A Great Big South Indian Adventure 9

High up in the tea plantations, trying to get tea at breakfast took 20 minutes and probably as many requests. Breakfast does not seem to be a specialty but pre-hangover and hungry we end up eating lots. The square omelettes are good and the french toast OK, but when the chai finally arrives it smells of fish according to Michael and the jam is coloured sugar. We manage black tea with sugar, but black tea without never arrives. Tea, white, without, just wasn't possible.

Still, ballast aboard and a little nervous about my biking ability and sociability I went back to the room and started writing some notes. Which today we transcribe.

In the Adventure programme this was as a rest day, which I could certainly use. It was why we had all ended up partying harder than tired middle aged people should last night. But on the trip the boys wanted to bike and Alex, being a superb host and possibly easily bored, laid on a casual informal exploration morning for us. He is obviously as thrilled being on a bike as anyone and on a casual exploration day he and Abi do not have pillion passengers, which means they can go a little faster. But the cars were staying behind, so the drivers, navigators and passenger could catch up on sleep, Marguerite and Gayle were going on a ramble. Steve decided rambling would be better than biking, so did I, but rush to get the bike gear on as the boys started to go. The mornings spin I was not looking forward to, but know I have to do it to get my confidence back. Being an exploration day we do not need our hydration packs, the rucksacks with 3 litre containers for water and re-hydration salts, with a long straw that we carry on the longer scheduled rides. India is hot and biking sweats you up.

Michael Cooke is a star and dazedly, or was that still drunkenly, ferried bike riders up the hill in the antique Ambassador he is driving on the tour. He drives Michael Hobbs and I up the hill, where we have a pre ride briefing and Michael's crown falls out.

Of course deep in Deep Woods, just about to start a day's biking, is not the optimum place fpr. Crown to fall out. I guess nowhere is really, but this is low down the list of unwanted embuggerances. So after a quick winge and even quicker debate he tucks the errant crown away and we continue with the briefing. 

We don't know where we're going but if we turn left at the top of the road we might come to a village.....it was that sort of briefing.

My bike starts first time, hurray, then stalls and takes ages to start again so I am again at the back trying to play catch-up on a very steep hill with a stalling bike and a potholed gravel road.

As expected it is not fun. It gets worse. The ride is what Chris later astutely described as a black run. The potholed road narrowed, lots of dry sand encroached on the sparse remaining tarmac and we soon got on to steep hills with vicious hairpins. None of this was made any easier by the bike stalling, the gears going into neutral all the time, with the neutral light and the horn not working, and being on my own. All the uncertainties of route, ability, bike and attitude crowding my confused mind did not help.

So as an exercise is getting the confidence back this was less than productive.

Some time later I caught up with the boys at a photo stop and walked up to Alex, who had been waiting a while and was raring to go. I wanted to tell him about the challenges with the bike, but he rode off, presumably mistaking my 'Stop' hand signal for a 'Hi, tosser's finally made it', which was true but not the intended message.

Dharmender the magic mender adjusted the carburetor to stop the stalling and the back up jeep followed my unsteady pace far to the back of the pack. The lonely duckling that's just never going to catch up, the one the moorhens and water rats watch with evil eyes.

So half an hour later when I finally caught up with the pack again at the chai stop I was not in a banter mood, which everyone had guessed by the time I got there. Tolerant silence like polite parents dealing with a petulant child in a public place.

Dharmender adjusted the bike for the horn and showed me how to get the bike into neutral. It was quite simple, all I had to do was change down gears as much as possible, letting the clutch out between each gear change. Then rock the bike, change down again, tap the lever to half change up and there you are. Probably. But since the neutral light didn't work you couldn't be certain. Simple really, but not what is expected.

Michael took a very strange photo of his missing crown. Very pink and fleshy, we probably won't show it to spare our gentle readers' sensitivity, but we all offered our opinion as to its medical character, among other astute observations.

After the chai the plan was to go into the local town Munnar, which meant going back some of the way we came and turning off on some track at some stage. I hadn't spotted any turn off. This seemed a single track road in a narrow valley to a single village, but maybe I had other stuff on my mind on the ride down.

The better riders rushed off. Chris and Abi followed me on the way back, while I rode like a girl, not a woman, a girl. The bike kept going into neutral instead of second gear which meant I was starting hairpin bends at very low speed. So it was just a long and weary process.

Eventually we saw Gayle, Margerite and Steve who were walking up the road. We stopped to say Hi, but I was in a funk and would only say the wrong thing, so did not stay long.

I wanted to go back to the hotel but didn't say anything so we continued on expecting to find the others.

We ended up in Munnar without finding them and stopped in a highly visible spot on the main road in town. Chris gave me a welcome hug, which was a big help, then he and Abi tried phoning the others, while I made myself useful and went searching for coffee. Eventually I found a shack on the high street and while they were making the coffee I popped next door into a shop that was so narrow I had to go down it sideways, but it sold spices, beer and wine. That was registered for future reference, since the hotel did not serve alcohol. But buying breakable bottles of booze to take back in the saddlebags was not a sensible option given my, and the bike's, ability.

Munnar was weird because although it is a good sized town, we kept seeing white people, which was a little disconcerting. They appeared in odd places, drifting along the street or sitting at the back of restaurant type places, but like wraiths they fast faded fast from view as I strode on. Apparently Munnar is on a tourist trail. 

Back at the bikes no one had answered their phones so while we drank the coffee Abi asked about the multitude of problems with my bike, then he had a fiddle with it. He failed to find the neutral light and concluded that most of the issues were because of a low battery and a loose clutch. Bike Whisperer Abi. 

He finally got a call and arranged to meet the mechanics, then led us back through the town towards the hotel.

There is a church on a hill in Munnar, highly incongruous, as if cut and pasted from a different story set in a different time. It's made of big rough hewn granite blocks and has the sturdy look of a Scottish kirk. Below it, at the side of the main road is the Infant Jesus Tyre Works. Memorable name for a tyre shack.

We took the turn off for the valley road to the hotel and saw Steve, Gayle and Margerite who had struggled some way to almost make it to town. We told them it was not far but they vowed to take a tuc-tuc for tueir journey back. They'd done some 13 km by then.

We finally found the back up truck. The other group had gone to the hospital, which I assumed was for Michael's crown and we continued back to the hotel. 

Having seen the kirk and the grassy golf course valley even the weather seemed Scottish. Sunny, without being hot and that tinge of moisture in the air that makes you feel chilly as soon as a cloud envelopes the sun. A comforting feeling, like being on a place you think you should know. The eastern side of the Mull of Kintyre, or a nook of Northumbria.

Back on that narrow valley road the tea girls were waving at us, one even blew me a kiss, which was very unexpected and brought a ray of sunshine into my turgid day.

The entrance road to the hotel had not changed so I had to use my brake, throttle and clutch all at the same time. The bike took a lot of verbal abuse.

Chris and I had a shower before wandering up for some excellent fried rice at the restaurant, he had found the roads hard and I liked his black run analogy. After a casual lunch we wandered back for a siesta. I did not sleep, just wrote a bit, lay down and felt very sorry for myself.

I did not have the will or the energy to get up and join the enthusiastic voices that announced the return of the others around teatime. Certainly there would be no tea and probably there would be some justified ribbing about my attitude to the bike.

However half an hour later, failing to find any worthy alternative, I wandered down to find Tony had come off his bike, badly, passed out, been to hospital and had a full check up. He said it was rider error, good tack I thought. He was undertaking a tuc-tuc and was attacked by a large pothole. He ended up hitting the ground hard on his back with the bike falling on him. When the team got the bike off him and pulled him up he remembers a huge amount of pain, which is probably what made him pass out.

He was high on adrenaline and painkillers and telling the story. My late arrival meant he had to tell it again, lancing the boil by talking about the actual accident. But he was highly impressed by the quality of the hospital, the fact he was seen immediately and that the cost of a full check up and painkillers was 370 rupees. €5.

We had not seen the spill because we'd ended up on a different road. But at least Abi had been responsible for that choice as Chris and I remained clueless. I was very happy we had not gone the other way because at least Abi had given my bike a good lookover.

That evening's drunken revellry was a pale reflection of the previous night. Michael Cooke had gone on a booze run. Supper was fairly sedate though Alex organised some chille beef, which he offered round. It was delicious and reluctantly passed on.

Over supper Will was coaxed into talking about his plane and helicopter pilot's licences. We left him with his rapt audience and did the usual Bullet Boy jokes from the safety of the sidelines.

Most people drifted off wearily to bed. I was not in sleep mode and stayed up till the early hours, slowly regaining some semblence of a sense of humour, ribbing with Alex and hearing more life stories. Sometime round about one in the morning the hardy few left Michael Cooke dancing to his own tunes.... 

So to sleep, perchance to dream, of anything but the day ahead.