A FINAL MANTIS RANTING OF HOLY SHIT INDIA‏

Our last day in India my goal was to write a story about our overall feelings for the place.  But alas I spent the day in bed moaning about my aching throat and inability to swallow, (looks like I said, “hey Rachael, India might be covered in shit but it is the first time we’ve not gotten sick”, one day early).  Then I figured the 40 hours it was going to take us to get home I’d have plenty of chance to write but something about screaming babies, awful airplane air, fat feet and looking after your wife who’s throwing up on the plane were too distracting for any creative thinking. 

So now, two days after our return, I’ve snuck out of bed at 6am on Saturday morning to scribble down this absurd inky idea that has popped into my head.

Landing in India, you feel like you’ve awoke swimming in your local poo farm.  Everywhere your eyes land you see shit, every time you breathe through your nose you smell shit, everything you touch, it is covered in shit.  Not wanting to put your face under you cruise around doing the back stroke and bizarrely come across the odd undigested pistachio floating on the surface.  Thinking, ‘what the hell do I have to loose, I’m floating in shit’, you pop one into your mouth…surprisingly it’s rather tasty.  And the more you search the more delicious floating undigested pistachios you discover.  ‘Things could be worse,’ you think.

After a few weeks of bobbing on your back, curiosity gets the best of you; rolling onto your tummy, you stick your face in, against better judgment you open your eyes you have a look around, ‘HOLY SHIT’, it is like a pistachio gold mine down there.  Soon enough you get sick of coming up for air and so take the plunge, you inhale a big lung full of brown frothy aerated shit, expecting to gag your body tenses up...but to your surprise nothing happens, in fact you feel fine; looking at yourself in the mirror you see why, in just a few short weeks you’ve miraculously grown Indian shit filtering gills, Wouzers!  No longer encumbered by the need to surface for air you swim deeper, filling your pistachio sack and breathing freely.  Slowly but surely you seem to be ‘acclimatizing’ to your environment and can only sense the shit you know is out there if you strain really hard.  The deeper you go the denser the pistachios get until a few fathoms down…you discover a solid bed of pistachios…a bizarre sensation creeps over you, ‘your smiling’; and you realize that only now are you experiencing the real INDIA!

Mantis and Mango Are Home!!!

You know what that means…PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are going to be having a potluck dinner and slide show of our trip!!!  Everyone is welcome, invite anyone you want!!  Please come, and bring a dish to share!!!!

Like every year it is going to be a rubbish free dinner.  We’ll have a recycling bin for bottles but other than that we don’t want to create any trash.  So bring a picnic basket with plates, cutlery, cups, cloth napkins and anything else you need might need!  Plastic plates will be frowned upon!

Date: Next Saturday, April 23^rd

Time: Potluck to start around 5pm with slide show sometime around 7pm

Location: 56 Langdon Street, Plymouth, NH 03264 (that is the barn behind my parents’ house)

Parking is slightly limited so please carpool if you can.  Please park in my parents driveway, on Langdon Street or if you don’t mind being parked in a number of cars can fit single file in our driveway. 

Email or give us a call if you have any questions!! 603-254-8824

Love Mantis and Mango

BOOBS

STORY ONE:

On our 3^rd rest day in as many days of riding we’ve landed in Kumily.  The plan was to just spend the afternoon here and then ride on but our bodies were calling for more rest!  Yesterdays ride was a bit more than we’d planned for.  20km of gradual up, 30km of almost get off and push up and down, then it took us 3 hours to ride the next 20km (that’s an average of 6.6km/h which is only just over 4mph, I could drink 30 beers and crawl that fast), finally reaching the top of the pass we were told, ‘40km of flat from here’, maybe in a car but not on a bike.  All told we were in the saddle for 7.5 hours, at 100F, plugged into the ‘is it too hot and steep for riding equation’ that is 29 normal hours, no wonder we needed a bloody rest day, we’re insane!  Plus we had 3 separate rain storms, one section of shrapnel road and our first crash of the trip.  One of us, upon seeing a bus swerve our way, slammed on the breaks and veered off the road so abruptly, that the one in the rear had no time to react and so careened into the other; overlapping wheels was forced down, luckily managing to unclip and land on their feet while the bike skidded to a hault.  No one was injured and the bikes were fine! HS-TIA!  (for anyone who’s watched Blood Diamond and is familiar with the term TIA, This is Africa, we have modified it for our current situation.  This Is India! And in extreme cases like a bicycle crash HS is added as a prefix.)

Limping into port around 5pm we find a mooring, collapse onto our bed and proceed to eat everything we can find left over in our bags, chocolate pies, curry chips, peanuts, cookies and raisins.  Shower up and out to dinner where i fist so much delicious curry, rice and parotas (they are one of the amazing India breads) down my gullets that I actually almost vomit on the walk home.  Despite the gorging I have the best night’s sleep since leaving home! Yes

Late the next afternoon we venture out on our bikes to explore what the signs claim to be, ‘The Only True Eco-Tourism Model in the World’, yah right!  I’m expecting to see more rubbish and poop then eco-anything but the national park is only 3km down the road so we have to check it out. 

After paying 20x the local price (which is still only 5 dollars) just to be allowed through the gate we start seeing signs like nothing else we’ve come across in India, ‘Please don’t throw Rubbish’, ‘No Horns’, ‘No Passing’, ‘No Music’, ‘No Speeding’, ‘Preserve India’, ‘Animals have a right to Live’.  HOLLY SHIT!  We pinch ourselves to see if we are sleeping or maybe worse, dead.  Nope we are not!  There is even a road crew of ladies picking up what little rubbish there is.  Nice one National Parks!

Getting to the end of the road it turns out there is really only one reason to come in and that is to take a wildlife spotting boat trip on the 1820’s British damned lake.  The locals are doing it so we figure, ‘why not.’

Along with 200 Indians and a handful of westerners we clamber aboard 3 boats that are more resembling of ocean ferries then sightseeing lake boats.  From the onset I’m pretty sure the real show will be inside the boat, not out.  Firing up the noisy diesel engines I’m proven wrong.  The boat ride is ridiculously long and most everyone falls asleep but we do spot monster deer, buffalo herds, boar, monkeys and a lone distant elephant. 

Way to go India!  It’s refreshing to learn there are spots in India that haven’t fallen prey to the destructive human race!

STORY 2

Just made some new friends, Emma and Guy!  After spending a few hours together around the breakfast table, watching the local fisherman haul in the most insane beach netting system, it starts to get hot, India style!  The kind where if you don’t drink your chai quickly enough it gets salty and watered down from the steady stream of sweat running off your nose.

Well then, what better to do with a rest day at the beach then go bodysurfing.  Oddly enough, or maybe not as they are from England, where it’s always cold, this is one of the first times Emma has ever been in the ocean where there is any swell.  Wading in chest deep a wave comes and we all dive down to get underneath it, that is except Emma who just stands there and gets tossed around a bit.  Turning I can see that she’s out of her comfort zone so I give her a grin, ‘nice one’.  At the same time Guy shouts, “one’s popped out Emma!”  Following her eyes down…low and behold it has, a boob has completely hopped out of its hammock. Wiping it back in she looks mortified and turns for shore.  Most likely because she thinks I was giving her the ‘One Eyed Titty Wink’ not the ‘Good Ocean Skills Grin’ I was intending. 

Sadly because either her wipping acting was olimpic athleat fast or my visionary reaction was so slow i didn't even get to see the boob.  Not necessarly that i wanted to but who would give up a free boob spotting opportunity; it was like getting caught steeling out of the cookie jar when you didn't really steal any cookies.

How do you explain that one?  I thought about it for a few seconds and came to the realization that I couldn’t so I let it go. 

Haha, that is until now as she and Guy are on our emailing list.  Haha. Boobs!

Love Mantis and Mango

GPS; ADVENTURE OR NOT‏

Three stories this time, if you only have time to read one skip to the last!

STORY ONE:

Another HOLLY SHIT DAY in India:

March 30th began on a bit of a high note. Just coming off a rest day our bodies were rejuvenated and our legs were feeling strong. Plus we were figuring this might be a bit of a turning point in our trip. We have reached Kanyakamari, India's Southern most point and are now about to start heading north up the west coast where there are rumored to be at least a few nice beachie spots plus some mountain riding where it might be a bit cooler and tea plantations that we've heard are quite spectacular.

The first 5km out of Kanyakamari proved our predictions to be 110% correct, first of all we didn't have a headwind, we were riding up our first incline in 900km (finally getting to use more then one of our 27 speeds), there were amazing Karst mountains to our right and the first real veggie crop farming we'd seen to our immediate left with rice paddies and coconut plantations beyond. Behold beautiful India; plus the road wasn't so busy, the buss drivers not quite so aggressive and the 6am temp was sublime; had we died and gone to India heaven?

No we had not! Just as a throwing star to the genitals is sure to ruin the mood we hit the main road and everything changed. Back to the same old horrendous bull shit Indian drivers, only worse, the traffic as bumper to bumper, mostly busses and dump trucks, there was no shoulder what so ever and the road dropped off a good 10cm making rapid escape impossible. After watching Rachael narrowly miss slamming into the side of a 4x4, the driver had looked us both in the eyes and then pulled out straight in front of us, (i guess that's what eye connection means here). Then shortly after I was mm's away from being side swiped by a bus; for the very first time i might add, i actually shouted at the top of my lungs 'F-U' to the bus driver, not that he heard over the blaring hours, but that was how pissed I was!

This got me pondering; firstly that if there was a 777 along side the road with a free seat would i jump on? O hell yes i would, but being a rather unlikely sinerio i started to think...what are we actually doing here? Because this, right now, is not much fun! Are we here souly to risk our lives, like we are at the moment, because if that is it i can think of a shit ton of other similarly stupid ways we could be risking our lives just for the hell of it and having a lot more fun in the process. Like we could be at home with a rotten old wooden latter suspended off two dead tree limbs above some upside down cars where our friends are blaring horns and revving the engines; the result would be the same, mangeled by some tires and at least we wouldn't be breathing in the smell of hot urine.

Being undoubtly a dangerous state of mind to be in while riding on a busy Indian road we pulled off for a breather, a hot chai and a whole loaf of raisin cake.

Partially revived we peddle on, but it is rapidly apparent there isn't enough chai and cake in India to make this road enjoyable; we are hot, sweaty, covered in road grime, nearly deaf and scared for our safety. There must be another way but our map doesn't show any and when we ask the locals they say the main road is it. The GPS we'd brought along had been useful in the cities but other than that it never shows any more roads then the map. Checking can't hurt i figure so i pulled it out, zeroed in our Kovallum and hit 'go to'. The mapping route bar goes from 0 to 100% and there in front of us it shows that there are indeed some smaller roads we could try, it actually shows we could have skipped out on the last 30km of hell if i'd just checked sooner.

300m up the main road the GPS has us turn left onto what is the worst road we've been on in India. Scattered chunks of mud covered pavement existed in places with huge wash outs everywhere else. The going's slow but atop the hill, half a km on, we turn right onto a great back road that amazingly continus for 40km to our destination. We even happen upon some tailors who repair Rachael's pants free of charge; for which we by them all chai from the stall across the way.

I'd say the GPS has earned its right to come along on future bike trips. We must have made 50 turns all on unnamed unmarked intersecting roads, no map, amount of Google mapping, or quizzing locals could have got us through.

Arriving in Kovalum we scored a room overlooking a great beach for 7 bucks and now i'm thinking...no i wouldn't hop on that 777; in fact, if we sold our house, car and all our junk we could retire here!

HOLLY SHIT LIVE IS WEIRD!

Love US!

STORY TWO:

48 hours ago i praised the GPS as the best thing since wonder bread, the ultimate tool for riding the most obscure and otherwise unnavagable back roads. Now i'm not so sure...

Back on the bikes after a relaxing rest day of body surfing and making new friends we're following the GPS's lead when out of the blue the detail vanishes and we are simply depicted as a black arrow on a white screen. Lat:26.02 Long:86. Just as useless our map doesn't show the roads we've been on or even the town we're headed for. We'd only planned on riding 60k and we're already through the first 30km, all of which have been on fantastic side roads hugging the coast with minimal traffic and the least amount of horn blaring we've encountered to date. Certain the road will continue to Varkala we peddle on enjoying the rare peace and quiet (don't worry we are still in India there is plenty of trash, poop and the occasional waft of urine coming up from the nearby sesspools).

Even the other well traveled cyclists we've read about riding through this area had cycled on the main road, "I wonder why they didn't take this road? It is great!"

And then about as quick as you can say, "where the f did my road go?' we were upon an impass. A large water way separated us from the road we could see on the farside. 'Damn!' that would be precisely why the road was so quiet.' We couldn't even remember having seen the road fork since the GPS had blanked 15km back. 'Rats,' we said, 'this was supposed to be a ridiculously short day.'

About to start backtracking, when from around the bend we spot a local wooden vessel with two men aboard, and they are coming our way. Perfect.

"Ahoy Maity, might it be possible for you to row us across this here fiord?"

"Nope, no time," came the reply.

"We will pay you!"

"Nope, we are to busy I said, no time," it came again.

We couldn't really tell what the hurry was about it looked as though they were just carting sand about.

"50 rupies," I shouted!

"Nope!"

"100 rupies!"

"To busy!"

The estuary is only 100 feet wide at the mouth, it wouldn't take them more then three minutes. Why wouldn't they do it, we couldn't understand. Then the boat man motions for us to follow a sandy track to left.

"Is there a bridge down there?"

His head wobbles. Ahh? We look at each other, this head wobbling is one thing we really have yet to understand, does that mean 'yep there is a bridge', or 'nope there isn't a bridge' or 'it's so hot i would love a popsicle, do you have one?'

His head wobbles again and he motions for us to follow.

Unsure why we are lugging our bikes through deep soft sand we follow.

Around the corner: Nope no bridge, just the estuary dumping out into the sea, though HOLLY SHIT! There is an incredibly perfect wave peeling off both sides of the break wall. Too bad we didn't have surfboards, i bet no one else has ever surfed here.

He's now cruzing along the shore just below us.

We give him the, 'what kind of shit are you trying to pull here?'

Again, the head wobble and hand motions to follow.

Then the man who's been closely shadowing us yet hasn't said a word (there always seems to be one of these in India) speaks up, "take yourselves to they yonder sand spit, Captain James will ferry you and your belongings across the fiord to safety on they opposing bank." (of freaking course this is not what he really said as he didn't speak a word of english but we imagined that is what he was getting at).

So we plot on trudging through the sand. Come to think of it Captin James himself really wasn't speaking great English either, maybe when i shouted, 'I'll give you 100 rupies!' and we thought he shouted back, "no time" he actually responded, "for you, lunatic white man, who is willing to pay the equivalent of more than what 60% of the Indian population earns in a day for a three minute ferry ride, I've all the time in the world, get in."

At the beach, Captain James is more then happy to let me take a snap shot of himself, Mate Tomas and Rachael in his vessel. Safely landing on the other side, i pay Captain James the promised 100 rupies, we all exchange smiles and he and Thomas paddle off to fill their ship with another load of sand.


That was just awesome! Possibly the best 10 minutes of our trip so far! Tick Tick went my mind; had the GPS continued to work, or had we possessed a map worth its salt, we never would have traveled down this road. And with that we'd never have met Captin James, Mate Thomas, had the pleasure of sailing on their yhat or discovered a new surf spot.

F-it i thought, lets build a fire, chuck in the GPS and our maps and we're sure to have the adventure of a lifetime!

STORY THREE:

And then...after 20 days of all the HOLLY SHIT India could throw at us we've just had one of our best cycling days ever; not just here in India but ever!  No poo, no rubish, no trucks, no buses, no horns, no gaucking, no urine, no beggars, no opressive heat; just incrediable roads and even more incrediable scenery.  I'd write a story but the pics will do a better job!  The only frusterating thing about the ride was knowing that it has been here all along and it took us this long to find it, at least i guess we finally did.  I'd reccomend flying to India just to ride this one road!

Love,

Mantis and Possum

POOP

STORY ONE

I realize that I’ve not painted India to be some sort of “Heaven on Earth” and I certainly wouldn’t claim it to be.  But maybe it’s exactly what we’ve been looking for, someplace so wildly different to what we’ve become accustom it’s shocking; like a defibrillator for the mind it’s making us think!!

Back to the interview!

“What are a few of the most major differences between India and home?” you ask.

Let me think for a few moments…

First I would say the most striking visual difference would be the manner in which trash is dealt with in India.  Now it is not if this is the first country outside the US and Australia that we’ve been to, like we’ve never seen a bit of rubbish in the street.  India is different, and I’m sure it just simply comes down to the sheer number of people in this country and the amount of trash this sized population creates.  But so far as we’ve seen there is rubbish just about everywhere you go.  Lining both sides of every road we have traveled, around every home, clogging every river, water way, irrigation channel, and drainage ditch, discarded on every beach, palm plantation, rice paddy and sand dune, ceremoniously placed on every temple, church and holy place, I’d be willing to bet that the number of places in India where you can’t spot at least a few bits of rubbish are exponentially approaching zero. 

Don’t get me wrong here, the defibrillators got juice and is keeping our minds open.  I certainly don’t think the way in which we deal with rubbish at home is any better, it is most certainly worse for the environment overall, burning fossil fuels to lug it way to a far off landfill so that it is out of sight, out of mind.  Maybe chucking it on the ground is a better way to deal with it; serving as a poignant reminder as to the environmental disaster plastic bags are creating.  Plus plastic does break down considerably faster when exposed to UV rays which ours is not buried far below the earths surface. 

Let me tell you littering is quite the bizarre feeling.  Not that I’ve taken it up as a new favorite past time but last shop we went to after loading up on water we had an empty water jug.  I went to return it to the shop keeper, as they usually take them back for recycling, but this guy just shrugged and mimed chucking it into the street.  ‘Emm’, I thought, ‘don’t know if I could do that.’  But then he closed in on me and quite literally forced me to.  I knew for certain with in 30 seconds the next homeless person would pick it up but the sensation was still very foreign, doing something you’ve always thought to be wrong.  I dare you to try it, chuck a bottle in your front yard, even if you pick it up later in the day, see if you can get yourself to do it. 

Secondly, I’d say, the next major difference between home and India is the method in which human excrement is dealt with.  It’s another eye opener as to how damn lucky we are to have all that we do, including the ability to simply walk into a room in our house, shut the door, poop, flush, wash, walk away with out even bothering to consider what happens next.  Again, I’m not saying our system is superior, most likely it isn’t, burning coal to generate electric power so that a sewage plant can process our probably unprocessable pesticide, herbicide, growth enhanced preservative filled excrement where the liquids can then be dumped into the rivers and the solids can be carted off in another fossil fuel fired beast; doesn’t’ sound too sustainable to me.

Here in India some people are lucky enough to be able to ‘walk away’ but not many.  As with throwing rubbish you can piss and shit anywhere you like.  All the streets reek of urine and if you open your eyes there are people squatting to poop everywhere; on the edge of the streets, in the middle of the streets, in rice paddies, on the beaches, along the peers. Human feces abound. 

Just an hour ago we thought we’d go for a stroll along the nearby beaches we can see from our 6^th story window.  Cruising along we noticed all the houses faced inland, ‘what on earth’ we thought, ‘who would build a house on the beach and have it facing the wrong way.  Then our noses gave it away, we were quite literally on a self guided tour of the local poo farm.  The sand and rocks were covered in human droppings.  We even witnessed a few poo’s being born. 

So what are you waiting for, drop what you are doing, grab your bike, jump on the next plane and come join us for HOLLY SHIT INDIA!!!

Love Sir Mantis and Princess Possum!!!

You know what, I’ve gotten way behind in my story sending so on the poo note I’ll type another.

STORY TWO

CONTENT WARNING!!!  THIS STORY CONTAINS RUDE AND CHILDISHLY INNAPROPRIATE MATERIAL.  The author used to have two separate email lists, one for everyone and one for those he felt where still, as he himself is, immature enough to find 5^th grade humor still funny.  Now in the name of simplicity there is only one email list so if you’d prefer not to start your day reading about more poop please don’t’ continue any further.  Thank you!!

The forth coming may not be an affliction suffered by all cycle tourists in India but it is by Mantis and Possum.  Now, week after week, in an attempt to beat the heat, we jump out of bed at 5:30am; lather with sun block, loosen the Achilles with arnica and a special wand (thanks Ben), shove our gear into our panty-ears and then, fingers crossed, try to poo…but when your body is accustom to getting up at 7am who needs to make a movement at 5:30am.  Our bodies still think they should be asleep.

Here you’d first be thinking; Mantis you are so freaking rude, who writes a tale about his own pooping habits and secondly you’d be thinking, ‘what does it matter Mantis, just pedal for a few hours and then poo when you feel nature calling your name.  Here in lies the rub; whether purely mental, (other then squatting out in the open, which would result in a tightly packed circle of teenage Indian boys intent on playing the Three Question Game, our mind knows there will not be a satisfactory chance to poo until we reach the next hotel at the very end of the day) or purely physical, (something to do with the hunched over riding position pinching our bowels) or a bit of both.  While on the road we never seem to ‘feel the need.’ 

“Why not just poo in the evening?’ you ask.  Good question!  Maybe the bowels are still bent, maybe it has something to do with the curry (though typically chowing down on spicy curry three meals a day is supposed to ‘make it flow’ not ‘stop the go.’)  But again it just doesn’t happen. 

Since writing the story about the bare handed man removing poo out of the cows butt we’ve been informed he way probably de-constipating the poor animal.  Maybe we should visit a local farmer, “I don’t think so!”

Alas, we have recently uncovered the conceivably long longs art of forcing a ‘Morning Movement.’

Don’t lie…your interested!

Believe it or not…Star Jumps are the answer (that is Jumping Jax for you Americans out there)

Maybe it jump starts the system, maybe it releases the pinch, or maybe it is completely in the mind but; 5:30am, climb out of bed, do 50 star jumps and you’re GOOD TO GO!

Making another HOLLY SHIT day in India a little less, or, I guess in a way, a little more shitty!

Love Your 5^th grade Mantis and Possum!!