Finally, a couple days of riding that I can actually say I enjoyed.

First few days, we rode down the urban corridor from Delhi to Agra along the Yamuna River (whichforms the suddern edge of the plain of the Ganges and eventually runs into the Ganges).  The plain of the Ganges is formed where a deep trench is created by the Indian tectonic plate diving under the Asian plate (with the Himalayas being pushed up as the Asian plate gets wrinkled).  The trench then fills with sediment washed down into and filling up the trench.  It's wet and fertile and one of the most fertile and densely populated regions of the world.  (I can attest to the density of both people, trash, cows, and Tuk-Tuks, as well as the loudest horns.)  The Delhi-Agra corridor is not something that I would ever recommend someone visiting or bicycling through.

At Agra we turned west up out of the plain (never getting more than 300 meters in elevation) and escaped some of the congestion, though the cities still were dense, chaotic, and frightening for cycling.  Although the area is part of the monsoon pattern, the wet season isn't very wet (well under 20 inches of precip per year) and soon we are in the Thar desert.  Still dense population, for a desert, but gave some areas of riding that could be pleasant.  But, so flat that some days the net elevation change was only about 10 meters.

The rock beneath the surface soil was limestone (reminded me of west Texas, but without the small valleys that cut into the limestone there), so there were lots of mines and cement factories.  The modern factories looked like the towers near Lyons, CO.  But there were primitive facilities with lines of human labor carrying pans of rock up a long incline to be dumped into a tower with heat and smoke coming out of it.

Days of riding the flats finally brought us to the Aravelli mountains - a long range which runs from SW to NE and ends at Delhi.  There were substantial stretches of decent pavement, tolerable traffic and rolling hills with one substantial climb of 7 km at 5% av grade, with pitches up to 10-11%.  There were 10 priors on Strava and I would have grabbed the KOM, but it looked like one guy must have taken a sag wagon and forgotten to turn off his Garmin (VAM near 1300 and estimated power output around 500 watts for 15 minutes).  I felt crushed.  The canyon was a bit reminiscent of Rist Canyon (but with cows, monkeys, dogs, pigs on the road which was only 1 1/2 lanes wide with trucks coming around the blind curves and leaving you only a foot or two of space).

They are definitely desert mountains - grass, shrub, few trees.

I had to buy some amoxicillin in a pharmacy here - about one dollar for a weeks worth.  Better than King Sooper - if you don't think about quality control.

Internet is agonizingly slow, so no pictures for now.

Devices at dinner:

We often make fun of other tables in restaurants where all or nearly all of the people are staring at their devices.  In the last week, I've had the opportunity to sit at some of those tables (the "nearly all") of device users.  I hadn't known this before, but when the people actually look up and vocalize, it is almost always in response to something on the screen, not to something someone else has said.  Person A may say something, and shortly after, person B says something - not in reply to, or on the same subject as, Person A's comment, but as a response to what he was looking at.  So sad.

Update for the last week or so:

Between poor or no internet connection, and assorted chores, and just plain old inertia, I haven’t posted much.

And, I’ve been a bit short on stuff that I really wanted to write about:  The Taj Mahal was pretty, the national park had birds – lots of birds, big birds, little birds, many colors of birds.  The fort was big – really, really big.  The historical stuff has been a challenge for me – I know little or nothing of Indian history, so stuff like the fort doesn’t fit into a framework like the European historical sites do.

Lots of friendly kids, and adults that wave and shout “good morning”.  Surprisingly, if you stop and talk to them, despite the “good morning”, few speak English.  And, despite the friendly waves from most, the proportion of obscene gestures, aggressive moves with cars and trucks, occasional swings of a stick seem higher than other places I’ve been.

Then, there is the strangenesses:  Driving here is done by audio, not sight.  The traffic chaos is such that you don’t dare look anywhere but ahead.  A glance in a mirror would be a huge challenge with all that is happening in front of you.  So, everybody honks and honks and honks, and I’ve gradually learned that when I can’t look back, or to the side, the beeps are how I tell where everybody else is.  Unfortunately, I still haven’t learned to differentiate the honks:  Hi, I’m here, don’t swerve.  Or, I’d like to pass.  Or, get the hell out of my way, you’re too slow and I want to get by.  Or, nobody is moving in this traffic scrum, and I’m just pissed at the world, so I’ll lean on my horn.  (The trucks all have big signs on the back:  “Blow Horn” or “Horn, please.”)  And, the behaviors learned in the city are taken out into the countryside and people blow their horns when there is only one other vehicle within 10 miles.  I kinda wish I was totally deaf.

I’m getting in some interesting training for criterium racing:  high speeds with small gaps appearing and disappearing, squeezing through between a bus, a truck, and a couple motos – well, I’ll never fear going head to head in a bunch sprint again.

Fortunately, with all this traffic chaos (and danger), we’ve only had one guy run over by a truck so far.  Unfortunately, injured bad enough to have to go home.

The last few days have been dead flat riding, and I’m looking forward to getting a little climbing in tomorrow.

It’s disheartening to see the environmental destruction by trash that gets thrown everywhere.  The advent of bottled water might have had some virtue in making clean water available (especially for paranoid tourists), but plastic bottles and bags are everywhere.  Along with the more traditional garbage – at least the organic stuff feeds the dogs, cows, and pigs that are everywhere.  Although, judging by the ribs showing, there isn’t enough edible garbage to go around.

We’re in the desert now, and finally have left much of the smog and thick air behind for the present, but it’s getting progressively hotter.

There are some smooth roads, but they are a minority.  100 km on a mix of bumpy, broken asphalt, sand, bumpy rocky dirt roads – that makes a long day.

The whole noise, smoke, smog, chaotic traffic, garbage, feral animals, insane electric wiring, people who are living barely on the edge of survival – it presents a very depressing and dystopian picture.  The question that I have is:  Is this the undeveloped past, with potential for economic advancement that will gradually pull even the poor of India into a cleaner, less polluted, and more livable future.  Or, is this the dystopian future (think Mad Max) where wider and wider wealth inequality drives more and more humans into an existence where there is neither the means nor the will to do something as simple as cleaning the trash off the roads, or smoothing the roads, and so society spirals down into the 1% living well, and the 99% living in squalor and with no survival  option but to be pushy and nasty and brutish.

Have a happy day.