Jan. 15 : Cochin, India

Sunday, January 15 :: Cochin, India :: 0km today / 2449km total

Another quiet, relaxing day. Too relaxing... I'm starting to feel stir crazy (again!). However, the food was AWESOME today... toast with butter and jam for breakfast, there is real juice here, and for dinner I hit the seafood market again, this time picking up 2 calamari for 100 rupees. For another 50 they were cooked for me, in garlic, onion, etc... the best calamari I've ever had. Too good.

Much of my day has been spent pondering what to do with the 3-4 weeks between now the final 5-6 weeks I'm planning to spend in Nepal, the Indian Himalaya, Punjab, and Delhi. I've decided to give Bangladesh a miss, since it's less developed for tourism than India is, and India is already pushing it to the limit for me, at times. I had also originally planned to go to Sri Lanka, but a number of things has put me off that notion:
a) the simmering civil war there that has escalated a bit recently
b) the insider cycling information that the roads there are poor compared to India's , and
c) the fact that there's nothing there that particularly intrigues me.

But what to do instead? The three things I'm looking at are:
1) riding some of the East side of India, which originally I had planned to miss
2) flying to the Andaman Islands from Calcutta or Madras for 1-2 weeks of Sun, snorkeling, and surf, or
3) extending my trip into... Pakistan!!

I still haven't decided, but I do know that (inshallah) I ride out of here tomorrow morning. The Southern tip of India is a few days away.