Day 113: Ankleshwar to Vadodara
The “K’s” are flying by!
Last night we had time for a pleasant stroll through a lush green park, adjacent to a reservoir. We were surrounded by locals, also walking, jogging, picnicking and generally enjoying the cool evening and the lovely oasis in a dusty land. Another side to India we have not seen before.
We were far from the only ones taking selfies.
We also had the chance to peek at a wedding going on at our hotel. We were confused by the setup before the guests arrived. There appeared to be two weddings - with matching seating and stages on both sides of a large dividing screen.
When the guests arrived, it all became clear. Men on the right, women on the left. It' looked like the women were having the better party.
Another early start to beat the heat. We were away before 7am today.
More main road today - although we did manage a couple of excursions into quieter and more sane roads.
Does a pilgrimage journey count if you get pushed there?
We thought this was going to be a lovely quiet road. Unfortunately, we were told that someone’s built a factory across it and it doesn’t connect to anything any more. That will explain why it’s so peaceful.
Scarily narrow bridge for two lanes of traffic. That’s why they are building a new bridge next door. It doesn’t quite make it to the other side yet though.
We cracked off the K’s though - over 100km today, although it was getting pretty hot by the end.
As we neared our destination, we headed a little to the left of Vadodora to make a stop at the local Decathlon sports equipment store. I broke the flag pole on the Blue Strawberry a while back, and although the bamboo I whittled as a replacement was going pretty well, I managed to snap that again today -making it pretty short.
We thought Decathlon has to have some tent poles that would be the perfect replacement, and indeed they did. However, as we walked down to the cash tills we spotted the archery section, and some arrows. An arrow was a much lighter weight alternative, and we didn’t have to get rid of about 10 unnecessary pole sections we didn’t need. Ideal.
Our trip to Decathlon gave us a smarter flag pole - made from an arrow.
As we were sorting this out, one of the members of staff came up to us and said they’d seen we’d arrived on bicycles and would we like a free bottle of Gatorade drink to cool down? Yes we would! Thanks so much to the team there. They were very helpful and, of course, we had a piccy with them.
The lovely people at Decathlon.
Heading off again.
Route updates
We’ve had the family conference, we’ve done the research, we’ve checked out the visa situation (well some of it - Brexit will throw that up in the air again!) We’ve now decided Baku in Azerbaijan is our next destination after New Delhi, having decided previously to avoid Iran.
You can see full details on the Route page.
The next leg after India.