Somewhere near Roorkee

A quick bike service and back in the saddle. No luck with finding a map, so again navigated out of town by the sun and lot’s of enquiring. With hindsight it would’ve been quicker to just let my shadow show me the way.

At one point I was squeezing through the biggest street market I’ve ever seen. First stalls of bloody, butchered carcasses, offered by guys with beards, before cart upon cart of beautiful fruit and veg. I found the flesh saddening and revolting and the rest of the market colourful, joyful, invigorating, an explosion of colour.

Once clear of Delhi’s sprawl, the craziest thing so far: a bus approaching the wrong way in the fast lane of the dual carriageway, its driver looking completely non-plussed. I marked him down as a fail.

But from there the road calmed down into a pleasant ride hemmed by trees, bisecting field upon field of sugar cane. By the side of the road, some of the cane was being crushed by little treadle machines, and the syrup sold by glass.

Heading NE, Uttarakhand is so much greener than the planes of Rajasthan, and the one river I saw was fast flowing with the opal hue of melt-water. I was reminded of the bathhouse scene in the film Spirited Away.

I think the excellent “Hotel All Seasons” in Roorkee is about an hour from Haridwar and the Ganges. So tomorrow I’m looking forward to a shorter pummelling of the A’  bone, before the night in Rishikesh.