Day 1: 95.8km Ponta Sahib
Day 2: 85.0km Sarehan
Day 3: 54.4km Solan
Day 4: 45.5km Shimla
Day 5: 0.0km
Day 6: 84.1km Bilaspur
Day 7: 101.0km Jwalamukhi
Day 8: 70.5km Gallu (near MacLeodganj)
The story as far as Shimla has already been recounted elsewhere, and I have never been one to flog a dead horse, but the picture to right was sunrise as I left the mountain town.
The fruits of my labour seemed to appear only after I had recovered from losing my lunch through the consuption of chips and chocolate in Shimla. It would appear (from the source of all knowledge - Wikipedia) that this fine city sits comfortably at an elevation of 2130m. The source of no knowledge (me) puts the less than fine city of Bilaspur at an elevation of about 900m. This discrepency results in a whole lot of fun as I found myself (for the first time) descending more than I was ascending. I have decided that this is what cycling is all about. Good roads coupled with these fine, fine gradients all led to me arriving at quite possibly the creepiest guest house I have sejourned; where I was the only guest, the man could speak no English, and the "restaurant" could only offer 3 choices off a menu with about 60 options. Rice was not one of the available options, and I had to make to with eating my 10th chipati of the day.
Highway 88: it wasn't all like this...
An early start to escape the possibility of being murdered in my sleep led me all the 101km to Jwalamukai. Apparantly there is a famous temple here. I did not see it; I was too tired. I had planned to stop at a town 15km before Jwalamukai, but after eating an Indian desert roughly equivalent to shovelling 5 spoonfuls of Demara sugar straight into one's mouth, it was made quite clear to me by the owner of that shop that there were no Guest Houses of any description in Nadaun (the town of my choice), which was (at that stage) about 9km away. As I passed by a hotel, a guest house and a rest house, I was forced to reflect on the accuracy of Indian advice, but decided that I would strike out for Jwalamukai all the same.
Then the fun began:
70.5km in 6hrs 40min resulted in the incredibly respectable average of 10.6km/hr.
Though before people start to think that all those banana pancakes have finally caught up with me, I would like to state that I crossed the 650m elevation TWICE, ending up at the reasonably respectable elevation of just over 2000m. From start to finish I must have risen over 1400m in the day. This included being chased up steep inclines by mangy dogs and swearing quitely through gritted teeth at tourists who rather than moving out of my way on steep sections, decided they would stand and gawp instead.
Having found nowhere inspiring to stay in MacLeodGanj, or the adjacent Bhagsue, I decided to continue up the steep road for a further 4km to where Lyon (a friend from Raleigh) was working. It was here that I ended up staying; away from civilisation and internet. It is for this reason that this update was so long coming, and indirectly why it is also so shit; all this happened several days ago.
Get with the times.
View from Eagle's Nest, up top
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