Alan was not feeling great today with a head cold. I was also not feeling fab - a bit of a bad stomach.
I woke up at 6 and could not get back to sleep and so sat and enjoyed the view and watched the city wake up. India does not really wake up until 7.30-8 and the city was quiet and lovely. I spent some time on the phone and organising my photos. I went and woke up Alan at 8.30.
We had breakfast at the hotel where we were staying and popped down to the German bakery round the corner to get a good coffee and some freshly squeezed orange juice. We got all packed up and then went for a ride around the lake and other areas of the city. The great thing about biking is that you really can see a lot in a short period of time. The lake was quiet and pretty. It was enjoyable to see it but with hindsight I probably would have left the city earlier in the day instead.
In the North there are donkeys, camels and pigs.... I did not see very many of these in the South.
After a potter round the lake and town on the other side of the lake we went back for a coffee at the German bakery and I got a take away cheese and tomato sandwich (made on a proper fresh granary bread roll) for lunch. It took us about 1 hour to navigate through town to the highway to the East. The town is very very busy and only has little lanes. It was difficult to keep an eye on Alan (who was in front navigating with his GPS on his handlebars) and also on the traffic, donkeys, cows, dogs, small children etc all at once but I am getting used to it - a few months ago it would have terrified me. The trip along these little lanes is totally off the tourist route and is very much fun to see. India really is insane.
We did get to travel through some awesome local markets.
When we left the city we traveled through an industrial region for 20km or so and the scenery was not particularly interesting but at least we were not on busy highways and found some single track lanes instead. The little road that we were on turned from a lovely little tarmaced road through villages to a dirt track for a about 3km. Towards the end of the dirt track we stopped and Alan suggested that I pumped up my back wheel as it was looking low. Unfortunately when I pumped it up the rubber between the valve and the inner tube gave way and let out all of the air. This kind of puncture is not possible to fix with an inner tube patch. I put in a new inner tube and started pumping again. The 2 new inner tubes I had must have come from the same batch and had the same defect because the next one that I put in then broke in the same place! 
3 inner tubes later and a crowd of local villages watching, I eventually had a wheel that I could cycle on. It was very frustrating as my stomach was playing up and I no have no spare inner tubes in India. It is going to be very difficult to find new inner tubes in India as they do not have very many western style bike shops and they are highly unlikely to stock the right size inner tubs. If the valve breaks again on one of to the inner tubes which are currently in my wheels then I will not actually be able to go anywhere as I do not have another spare with me..... Arrgg.... a little worrying to say the least.
It took 1 hour before we set off again. We were then running short of time to get to Chittagarth before dark and so decided not to push so much and just stop in a town 35km away. When we arrived the lodges were really discussing and we decided not to stay and instead get a bus for the last little bit. We waited around for a while and then gave up on the bus arriving and put both bikes into a Rickshaw. Loading up the bikes and arranging a Rickshaw was done with a crowd of about 20 Indian guys all trying to chat with us, asking us to take photos and videos and aid in loading up the bikes. We are the local entertainment....
It took ages to get to Chittargarth as the road was horrendous. Not the most comfortable journey squashed up in the back of a Rickshaw with stomach cramps holding on to my bike and bags on a very bumpy ride. It was made much more pleasant though as we traveled through a village and watch about 20 children chasing after a lorry full of sugar cane chasing after it trying to steal sticks of sugar cane and the men on top of the lorry beating off the children with sticks. The children were screaming with laughter. It is obviously a game that they play regularly.There were too many children for the men on the lorry to fight off all of them and so some kids were successful where as others caught a good quack with a stick. As we were passing Alan managed to grab one of the sticks of sugar cane that a child had loosened from the lorry.
It was about 8.30 when we arrived in Chittargarth and rather than staying in the Ricksaw and going to the hotel where we were planning Alan asked to be dropped off at the station as he has had bad experiences with Rickshaw drivers taking him to specific guest houses of their friends etc in the past and ending up being ripped off. Unfortunately in this instance it turned our to be the wrong call as we spent the next hour and a half riding round the city in the dark trying to find a hotel that was not full or at the top of a hill. I really did not enjoy this evening. I was tired as I had not got very much sleep over the last few days and I had really bad stomach cramps and diarrhea and I just needed to find somewhere to stop for the day. Alan was not feeling great either with his head cold and so it was not fun. When we eventually found somewhere with rooms available the staff did not speak much English and tried to charge us 1000RS for a room worth 200-300RS. We eventually got it for 400RS but this took a while. It was past 10 by the time I actually got to the room and 10.30 by the time I got into bed exhausted.
It was good that me and Alan did not get ratty with each other even though we where very tired and both feeling ill. Up several times though the night with diarrhea... Arrgg! These things are just part of traveling - every now and again in India you get Delhi belly, have issues with finding places to stay, end up biking in the dark in big cities with crazy Indian traffic and have bike problems. It is just unfortunate when all of these issues happen at once!
The good thing about arriving in Chittagargh tonight though was that we could see the fort at night. It is all lit up.
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