Mar. 3 - Sitapur, India

Friday, March 3 :: Sitapur, India :: 165km today / 5640km total

The train arrived on time, and sometime before 8 a.m. I was off and rolling. I'm back in Uttar Pradesh now, a state that I had liked the first time around. The road from here all the way to Varanasi should be hot, dead flat, with horribly dangerous drivers. All three factors a dramatic change from Pakistan's Karakoram Highway!

I was well-rested, but not well-fed, still, if conditions were favourable (tailwind, good road surface, not being sent into the gravel more than, say, 10 times) I knew today could be a massive one. My legs were aching to go, so I hammered the first 85km, not stopping at all. Well, thats not quite true - I was run off the road a few times by oncoming trucks/buses, ah, so good to be back cycling on Indian roads. And yes, lots of carnage all over the place again, but no dead/bleeding bodies or bloodspots on the road today. Either way, I found a great eatery at my first waypoint town, and devoured a massive meal of chicken tikka and naan. India DEFINITELY holds the title for best food. It took some time for the food to digest, but still I rolled through 110km exceedingly quickly. During a busy stretch a minibus sideswiped me, almost knocking me off the bike - the bike went into the "wobblies" (weaving back and forth uncontrollably, at high speed), which usually means you're going down... I've been there a few times. All I could think during those 1.5 seconds was "if I go down its going to be very messy" and fought hard for control, trying to counter-intuitive my steering. Somehow it worked, I regained control, but lost my temper, threw the bike into a high gear, and hammered after the minibus, which had not hung around to see what happened to me. If I caught the bus the driver was going to have a very, very bad day, as I tried to remember how deep I had packed my bicycle pump. I was praying for a town, roadworks, train, anything that would make a bike faster than a bus... but the road was straight, un-towned, and fast, and after 5km I had to give up the chase.

50km from Sitapur I backed off the pace... Sitapur sat at 165km, Lucknow around 250km, with nothing in between... to make Lucknow would be really tough without a tailwind, which the Sitapur-Lucknow stretch of road did not have, based on local conditions. And it was a good thing I slowed, because 10km later I started feeling awful - weak, headache, feeling faint. As I write this I'm not really sure why... dehydration? heat? pace? Usually I'm pretty good with the self-diagnosis on these things, but its still a mystery to me. Anyways, I was miserable. The last 40km into Sitapur was horrible. I'll force myself an easy 88km to Lucknow tomorrow to fully recover from whatever it was, then allow myself a bigger day Sunday.

Oh by the way, for you photographers out there, I came up with a GREAT idea for a photography book. "Road Accidents of India". No, don't show any bodies, but you have to see the crazy angles and contortions that vehicles end up in here, post-crash. It really is unbelievable, laughable to those flipping a page (not laughable to me, here). Think of the craziest car crash scenes in Hollywood movies, you know, where a car ends up rolled over, pointing downhill, it's tail up in the air, then imagine big trucks and buses doing that, alone or mangled with another one, their loads cleared or spilled out one side - you get the idea.