Phew! I thought I'd just document the trek for kicks but its taking too long!
Day 7. To Sojha and Jalori.
It was a good night's sleep. I woke up later than most of the guys. I even managed to warm up and stretch at a scenic bridge nearby.
Breakfast was a much welcome bread with omelettes and butter/jam. I love it every time. Of course, thanks to the vegetarian stand of two members I was able to have an eggstra.
I thought I'd go and have a hot bath at the previously discovered toilet.. imagin e my suprise when I saw aunty in there washing her clothes, staring at me incredulously. Jeezus, this was
her bathroom! After mumbling some oh's and 'i thought's' went off into the real toilet, which was a grim reminder of another bathless day.
As we took our bikes out I noticed a tilt in my seat. There was a bolt missing from one side. Dimple couldn't repair it - he told me to bear with it till the summit.
We took off together this time. Before leaving, I took one last look at the sign outside aunty's dabha. Chingri lodge. To my surprise I saw a picture of a chillum at the edge of the sign. Aha!
I thought this time, we'd go in a group.. yeah, that was true for the first kilometer. Manish and Harry overtook us within a few minutes. Ved too pushed off with his cycle. Understandably, the other group started walking with their bikes almost immidiately. What a waste.
Sumedh realised his bike was running only on second gear. It couldn't go to first. That was the last straw. We noticed one of those Andhra fellows who had 'taken' his Firefox walking leisurely with his cycle. Immidiately we got him to take the Thunder instead as he wasn't riding anyway, and buzzed off.
This was the toughest climb. It was impossible to pedal for 4-5 steps even. Amidst the frequent breaks, the most torturous parts were the turns. I remember some turns where I had to stop every pedalling step.
'Breather'
Picture by Sumedh
As we were lumbering forward I realized that the breaks were inevitable. And clearly the breaks were not providing enough time for our muscles to rest between pedaling surges. All this led to a disorganized mess, and more and more Lactic Acid accumulating in out muscles.
I thus formulated a strategy. We would pedal for a while continu ously.. and then stop for a few paces and then start again, repeating the 'cycle'. And to ensure just enough Oxygen goes in as required, I decided to take our number of breaths as a benchmark.
Thus we would pedal for 20 breaths - and rest for 10 - and pedal again for 20 breaths. This would lead to a steady and much faster progress.
And it did!
We started picking up pace..
By then, it was 1:00pm. And then it started to rain.
We luckily found ourselves in the surroundings of a cafe-lodge where we quickly deposited ourselves. After parking the bikes inside, we rested our sorry asses inside the warm inn. It was made of wood.. so were most of the houses here, and I gather this must be the cheapest place for wood in the country.
Anyways. We ordered hot Maggi noodles. My shirt was drenched and I was feeling cold under my wind-cheater. As unbearable as it was I changed it - but quickly realised that all my T-shirts were cotton - and would stay drenched for a long time.
Our Andhra friend, with his new Thunder joined us.
Chetan appeared out of the blue.
He had gone much ahead - but came back looking for us. Apparently it was raining heavily higher up.
At the Cafe
We enjoyed the Maggi, (which I suspect was Top Ramen, but that's even better) and were plesantly surprised to find the bill less than Rs.20/- per person. We bonded pretty well with the man from Andhra and I wondered where this animosity had come about earlier. We had tea; I remembered Naveen telling me once that it is a custom in Andhra to have tea after meals. Its a good custom. But the tea was just okay.
It stopped raining and we lumbered ahead, but with a renewed vigour. We had only a few hours left though - for it was about 2pm. One should reach by 4, and by 6 it gets too dark to travel.
We saw Uncle speeding downhill and he stopped in front of us. He was visibly shaken up and fatigue was written all over his face. Apparently some of them couldn't take it any more and decided to take a Jeep for the rest of the journey. Pretty soon the other Andhra guys followed and they were more than happy to take a ride on the next transport vehicle that came up. Expected.
A Jeep came by with space for the fatigued lot and their bikes. Sumedh, by now frustrated with his luck with cycles, took the best off their lot; which was Uncle's Firefox. He was just happy to get out of there!
Miniature berries - they tasted exactly like strawberries
Off they went, and off we went. A 500m climb which felt like an eternity later, we spotted Ved. His cycle stalled.
There was a problem with the chain. It was stuck at the dérailleurs and refused to budge. Using our engineering skills, we took apart the wheel..
..fiddled with the chain..
..and came up with this.
Ok, so we couldn't fix it. But at least we'd start moving. We asked two cars that were passing by to send the message that we'd be late.
By now it was about 4:45. It was too late to even reach Jalori, as it was rapidly getting dark. We trudged along, and Dimple appeared on a Jeep.
He was furious. One look at Ved's bike and he was now a man possessed. Yelling and screaming he started piling up the bikes on the Jeep. We pleaded with him to at least let us go ahead by bike. This was our goal after all, we couldn't chicken out by taking a Jeep. A lot of negotiating later he let us climb giving us a deadline of one hour. He took our bags though. Ved tried to remove his cycle saying he wanted to drag it to the top for honor's sake - Dimple would have none of THAT. That said, he took off.
1 hour. We had 3 kilometres left to cycle uphill. We were off.
There's nothing much to say about the journey ahead. We were pushing ourselves to the max. It was getting dark, and all that was on our heads were the milestones every 500 meters and the ticking clock. I was getting exhausted. Water was also out. It was getting cold.
Sumedh was quick. Both Chetan and I met up with him at a stream where we had our final pit stop. We refilled our water bottles and opened a pack of glucose biscuits. I gobbled them and drank about 600ml of ice cold water at one go. We waited for a while.
The stream was below this road. Chetan here. Picture by Sumedh. They were waiting for me.
Big mistake.
I started feeling cold. Then chills. And then I started shivering. The temperature didn't drop or anything. I was getting hypothermic. It was the water.
It was a shock, you know - to feel like that on top of the exhaustion. I took extra jackets from Chetan and Sumedh and started pedalling away. I thought maybe I could warm up my muscles enough for this phase to pass by. It worked, I suppose. Chetan and Sumedh went up ahead. I took more frequent breaks, but this time to take pictures. And what beautiful pictures!
I think I fell in love with my Cybershot P8 all over again after the above pics
I didn't see them till the end of the climb. It was just me, the bike and about 500meters of steep incline. The distance didn't matter any more. At least no one will come and pick me up in a Jeep.
A tremendous incline. Took my breath away just by looking at it. But it was the last..
A milestone appeared : Jalori - 0. I was there.
Dimple was around. He was smiling. "Phat gayee?" was his first reaction. I said Yeah. The seat was killing my rear, as it was tilted. I asked him to fix it the earliest. Anyways I had to take my bike to a house. I could hardly lift it over a couple of stairs - Chetan was waiting for me.. he took the following picture..
Exhausted!
I had 2 jackets on, I was drenched from inside, it was getting pretty cold. I wasn't shivering any more, and my legs felt like they would give way. It got really dark really fast. It was done.
We took this photo. I take pride in the fact that we were the only ones to pedal every 'step' and corner of the way.
"Agni Lomdi"
As I went inside the early birds who had arrived first (by Jeep, but of course) were nicely tucked in. They were visibly exhausted as well. I changed, but started feeling cold again. Most of my clothes were damp. I found a good one somewhere, hung other clothes to dry and took a walk.
This was a nice place. There was a temple adjoining the room we were staying in. A wide, green meadow leading to a valley, still having some cows grazing. It was a very small town with few shops but no visible houses. We had dinner in the dark. Water was scarce so we were supposed to be frugal. I remembered the stream 500m away. Anyways we had a reasonably good dinner - bland as it was it was compensated by raw onions and tomatoes in plenty. "Eat the onions" Dimple said. "They'll keep you warm".
I sensed a discontent from him regarding the older group. Well it didn't take an idiot to figure that out, he was verbally abusing them every second they were not present.
We went off to our room to sleep, where we were offered Bournvita. :D the obsequious Bournvita. I was just irritated about cleaning the cup I drank it from. We drifted away pretty easily.
