Big day, but we were up for it. It’s not the distance that’s wearing, it’s the constant descending and ascending. 1,600m of climbing today, which would be nothing normally on a road bike, but on a fully laden touring bike, it’s a big day.

Still, the landscape today was very attractive. Mango plantations rolling down to fishing villages and occasional white sand beaches.

We’re finding eating little but often helps too. Multiple snack stops keep us charged up.

Snack stop two with a banana and a Kitkat.

The brightest colours are nearly always the women in their sarees.

Lunch was lovely too. We spotted a good eating sign, and there didn’t look to be much for a while so we pulled over. However, it wasn’t looking very open, until a guy shouts from the back, “One minute.” So we wait and then get shown in to the eating area. “Chicke thali” we’re told - ok. We’ve given up being veggie pescetarean fussy eaters at present. We eat the food that’s available.

Then he says, “My son is at school and I must pick him up. You wait five minutes.”

It sounds like this was going to take forever, but in fact his wife was out the back cooking the whole time and we very soon had a beautiful chicken thali in front of us.

The afternoon excitement was meeting another group of cycle tourists. We were having another snack stop when three guys pulled up outside. They were Swiss cyclists riding from Mumbai to Bangalore - the reverse of our route.

We had a good chat about what to expect up the road - more rolling hills for us - and then headed off again.

Blog

Day 99: Devgad to Ratnagiri