This is Part 4 of the four-part series covering my Bangalore to Delhi cycling tour. In the first three parts, I shared daily ride stories and pictures. Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
In this part, I will share about food on the tour, people & their questions, bike & luggage, technology used, and a few summarizing thoughts.
Food on the Tour
On this tour, I ate food at roadside restaurants. Took simple carbs for breakfast and lunch and proteins at night. Morning breakfast - mostly idlis, poha, or aloo paratha. Lunch - mostly dal rice or curd rice. Dinner - mostly roti with egg or paneer dish. Fluids - regular water and Electral (ORS) to replenish the salts - around 3 to 4 liters. On the entire tour, I got RO water at all lodges and restaurants. I only purchased bottled water once in Mahbubnagar as I thought the lodge would not have RO water, but later found that they had RO water. Based on my nutritionist's advice, I avoided fruits and vegetables during the ride. Did not purchase tea and coffee on the roadside stalls. During the day, I had coconut water, sugarcane juice, buttermilk, and Coke/Pepsi/Thums Up a few times.
On the first few days of my tour (till Hyderabad), I had bananas to start my day, but that would not sustain me until breakfast time - around 08:00 am when roadside restaurants would open. I consulted my nutritionist and started keeping bread, peanut butter, and jam to make my morning breakfast - a PBJ sandwich. I would eat one or two PBJ sandwiches in the morning, between 04:30 am & 05:00 am, and keep one more as a backup in case I did not find a restaurant. From Hyderabad, I also kept instant coffee to make my own black coffee in a flask - I would start the day with some black coffee and have some more at rest breaks till around 09:00 am. Since some hotels did not have a water heater, I purchased a small immersion heater and that allowed me to make black coffee every morning from Nagpur onwards.
My nutritionist had advised me to have haldi & black pepper with milk as a recovery drink at the end of each day; however, I could do this on very few days as I could not get hot milk on most days.
Overall, the nutrition plan worked out as I did not feel overly tired any day and did not fall sick, either. Check out the food I ate and the places where I ate in the pictures below.
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| 26-Jan-2023 Lunch around 2:00 pm |
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| 27-Jan-2023 Breakfast around 06:30 am |
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| 27-Jan-2023 Lunch around 3:00 pm at Silver Horse Family Restaurant |
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| 28-Jan-2023 Breakfast around 07:45 am - Idly with sambhar and 2 chutneys |
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| 28-Jan-2023 Breakfast place - cooking on a wood-fired stove |
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| 28-Jan-2023 Breakfast place |
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| 28-Jan-2023 - Secon Breakfast - puffed rice and omelet |
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| 28-Jan-2023 - Secon Breakfast - puffed rice and omelet |
28-Jan-2023 Dinner @ Pattikonda - tasty but very spicy dry egg preparation
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| The owner made me a special dosa |
29-Jan-2023 Breakfast @ 09:30 am - special dosa with egg and masala puffed rice
29-Jan-2023 Dinner - Roti with paneer gravy
29-Jan-2023 - Some chat too (overate today evening)
29-Jan-2023 Haldi & black pepper with milk
30-Jan-2023 Breakfast around 07:45 am
30-Jan-2023 Lunch around 11:30 am at Chandra Dhaba
30-Jan-2023 - omelet around 05:30 pm - longest day till Mahbubnagar
31-Jan-2023 Breakfast around 07:00 am
01-Feb-2023 - Speciality tea in Hyderabad
01-Feb-2023 - Tea with mint and chia seeds
02-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 07:30 am
02-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
02-Feb-2023 Another round of idlys around 10:30 am
02-Feb-2023 Lunch of curd rice around 12:30 pm
03-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 07:30 am
03-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 07:30 am
03-Feb-2023 - Second round of Ildy/Wada around 10:30 am
03-Feb-2023 - Treated to orange juice by this gentleman around 11:30 am
04-Feb-2023 Breakfast place - had a hearty conversation with the Sardarji owner on various topics
04-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 07:30 am - First aloo paratha on the tour
04-Feb-2023 Sugargance juice around 01:00 pm
04-Feb-2023 Lunch around 02:30 pm just after entering Maharashtra (Pimpalkhuti)
05-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 08:00 am - first poha on the tour
05-Feb-2023 Lunch place
05-Feb-2023 Lunch early lunch around 11:00 am
05-Feb-2023 having leftover PBJ sandwich at Airbnb, Nagpur, around 06:00 pm
05-Feb-2023 Dinner - Nagpur
09-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
09-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 10:45 am
09-Feb-2023 Lunch at Hotel Stay Inn, Sakoli, around 03:00 pm
10-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
10-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 09:0 am
10-Feb-2023 Lunch place
10-Feb-2023 Lunch around 12:30 pm
11-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
11-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 08:44 am
11-Feb-2023 Lunch around 02:00 pm
11-Feb-2023 Dinner @ Bhatia Lodge restaurant, Simga. While the lodge was pathetic, the food was very good.
12-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
12-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 08:00 am
12-Feb-2023 Lunch place
12-Feb-2023 Lunch around 12:00 noon
13-Feb-2023 Breakfast cook - I was the first customer
13-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 09:00 am
13-Feb-2023 mid-morning snack - my mom's Gojju Avalakki and aloo pakoras from the shop
13-Feb-2023 Lunch at Keonchi around 02:30 pm before commencing the climb up to Amarkantak
14-Feb-2023 late Lunch on rest day at Amarkantak
15-Feb-2023 Lunch around 02:00 pm
15-Feb-2023 Dinner @ Indian Coffee House, Shahdol
15-Feb-2023 Dinner
15-Feb-2023 Dinner
16-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 07:30 am
17-Feb-2023 Breakfast place - Satish Saxena, the dhaba owner
17-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 11:00 am - awesome Guava chutney
17-Feb-2023 Lunch around 02:30 pm at Rakku Dhaba, Amanganj
18-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
18-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 09:00 am - amazing chutney made from Bel fruit (Wood Apple)
19-Feb-2023 Lunch (South Indian) with family in Khajuraho
20-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
20-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 09:30 am - 2 amazing chutneys - green mint/coriander/chilly and red garlic
21-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
21-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 08:30 am
21-Feb-2023 Sugarcane juice around 11:00 am
21-Feb-2023 Dinner place
21-Feb-2023 Dinner @ Datia
21-Feb-2023 - Dry fruits milk shake @ Datia
22-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
22-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 08:15 am
22-Feb-2023 Lunch place
22-Feb-2023 Lunch around 01:00 pm (watery dal in a high end place)
22-Feb-2023 Dinner at Dholpur
23-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
23-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 07:30 am
23-Feb-2023 Lunch place
23-Feb-2023 Lunch around 12:30 pm
24-Feb-2023 Breakfast place
24-Feb-2023 Breakfast around 08:00 am
24-Feb-2023 Lunch place
24-Feb-2023 Lunch around 12:00 noon
People and Questions
Of the 100s of people I met on the tour, there were only a couple of slightly bad experiences.
Most asked questions:
- What is the purpose of your travel? In the initial days, I used to just say that I did not have any specific purpose and was just going on an adventure. Later on, I modified the answer to: I wish to travel, see, and experience India at a slow pace and interact with people like you.
- Are you a YouTuber or Instagrammer? A few folks asked me to share my story on social media to inspire people.
- Is this an electric cycle?
- What is the cost of the cycle?
- Why are you traveling alone - you will have more fun traveling in a group.
- Where do you eat and sleep?
- Have you taken permission to travel? This was a weird one - why does an Indian citizen need permission to travel within India and permission from whom?
- Are you not scared?
- I was never scared of the roads or the people. The national highways have a shoulder where you can ride without worrying about the traffic, and the good thing is that on the highways, the amount of traffic is never really as bad as in our large cities. On this tour, I encountered maximum traffic between Mathura and Faridabad.
- While traveling close to the Tiger Reserve forests, I was a little worried about encountering wildlife.
- I did not travel in the dark for long - an hour to 1.5 hours in the early morning was the max, and I had good front and rear lights and a reflective vest to be visible.
The Bike and the Luggage
I used my less than 1-year-old Bike Friday New World Tourist on this tour. It is a custom-built folding touring bike. Except for the rear dynamo light issue, the bike did not give me any problems - not even a single puncture. Every 4-5 days, I would clean and oil the moving parts. The bike's key features that I like are:
- Small 20" wheels with 36 heavy-duty spokes - mean fewer chances of broken spokes, even on heavily loaded tours. On this tour, the bike weighed 15 Kg, and the luggage weighed 20 Kg.
- Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 internal transmission - no messing with external gear adjustments and easier cleaning. The gears can be changed while stationary.
- Schwalbe Marathon tires with additional rim tape and tire liner to protect from punctures.
- Shimano dynamo hub on the front wheel feeds the front and rear lights (by Busch & Müller). In the future, I can even get a Busch & Müller USB Werk that will allow me to charge my devices during the day when I don't need the lights.
My luggage was in 4 panniers + 1 saddlebag + 1 handlebar bag, and I mounted the phone and GoPro on the handlebar.
- Saddlebag - multi-tool kit, 1 inner tube, puncture kit, rag cloth, piece of soap, and a tiny bottle of vegetable oil - to get the grease off your hands.
- Handlebar bag - Power bank, Electral sachets, headphones, wallet, charging cables.
- Front pannier 1 - Few electronic items and chargers.
- Front pannier 2 - evening wear clothes, toiletries, towel, sleeping bag, and flip-flops.
- Rear pannier 1 - food, raincoat, 2 inner tubes, bungee cords, cleaning rags, foot pump, additional tools, and bike cleaning & oiling supplies.
- Rear pannier 2 - Additional clothes mostly used on break days. I did not have to open this pannier on most evenings. This pannier has an external flap that allows me to carry additional water bottles and fruits in an easily accessible manner.
Cycling Clothes
I used full-armed padded cycling shorts, pants, and a Merino wool shirt. This setup, along with a cycling bandana, allowed me to cycle in the sun without getting sunburnt. I don't like applying messy sunscreen. A cycling bandana serves multiple purposes - in the early morning cold, I could use it to cover my ears, and on dusty roads, cover my ears, nose, and mouth.
I washed and dried the shorts and shirt on alternate days - no soap. I would dry them under the fan in the hotel or, where possible, under the sun outside. The pants would need to be washed every 4-5 days on rest days.
Technology
Instead of using commercially available apps such as Strava, I built my own set of custom software to track my tour. Strava does fine-grained tracking and drains the device battery faster than my custom hybrid iOS app built using Angular, Ionic, and Capacitor. The picture below shows the various components.
The functionalities are as follows:
- Tracking App: It allows me to track my movement. The app has an input parameter of Distance Filter, and I usually set it to 2000 meters. This means every 2 Km, it will send my location update to a REST endpoint on the NodeJS app. In areas where the internet connection is not there, the location update is kept on a local file which I can later manually synch when the connection becomes available. The app still needs to be improved, as it crashed once in a while, and I had to restart it.
- Wix Website: This shows my latest location when I am on tour and shows the home location when I am not on tour. Keeps the indicator whether I am on tour or not. This is set to true when I start tracking using the tracking app.
- Firebase Realtime DB: Stores the location updates.
- Google Maps: Paid subscription to Google Maps JavaScript API to show my progress on Google Maps.
- Express / NodeJS App: Has REST endpoints to insert and query location updates and also a Web app to show location updates. Need to modify the web app to allow easy viewing of particular dates on this tour. Currently, you can see the following:
- A summary here: https://trips.cyclemy.world/blr-del and
- Specific dates by explicitly requesting the date, e.g. to see the last day of this tour, use: https://trips.cyclemy.world/26Feb2023.
Thoughts
As many travelers have previously shared, the world is not as bad as you see and read on newsmedia. People everywhere are trying to live their life in the best possible manner and they form impressions about places and people they have not seen based on what the media and others tell them. Traveling slowly and talking to people opens up our minds and we become much more accepting and considerate.
I saw and heard from people I spoke to that a lot of younger Indian population think that becoming a YouTuber is a path to riches. I think becoming good at a skill considered valuable by others, opens up a path to earning money. How much you earn depends on the value people place on your skill, how much demand there is for it, and how scarce is the supply. Producing good content that people would consume is not an easy task. It has taken me quite a lot of time over 2+ weeks to write this four-part series. I still haven't touched the GoPro footage, and my guess is that it will take me another few weeks before I compile them to make a few good videos. So, let's focus on building our skills.
On a related note to above, there is a need to guide the young on the right career path. Now this is likely a common problem in villages, small towns, and big cities. There is a lot of content freely available on social media and this serves as a distraction. Cheap internet in India has this negative side affect. There has to be a way to guide India's young on productively spending their time instead of wasting it on social media.
It's hard for people to get timeoff from work to go out on 5-week tours like I did. But, for those who can, please give it a shot. You can start with day long trips, then weekend trips, then 3-4 day trips, and then week-long trips. If it's hard to go out on your own, start with organized tours such as those from https://yhaindia.org/ and https://www.tourofnilgiris.com/. Reach out to me if you want to plan customized cycle tours.
Cycle touring can get a bit expensive depending upon the type of cycle and cycling gear you get. You can start small and then grow. From 2010 to 2015, I used a Cannondale Quick 5 that costed me INR 25K. In 2016, I got a Jamis Aurora touring bike from the US and it costed me USD 650 after discount. You don't want to know how much the Bike Friday NWT costed me - probably like upgrading from a Honda Civic to a Ferrari. Many of my accessories have been purchased over a period of time from 2012 onwards.
Oh yes, I was working during this tour. Most afternoons and evenings, I would respond to emails, get on calls, solve a design problem, or write a piece of code. I prepared my senior management by letting them know two months in advance about my tour. Informed the BA and tech lead 4 weeks earlier about my tour and we spent the 4 weeks planning for my physical absence - we created the work plan and designed the critical elements for upcoming deliveries. The team worked exceptionally well during the 5 weeks I was away. When the team presented their top-notch work after my return, I had tears in my eyes. A couple of learnings from this:
- No one is indespensible - life goes on even if you are not there.
- Controlled push to the team increases their quality of work and their confidence levels.
Mobile internet is great throughout the country except for a few jungle and mountainous areas. UPI payment accepted across the country and at the smallest of shops.
That's it for now. Next tour - Delhi - Manali - Leh - Kargil - Srinagar - Jammu - Amritsar starting tentatively on Sun, 30-Jul-2023.
