Ecobiketrip

India coastal line heading south and crossing to the other side

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• Author: Johannes
• July 29, 2008
• Category: India

Our flight to India was tiring, packaging of bikes some unfunny procedure and debating about paying overweight was long lasting. So we will try to avoid as much as possible future flights.

Dubai’s surrounding area in the Emirates is one big desert hot and humid and very fine sand is all in the air. The United Emirates have vast skyscraper buildings, big amounts of petrol and the accordingly consuming cars and industry. They gain new land with throwing megatons of sand in the sea that ends up having shapes like huge palms or even all the continents, called ‘the world’. Houses there are very popular that even Brad Pitt bought a residence. No wonder why they have the biggest ecological footprint all over the world.

We flew to Mumbai, where just our first experience to go to the hostel in the city centre from the airport was exciting. We tied the big cartons with our bicycles to the roof of a three-wheeled rickshaw what is nothing extraordinary here to carry something bigger than the vehicle itself. Later on the journey we saw the record of how 17 people would fit into one normal jeep and how trains and buses especially in the rush hours get crowded that every entrance, which are open, people are hanging outside just like we have seen it in the movies.

Mumbai is a 16 million-inhabitant city; it takes you many hours to go from one side to the other. Real poverty exists there and small children, in the age they start to walk in our countries are begging on the street touching your feet and looking up to you with a gesture that they want food. It’s almost unbelievable that every spot that is somehow rain-safe is covered with homeless people; they also put up 1000s of small plastic shelters on the pavement. That’s one more reason why streets are so dirty and smelly, public toilets are rare as are dustbins, so everything is ending up on the roads and with the next rain being transported a little further. Holy cows are almost everywhere and really chill on the roads without moving and eating all kinds of things, even plastic that they will not do for a long time. They are also fed by local restaurants for protection of some goddess and painted the hinduistic way with colour on the forehead or if they are working bulls also their horns.

We were also called to take part in a Bollywood movie; they wanted some western looking background people for a scene in a disco. One day of fun, food, some small money, getting to know many tourists and the indian way to produce movies. We came back to the city centre at 3’o clock in the morning and left by train to Goa at 7. So we went right away to the train station and spend our night there with some new great impressions, Mumbai Victoria Station by night.

We circled Goa for some days till I got my first diarrhea, which made us stay in one cottage for three days. In Goa you can still see the big impact colonization had on this region, most people there are catholic with big churches remaining from these times, some are even characterized as world heritage and inside you see monuments from first missionaries. Beaches around this area are very nice but currents in this season strong and not possible to go out far. In Goa there is typical tropical rain at this season with some strong pours lasting for short time and stopping again. We experienced different kinds of rain and changing vegetation a couple of times so far. Further south and crossing Western Ghats will make us feel how things that got wet will never dry again. We already had to throw some things away because mould was taking over. That’s also some great problem on farming that they often have to use some kind of fungicide to maintain healthy plants, only some are organic based and there is a growing movement as it seems. More details about the ecological aspects I will give at another time in the reviews section or maybe in some magazines.

Entering Karnataka was a good move. People were friendlier and live different. At the coastline they are mostly dependant on fish and tourists are something extraordinary. Landscape is beautiful with all the palms and big sweet water streams coming to the sea. Monkeys are omnipresent being very often synanthropic and living around the people or in close by woods. We had some great spots for camping on the way next to waterfalls or at the beach or were sometimes lucky to collect fruits from the way. The fruits are a very good aspect of this country as they are all tropical and tasty, also some strange vegetables can be found.

In the very south in Mangalore we made one more stop also visiting the great fruit market before going uphill through Western Ghats and some knowledge-gathering of domestic plants.

Solanaceae plants are growing all over the place next to the road, which are famous for the big and beautiful blossoms for delicate vegetables and also for having some of the strongest and darkest ingredients for never ending experiences. Medicine Men used them to see the future or problems hiding in the person’s inner selves.

First we were at small Retreat inside almost evergreen rainforest, where the owners studied biology, have a pretty big organic plantation with coffee, vanilla, cardamom, garcinhia and in small scale many fruits and vegetables. They also have their own NGO building up awareness for biodiversity and organic means of farming. There we also got to know two Dutch girls working for other NGOs helping poor people, especially women. We made a great interview and after these two days there I really felt fed with valuable information. We also got the good tip to pass some a botanical sanctuary not so far, though not really on our way, but it was again worth the few extra days and many bites by leeches. There nothing more important exists than having the highest diversity of plants possible fitting to one certain region. They nurse endangered plants with high amount of knowledge and plant them out again, or making up landscapes botanically and growing their selected plants in a very well thought way.

In this evergreen forest at the Western Ghats of India the South West Monsoon strikes now and it’s not all the best season for cycling.

We then passed the second row of this mountain range reaching again 2265m, where it was cold and rainy all day long. We just went to a tribal museum, where we got an invitation to a real tribe in Madurai, which we will of course try to do and then had the great downhill to the almost flat rest of Tamil Nadu.

We afterwards had strong wind in the right direction for some days doing more than 40km/h uphill. With this wind you could fly to good records of distance achievements if there were not 4 flat tires a day. On the second they were all mine and every new took one hour of finding punctures and repairing the tire right away due to lack of spares. Until Aggelos probably found the reason why this punctures would happen bad words were spoken. We suppose it was the rust that came inside the rim underneath the plastic layer from the spooks. When I changed my complete tire again in Tehran for some of the best material available there the new spooks and the disc are simple iron as I understood here in India. They got all rusted and I will have to do some great effort to get it off again.

Asking people for the way in India is not always useful, either they don’t understand or they don’t like tourists or I have false expectations, when they send you in the wrong direction, which happened twice on this day with the four flat tires. We would likely believe children at any time. It is also very difficult for me to find the right information inside towns, though the language is not such a big problem, moreover it’s the style they would send you to one shop or tell you one thing which simply cannot solve anything but makes you run in circles and not feeling better. Probably I am still way to much European to not mind for lasting effortless time spending.

After some days of bad luck we finally arrived in the Mission in Vellakulam, one place that was in the program from the beginning, where we also received the parcels from Europe. People here are very friendly and helpful. They established a great institution for many children and women. Proper education is a very big issue in these non-rural areas. They watch out for 70 children, mostly orphans or under problematic conditions in the age between 4 and 17. We will stay here around one week having a lot of ideas to work together, like establishing some activity park or making a short movie with the kids. We also have time to fix some things or to update our sites and articles before moving on to the all-kinds-of-meat-eating-and-catching tribe.

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