppose that's still
early by some peoples standards! We were both raring to go
and eager to get back cycling again, it seems so long since we
did any distance. The road out of Shimla was
busy with buses, trucks, jeeps, motorbikes and the occasional
cow. Because of the many hills around here you tend not to
see too many bicycles, compared with flatter areas of India
anyway. Probably something to do with the lack of gears on
Indian bikes. Once out of the town and heading down
the main road to Solan, we left most of the traffic behind,
except for the trucks and buses, who passed us frequently with
their horns blaring. The road surface was quite good, but
there were many bends and few straights of any length, so we had
to keep the speed down, especially as we were fully laden with
our panniers. The views down the valleys were
quite spectacular, spoilt only by the heat haze which made
anything more than a mile away disappear into whiteness.
Shame, could have had some great photos otherwise. Most of
the journey to Solan was downhill, with the occasional flat bit
and a rarer uphill section. We arrived at what we thought
was the town of Solan, where the Solan train station is situated.
We thought it looked a bit small for what was supposed to be
quite a large town, and not seeing any hotels, decided to head
on to the next place. We descended from the train station
for several more kilometers, then came across the main part of
the town. There was a long winding road up to the town
centre, and by the time we got there we were both feeling a bit
drained, so, seeing an hording for a nice hotel, decided to call
it a day, even though it was only 3pm. The
hotel was as good as the advert implied, but had a little
problem with being understood when I went in to check it
out. 'Do you have a double room?'. 'A what?'
'A double room, you know, a room for two people'. 'Oh, you
want a room?'. 'Yes please, a double room, do you have
any?' 'You want a room?'. Well, I'd hardly come in
here for a pound of bananas, would I! The
standard room I opted for was not quite as plus as the super
deluxe he tried to persuade me to have, but it was fine for our
purposes, and 300 Rs cheaper, according to the rate card I was
shown. I asked if there was any chance of a little discount
from the 750Rs standard rate, and without hesitation the manager
knocked it down to 500Rs net. Must be a quiet
period. This was more like it, a lot cheaper than what
we'd paid in Shimla, but then we had been staying in s posh
hotel for my birthday. And we had a satellite TV (seem to
be the norm these days) and hot water. The bed was a
little unusual, it was square, and had headboards on two sides,
giving you a choice of sleeping angles, I suppose. Dinner
in the hotel restaurant, veg soup starters followed by chicken
tikka for me and a vegetable jalfrazy for Rita Its amazing
the number of different spellings we've seen for that popular
dish, even Jalfrenzy in Ladakh. The food was excellent,
and we felt we had done something today to earn it. Our
first day cycling since we got to India, only taken us a
month! Back
to Itinerary
Sat 8th October, 2005 What's the point in
rushing, we've still got 5 months left in India, so why not have
a day off? Okay, so we've only done one day cycling and
we're already having a day off. But that was one thing we
decided on, we would not be rushing from town to town on a daily
basis like we ended up doing for most of our recent world tour,
due to time constraint and trying to fit too many places in to a
7 month stretch. Had a bit of a shock
(excuse the pun) when I went down for breakfast. Rita
wasn't hungry so stayed in the room watching BBC World, as long
as I bought her back a cup of expresso. I had finished my
breakfast of masala dosa and was enjoying my cup of coffee and
doing the Sudoku puzzle in the Indian Express, when I noticed
that everything was shaking. There was no sound, just the
table, me, the chairs and everything around was shaking,
considerable. At first I thought it must be some sort of
heavy machinery being operated nearby, but there was no noise to
indicate that.. I asked the waiter what was going on, because
things were shaking, he just tried adjusting the table, like it
had a wobbly leg. I then pointed out that the TV on the wall
across the room was moving, as well as all the other tables, and
isn't that wall vibrating as well? The manager then came across
and assured me all was OK, there is nothing wrong and I should
return to my table. I was not convinced. Our room was two floor
up on the top floor, so I phoned Rita on my mobile, the bed had
been shaking and she had been pretty worried too.
Saw the news on TV about an hour later and it said the
earthquake had been a 7.4 on the Richter scale, but there were
no reports of casualties or damage. It was only when we saw the
news in the evening that we found out there had been so much
damage and loss of life in Pakistan. Before that, I was thinking
it was quite a novel experience, but now I guess we were lucky
the epicenter wasn't closer.
Spent the rest of the day walking around Solan
and relaxing. The town doesn't appear to see many
tourists, so we had a few people staring at us, but give them a
smile and a wave and they soon come round, Had
a few drinks in the other nice hotel in town, not far from
ours. They had a rooftop restaurant, which the doorman
assured us was open. But when we got to the top, the
tables and chairs were stacked up and the bar looked as thought
it hadn't been used for months. Within minutes though,
waiters arrived and organised a table and chairs and took our
order. One waiter then stayed with us for the next hour or
so, just in case we wanted anything else. How sweet!
It was actually probably the best rooftop restaurant we've seen
in India, it looked as though it was purpose made and was well
decorated with railings and plants, unlike so many other places
which look like they've found a flat bit of roof and put a few
tables on it, and you have to be careful not to fall off the
edge or through one of the carefully hidden
skylights. Back
to Itinerary
Sun 9th October, 2005
Back on our bikes today, suitably refreshed
after our rest day. Not sure how far we're going to get
today, we have a few options and will take it as it comes. On
the road by 9, we cycled out of the town centre and re=joined
the main road. Started out at 1520 metres above sea level,
and heading downhill, which is what we hoped would be the order
of the day. Our hopes were soon dashed when after
descending only a hundred metres in 5km, we started to
climb. Back up at 1630 metres, the road leveled out and
followed the contours around a rather large hill, with more
spectacular views down the valleys a long way below
us.
After 14km we dropped down again to the town of
Kumarhatti which had been one of possible targets for a night
stop on our first day. Seeing the town, I think we made a
very wise decision to stop in Solan, there was only one hotel
(that we could see, anyway) and it was not very
impressive. After a brief stop to ask directions, then ask
some other people for directions as well - always best to get
several peoples opinions about directions in India - we headed
off downhill towards Sarahan. This was more like it,
heading down the valley, dropping slowly. Dropping slowly,
that is, until we started to climb again. We had got down
as low as 1250 metres when we started to go up again, but we
thought this wont last long. How wrong could we be. 10km
later we were up at 1700 metres and feeling a bit hot and
whacked. From there on the climbing eased off, and we were
really glad to make it into Sarahan at 3:30.
Our guide book doesn't say anything about
Sarahan, so we would have to take pot luck about finding
somewhere to stay. A few minutes into the town and we saw
a sign for a Rest House, usually a government run place but
functional, we headed for it, not seeing any other
options. Once we located the Rest House, we thought our
problems were over, but we couldn't find the manager and had a
few language problems with the people in the rest house,
presumably other guests. It was 20 minutes later before we
found out that actually, there were no spare rooms available
anyway!
A kind person offered to show us another place
we could stay, but it was an unsigned hotel with rather grotty
rooms, which Rita said was just about habitable. Decision time. How far is it to the next town, Nahan? About 40km.
Having only done about 50km so far today in the six and a half
hours since we left Solan, it seemed a lot more to do. Okay,
there had been a lot of uphill and we had been stopping quite a
bit for breaks and photo opportunities, but what was the road to
Nahan like, it could be worse! We found a nice
chappy who spoke good English, and he assured us that it was
downhill all the way to Nahan, except for a bit of uphill in the
first 3km and we should be able to do it in 1 and a 1/2.to two
hours maximum. That decided it, rather than spend the
night in a cesspit, we'd head for Nahan and hope for better.
The guy was right, up to a point. The
first 2km weren't too bad, then we had 5km of downhill.
This was looking good, until we started to climb again.
Not too much, but enough to slow us down considerably.
More downhill followed by more climbing, followed by much the
same for the next 25km. I began to wonder if the guy had
actually been on this road, saying it was all downhill.
Actually, that's a common problem we've found with people who
don't cycle, if you ask them what the terrain is like, they
often don't really know, even if they've traveled the road
frequently. Its very easy to go up hills in cars and
buses, but you only really notice them when you cycle
them. That's my opinion anyway.
When we got to within the last 10km, the road
started to drop appreciably. At some points we could see
the road ahead, down the valley, clinging to the steep hill
side with the valley bottom far below, but we could see it was
all lower than us, and that cheered us up no end. We have a map
that says Nahan is at 950metres, so I knew we had to drop down
eventually. It was a very quick 10km, dropping down
from 1400 metres to 800, but it was a very twisty road and the surface
was appalling in places, so we didn't make it above 25
mph, according to my bike speedo.
The bad news at the bottom was that the town of
Nahan is on the top of a hill, across the valley from where we
came down, so we were face with a long hike up to the top, which
took us half an hour, arriving at the first hotel we could find
at 7pm. Quite a long day in the saddle.
The Regency Hotel had an ok room going for 300
Rs, Rita managed to beat them down to 200 Rs, Its not that
300 was too much, just that you've got to barter, and old habits
die hard. Rita said she felt a bit guilty afterwards,
getting the room for only 200 Rs, but the manager seemed quite
happy. And for that price we had en-suite with hot water,
sat. TV and a balcony. Cant be bad. I even think the
sheet on the bed was clean, but wouldn't swear to it. We
also had further entertainment supplied in the form of a colony
of ants parading in a diagonal line across one of the wall,
carrying everything from small cockroaches to small pieces of
biscuits they'd found on the floor somewhere . And only
200 Rs! Back to Itinerary
Mon 10th October, 2005 Pleased
to find when we awoke that we hadn't been carried away by the
ants in the night. On the road by 9:30, heading towards Paonta
Sahib, only about 45km away., but after yesterday, we didn't
want to have another big day and cycle all to way to Dehra
Dun. Because the town is on top of a big hill,
we were fairly confident that we should at least start out by
going downhill, but we were prepared to be surprised, especially
after yesterday. The first 7km was all
downhill, dropping from 950metres down to 450 metres. The
road was newly resurfaced as well, so we didn't have to
concentrate so much on pot-hole dodging, and made excellent
progress. Stopped for a coffee break at a nice little cafe
at the bottom of the hill, and to top up on water and fruit
juice supplies. We only drink bottled mineral water, but
when it warms up it doesn't seem to quench our thirst, so we
found adding some fruit juice makes it a lot more
palatable. The rest of the ride to
Paonta Sahib was through interesting small villages with
friendly inhabitants, the road rising and falling gently but
with no big hill like yesterday. At another drink
stop, we watched a man at a roadside cafe mixing up a thick
white substance that turned out to be paneer, a sort of cottage
cheese. After that, he poured a large amount of what appeared to
be sugar into another very large bowl, but unfortunately some of
the soil from where the bag had been stood on the ground also
fell into the bowl, and as we peered in we noticed there were
about 50 large ants crawling around the sugar as well. One
of the boy assistants started picking out the ants and bits of
soil, but it didn't look to me like he was going to make sure he
got them all out. I guess that might explain some of the
black bits yo sometime see in the cakes and desserts! We
thought we had
reached the town when we came across a fire station with Paonta
Sahib painted on the outside, but this turned out to be a
sub station and the town was another 7km away. The fire
station was probably to cover the huge cotton factory just down
the road, with a small town build up around it. The first
hotel we found had a load of bed mattresses laid out in the
courtyard, obviously being given an airing, they all looked
fairly grotty, and the hotel was very dark inside so we passed
on that one. A few more kilometers on we made it to the
town centre and found the Yamnua Hotel, a government run
establishment. Opted for the standard room again, but this
time there was no negotiating allowed on the 400 Rs price, plus
10% tax. Nice place though, I think we might stay here 2
nights. Back to Itinerary
Tue 11th October, 2005
I was right, we are staying two days. Had
a leisurely breakfast in the hotel restaurant, I thought
I'd have something simple, mushrooms on toast. Turned out
to be finely chopped mushrooms in a tomato, onion, garlic and
spicy sauce. Quite nice, but not exactly what I was
expecting! Took a stroll into the town, only
a short distance away, buying some essentials on the way, i.e.
toilet roll and mosquito coils. The shopkeeper showed us
two brands of coils, thinking we'd obviously go for the cheaper,
after all it was a whopping 2 rupees more for the expensive
ones, but he said they were much better, so we gritted our teeth
and paid the extra. 17 Rs, that's about 21pence, not bad for 10
nights comfort! There's a big Sikh temple in
this town, one of the biggest outside Amritsar, and an important
pilgrimage place for Sikhs. The outside walls are lined
with shops, all selling pretty much the same things. Seemed to
be a lot of trinket style things such as stainless steel bangles
of varying sizes, maybe its a religious thing, not sure.
We only went in to the initial courtyard for a quick look, but
weren't sure how far we were allowed to enter and whether we
should be wearing a headscarf, like we had to when we went to
the Golden Temple in Amritsar, 9 years ago. No wishing to
offend, we left. It was quite hot and humid
today, bright and sunny but a little too hot and sweaty for
walking about a great deal, There didn't seem to be much
else in the town centre, aside from the temple, and we had
cycled down the main drag when we had arrived. Found an
internet place prepared to let me connect my laptop, with a
little persuasion, but it was very slow. I've yet to find
anywhere in India with any sort of reasonable upload speed, so I
can upload our diary and photos to our website. All I seem
to be able to manage is one or two files at a time, then it goes
really slowly. For dinner tonight I opted for
the roast chicken with boiled veg and roast potatoes. I
didn't get my hopes up, I knew it wouldn't be like a real roast
dinner, but I had to give it a go. It actually wasn't too
bad, he chicken was nicely done, the potatoes were ok, as were
the veg, but the "gravy" was a tomato based substance
which was rather sweet. Rita had a vegetable chop suey,
and strangely enough the sauce in that dish was almost identical
to my roast dinner gravy! Back to Itinerary
Wed 12th October, 2005 Cycle
to Dehra Dun today. Quite a pleasant cycle ride with lots
of interesting things to see on the way, not in the traditional
tourist way, just people going about their everyday work and
chores. Lots of people were choppng down trees from the
roadside and sawing them up, manually. I think there might be a
road widening scheme going on. The road surface had
recently been given a fresh layer of tarmac for quite some
distance, making for a smooth ride as well. The approaches
into Dehra Dun (pronounced something like darer doon) got more
and more busy, and the pot holes returned as well, making the
last couple of kilometres a nightmare. The traffic in town
was very heavy, I was very thankful for my new bell. Continued
on the Uttaranchal page Back to Itinerary
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