Itchy-wheels

Ferry tales and Home again

Goedemorgen all!

Sorry for the late update but it has been a very hectic time.

I spend the last days in India and my worldtour cycling from Arambol to Mumbay from ferry station to ferry station following small traffic free (finally!) coastal roads. The winding roads led me through beautiful tropical beaches, hidden mangrove coves and piraty fishermen villages where I frequently had to take the most weird ferries to cross the rivers and bays. The road was more tiring than I had expected as especially in the south the road  ascends to a 125m high plateau and then down to see level again and again and again. So in the end I still had to climb 1000m a day and with the humidity and the heat it was very tiring. But then again, the beautiful people, villages, bays and views over the Indian ocean made it the best part of India I have cycled. I can recommend this coastal trip to everyone :-)

But all nice things end and on January 8th I arrived in the rotting, stinking, slimy and slummy 20 Million people hell of Mombay. The first thing I noticed was the penetrating STENCH, a mixture of rotting garbage, dead animal, shit, beggars and the fumes of the tuktuks. Disgusting.
I staid in the Travellers inn but the hotel management was less than friendly and for the first time on my whole worldtour I had to make a small fight with the owner before I was allowed to take my bike into the hotel.
Unfortunately I had been stupid enough to leave my hip belt with valuables (money, credit card etc) on the hotel desk and when I came back 10 minutes later ALL my money was missing. I am sure it must have been somebody from the staff as they were the only ones who knew what was in there. I cannot prove it though but BEWARE of that place.

I was thus more than happy to fly to Istanbul on January 9th but unfortunately the weather was quite bad so I decided to relax at the airport to get used to the western life again. On the 10th I finally flew to Dusseldorf were my parents and friends were waiting for me. A BIG thanks to Mark, Jeroen and the parents for helping me with my huge bike and crazy amount of luggage :-)

The last days I have been working in my spare time on a huuuuge google earth file where you can see the route I travelled (in 3D, wooohooo :-) ) WITH pictures and more nifty updates are coming in the next weeks. I will have a lot of  work to do in Germany the next period (promotion, paperwork etc etc) but I’ll try my best.
So stay tuned and in the meantime enjoy the last  pictures of nuthouse India.

Marc