Wednesday, August 2, 2001: (Penny) Stares, Puris, and a "Bike Path" - India

This morning we got to talk with a really neat girl, Gitangali, who spoke English, and her little friend Chintu. Gitanjali is going to an English medium school, and she had learned it very well. It is amazing how many people are bilingual, trilingual, and even speak eight languages. I was very impressed. English medium schools are more common than I thought they would be, and I was told that parents want that for their kids as the language of the future in computer jobs and "being well educated."

Before we left we thought it would be good to get some food, and Tad wanted to do some bike bag repairs, so we got some puris for breakfast (I had biscuits and bananas), and then went to find a tailor. (Puris are big puffy fried bread. They are good, but a little oily.) At breakfast we had quite an interested crowd around the bikes. It seems to me that many people in India are not afraid to be curious and show it. There is none of this "Don’t stare" policy we seem to have in the US. So they stared freely and even tried out the gears, bell, and odometer on Tad’s bike.

It had rained overnight and drainage was not very good in this town (or in many places), so after fording the stream formed between the road and the shops we wanted to go to, we found a tailor that would fix Tad’s bags. Now we had an even bigger crowd, and I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic. Tad, sensing this, took out the digital camera, and boy did that attract attention. (Precisely what we wanted it to do.) This drew most of the crowd to him and gave me a chance to breathe. It’s crazy how people- boundaries are so different. I mean at home if I saw two totally different people, I would be curious, but I doubt that it would attract a crowd of about 50 or more - males. I say males because that’s who it was. They are the ones mostly out, so they were the ones to come, and for me as a young woman, this was a little overwhelming.

PeaceBike was interviewed by the Sungareddy Times, and then we finally took off. We started asking for roads to Bidar and finally found a guy who told us of one. It was about the size of two bike paths and looked in really good condition, so we decided to take it. Asking people how far it was to Bidar always got us different answers, but we were hoping for the best. I was a little leery, especially after the snake stories I had heard (the son of a worker we met was just recovering from a nearly fatal viper bite and had spent several weeks in the hospital). It felt like I was riding off into the unknown.

After a while I relaxed and began to enjoy it. It was gorgeous - everything was green from the recent rain. I felt so close to the landscape just riding along with the quiet and softness of nature all around me.

As darkness began to fall, we came to a village and knew we needed to find a place to stay for the night. This was my first experience not even having the choice of a hotel room. I was pretty nervous, but there was a family outside by their home, and I thought maybe they’d let us stay with them. We got out our Hindi book and pointed to the script that said, "Where can we stay for the night?" They talked about it and then took us to a temple where a group of men had gathered. They talked some more about it and then took us to the office of the village leader. They opened the door for us – a concrete floor room, bars on the windows, and shutters, lizards on the walls and bikes and machinery stored inside. We were grateful and set up our tent with everyone watching through the door.

I went out to find a place to go to the bathroom, but when everyone started following me, I decided I didn’t have to go after all. Tad sat outside talking, while I lay down in the tent. We had some granola bars, and it didn’t take us long to fall asleep.