Church in Old GoaThe Portuguese really left their mark on Goa. But then they occupied Goa for 500 years – shockingly up until 1961- before finally being driven out by the Indian army.Riding into the city from the north we passed Mediterranean-looking tiled roofed villas in various states of disrepair surrounded by high walls with medieval looking crosses built into the walls and gates like identity badges.   While before there were Hindu shrines dotting roadsides and villages, now there were little mini-churches with ornate facades and crosses inside … many hung with the same garlands of marigolds and with the same small offerings we saw draping the Hindu shrines to the north.The crosses are still of the archaic design you see in Spain and Portugal from the middle ages that used to adorn the shields of the crusaders and top gargoyle-covered Gothic cathedrals … to me they evoke a shameful legacy of inquisition, brutality and using religion as an excuse to conquer, exploit and subjugate.On the first day of our two days in Goa, a few of us navigated the entertaining and dirt cheap local buses to checkout Old Goa, the now-abandoned inland city where the Portuguese set up shop in 1500’s to control the spice trade. They built a huge city that was more important than Lisbon or London at the time with a cathedral and many other lesser churches.  They were typically brutal to the local people with the same subjugate and convert tactics and (even an inquisition) used so devastatingly during the spread of colonialism.  And then they abandoned it all in the 1800s after malaria and cholera forced them to move back

OK, that may be a tad harsh, but honestly after coming from six days of seeing only local folks and beautiful non-touristy coastline, and seeing minimal tourists in the last 5 weeks, Goa was a bit of a shock.When we crossed a ferry roughly 20k north of Goa I started seeing lots of Westerners.  Many were on motorbikes in tanks or bikini tops or bare chested with flesh in colors ranging from petal pink to Dentine red to leather brown which was hanging out in rolls and jiggling with every bump. The hotel where we are staying is littered with pink tourists sweltering and sunbathing around a pool – it’s so hot I can barely stand to leave the shade yet there they lie. And don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic to weight issues having struggled with it myself over my life.  It’s just such a contrast to the beautiful saris and the care local folks take to dress and bejewel themselves that it’s literally shocking and in some ways embarrassing to see.   It really gave me a perspective on what locals must think of westerners when they see us.  It’s not pretty, really. Most cyclists are now wearing bike shorts and a short sleeve jersey for riding.  A few have taken to riding shirtless which – frankly – isn’t great as far as I’m concerned but I’m not the clothing police. But at least most of our flesh isn’t jiggling, or there is less to jiggle at any rate, and we’re doing something that is so bizarre and alien that the novelty of puffing up steep hills distracts from how we look.  There are a few of us still covering arms and legs below the knee for sun protection and to try and be respectful of more conservative views on

On a gorgeous bluff over a beach in Devgarh - locals only come hereI heard a crack.  I’d just come down a long descent on bumpy torn up roads and hit the bottom with the next climb starting almost immediately again in front of me.  Uh-oh. Cracking sounds are bad. What rattled off this time?Stop the bike. Seat bag is on.  Nothing obvious is off, broken or loose. Rear light is still attached.   Fork is OK (my big fear on these roads is damaging my carbon fiber fork- which would be not only dangerous but possibly a trip ender). Everything seems OK.   So I start the next long climb and get most of the way up and look down to check my computer … gone.  Drat.  I turn around and head back down the hill (a really long steep hill, of course) and search the area where I think it may have fallen- no luck. So I chug back up the hill to play catch up and check in with our sweep (the staff member who rides at the back of the pack to “sweep” in the stragglers and make sure no-one is having trouble) and then work to catch up with someone who has a computer so I can make it to the next town.The bike computer is pretty important for our navigation.   Basically our navigation is based on three sets of tools:A set of written directions that are posted on a white board every night which I hand-copy down, put in a zip lock bag and use binder clips to attach it to my camera bag on the stem. The directions look something like this: ·         At .6 Kilometers, right at Traffic circle·         At 9.5 Kilometers, Left at T intersection (ask for town of Devgarh)·         At 22.5 K straight through 4-way

When I travel I like to go beyond my comfort levels.  At home you are surrounded by the familiar.  Here I reach out and force myself to be receptive to the world and people in a way that I never allow at home.  Cycling through small villages and seeing a place on a bike forces an openness and interactions beyond anything possible on tours insulated by guides or even sticking to the backpacker circuits.In hindsight I think our first week was traveling through the most challenging area we will visit.   Of course that perception is impacted by being brand new to the country and overwhelmed by what now seems normal, but still I think it was a sensory shock introduction. Agra, where we started, is a rough industrial town that happens to have one of the world’s largest tourist attractions. It’s predatory to visitors and relentless in getting every dime out of you, but as I saw as we rode out it’s also a dirty, overcrowded, shockingly unsanitary place.   It must draw most of its workers from the surrounding rural areas that bring many of their customs right into the city.The first week we went through rough village after village, which I understand now were at subsistence level living, where people had very little and conditions were filthy.  I saw women doing everything – backbreaking labor, and men seemed to do nothing.   I was grateful not to be a woman born in NE Rajasthan. There were children everywhere in these villages – and after seeing other areas where children were uniformed and in school I think perhaps this area was one where many children had no school or were not attending for whatever reason.  This led to a lot of behavior the first week with kids that I’ve not seen

We are halfway through this trip.  2000 kilometers ridden out of 4000 planned and one month in country.In many ways that seems impossible – and I can’t believe I’ve been here this long. But then when I think about this trip in terms of experiences it feels quite different, like I’ve already packed a year’s worth of intense experience into an amazingly compact time. Wonder. Excitement. Fear. Anxiety. Frustration.  Freedom.   Curiosity.  Fatigue. Acknowledging the humbleness that comes when assumptions you didn’t even know you made go out the window. The addiction of intense mental stimulation - being “on” for hours and navigating one situation after another that is so different and challenging.  Reminding myself how much I don’t know and soaking in as much as I’m capable of before retreating.This first month has been about being mentally and – to a lesser extent – physically challenged.   To me, this trip is not that physically difficult so far compared to other bike rides I’ve done. On those trips - the physical challenge of getting up day after day and riding 100 miles and climbing thousands of feet provide their own kind stimulation and goal. This is not a traditional cycle tour or event where the measure of the day’s success is calculating elevation gained and average speeds and talking about that great double pace line.The cycling challenges here so far have been navigating rough roads and learning to deal with traffic that physically leaves you beaten and mentally exhausted because you have to be so alert and focused for hours - you do not want to make a mistake here and the conditions make it easier to seriously crash on these roads than anywhere else I’ve ever ridden. The mental challenge is re-calibrating my internal alarms to recognize curiosity and openness

 Work to reward ratio.That’s one of my unscientific measures of good cycling.  I’ll happily climb any hills and ride hard as long as the net reward for all that work makes it worthwhile.The last two days we’ve been cycling south heading from Mumbai to Goa. It will take six days of cycling total to get to Goa, and it’s been challenging riding. Hills, heat, rough roads balanced by views and interesting encounters.  The climbs are steep – think the old roads through the Appalachians – many easily over 10% grade and many several kilometers long.   So this has not been cycling for the faint-hearted – some riders have even bailed on the cycling to go to Goa early for extra beach time. But so far the ratio has leaned to reward – the route today in particular was spectacular.Beautiful whites sand beaches framed by mountains at sunrise were the early sites this morning after a nice warm-up climb. We followed the coast south through a succession of climbs up a mountain and descents down to the beach or to the mouths of rivers that fed into the sea. There were fishing villages and the base of the rivers, and many had just come in with their catch and were moving fish off boats or laying fish out on the ground to process. Nets were piled up, and boats and boat repair yards lined the waterfront – many of the boats sheltered by woven mats that fit tightly over the top.  At one place I saw them launching a huge wooden fishing boat –on wood rollers with at least men systematically removing supports and letting the boat move towards the water. Lava field plateauAs the day progressed the climbs led to old lava fields that formed a plateau.   Black and

Squeezing on a small boat in MarudThere is no way all of us - with all our bikes - are fitting on that little boat.It’s early and we’ve just ridden 5k out of Janjira to the ferry dock in Murud.  It was a gorgeous morning- with the sun rising over the mountain and casting a long white light over harbor and the village.  A huge fort surrounded by water lay just offshore …. These folks loved their fortifications.But, somehow, they stacked up the bikes and then carefully stacked up the cyclists and off we went on the second ferry ride in the two days since we left Mumbai heading south.Bikes were lined up inside the open boat and laid flat on the top of the boat. Riders were packed in the back and also sitting on the top of the boat behind the bikes around the diesel exhaust pipe.  It all worked.  Even unloading – where for the second time we got us and our bikes off the boat by climbing over and walking through another boat tied between us and the pier. Apparently all this is business as usual.The two days cycling south from Mumbai have been beautiful, and the cycling today, the second day as we hit mountains again was beautiful and challenging.You would think this area would be covered in Mumbai vacation homes and resorts. But luckily they head further south to Goa to play, so we are seeing little fishing villages and heading through mountain towns and seeing wetlands, mangrove swamps, forests and mountains.  Lovely little villages have varied drastically from well-off coastal towns with double-story concrete homes and well-kept streets to small mountain villages where homes are made from the same rich red clay as the earth – shaped into bricks and terraced up steep mountain

The infamous slums of Mumbai are really self-contained communities.   We were lucky enough to visit one today to be part of a celebration.We have a woman riding with us – Morgan – who was disabled in a freak accident when she was 24 and is in a wheelchair. She is riding with on the tour with her partner Victor and cameraman Eric who is documenting the trip for a film. She is using an electric assist hand bike to navigate these roads.   It sits low to the ground with a flag that flies high to help with visibility.  And when she’s cranking along she can outpace me. MorganShe’s not riding every mile or every day.  Some days the traffic, bad roads or hills probably just make it too unsafe.  And there are even challenges for her in the basic accommodations and routines. But when she does ride she draws an interested crowd and I feel sure inspires and surprises many who never thought it was possible to what she’s doing. And that, I expect, is one of the main goals of her effort.  http://theableproject.com/india-hand-bike-tour/Morgan and her team worked with a Victoria based charity doing work in a Mumbai slum to share some hope and opportunity she feels the bike has given her after her injury with others. I and several other riders were happy to go out and support her and their work in a celebration and presentation ceremony of 42 hand bikes to disabled people from the Mumbai area.Tour d’Afrique gives a portion of the proceeds of each of their tours to a local charity- often presenting bikes to health workers in Africa (see the link on my blog). This time they worked with Morgan and an organization out of Victoria that is helping revitalize a slum in Mumbai

Happy not to ride in this ...They decided to bus us to Mumbai for our rest day.Mumbai (Bombay) is so big – 17 million people - there is no way to safely get in on a bike and the traffic was so heavy that even riding only 60k or so and busing the rest would have meant getting into the city late at night– there was 60k of trafficky suburbs and city to navigate before getting to the old colonial area on the tip of the peninsula where we are staying.   So better to just get in a rattling old bus and check out the scenery on the way in.  Which was OK with me.  Mumbai is a contrast.  There is blatant display of money, modern high-rises, miniskirts, hand-holding couples, beach and ocean views, sophisticated stadiums and old colonial buildings alongside urban poverty, congestion, dirt and sprawl.  I’d been to Mumbai before- back when it was Bombay –as a college student and stayed with a host family for several days.  We went to the beach and India Gate and Elephanta Island with my family and their friends.  But my most vivid memory of that trip was not of the time with the family, but of the bus ride in from the port past a slum which was shacks and mud and children in knee deep filth and an odor that made you know that mud was crawling with disease.  Dead silence on the bus – and that never happens with 30 college students.  Today I went back into a slum for a celebration and an entirely different experience, which I’ll describe more in a later post.The night we got in I spent a lot of time with Lee and Kevin who are leaving tonight to back to Vancouver. We roamed around