2010-09-19 24 80

The Place

7 kms to the south of Satna, India.

Who Went

Felix Dance - by mountain bike.

Expedition

Felix Dance

Well I must say this was one of the least inspiring of the geohashes I've done. I had been miffed that I'd dropped a sitter in Varanasi due to rampaging illness, subsection debilitating fever, and was only a few seconds over discovering I'd missed another awesome one from lack of awareness on the way over.

Yes, I've been cycling may way through central India - this leg from Varanasi across to Satna, and I'm still suffering from the aftereffects of my illness. Yesterday I found the otherwise easy 50 km jaunt from Rewa to Satna so tiring I decided to take today off. Well all that changed when I went online to check the geohashes - I was determined not to do any unless it was easy and within 10 kms. This one was 7 kms away.

Hastily spending the next three hours uploading photos and chatting to friends online I rushed back to my hotel to frantically watch Chuck Norris on TV, read a book, jump on my bike and race towards the geohash point directly south of my location. Basically following my compass needle and a train line south I vidied the tumultuous clouds with trepidation. Soon I was within 500m of the hash, it was time to bush-bash.

As it happened, the last couple of days had been pretty rainy, it being the monsoon and all, so the fields were of a fairly squishy, muddy texture. This texture quickly adhered to both my bike wheels (see photo below) and my cleated shoes. When riding I could actually feel myself raised higher than normal above ground-level due to the thick layer of mud accreted beneath me.

At about 200m to go I encountered a small group of locals who, without actually disallowing me from reaching my intended destination, seemed confused and almost insulted. Mostly the people I meet are confused and affable, "Sure, whatever man, do what you want - we think you're weird, but hey, you're white - everything you do is weird", they seem to say. But there was something unpleasant about these boys.

Feeling very nervous about leaving my bike just out of sight within the last 50m, I hurriedly tromped around through the mud and eye-level weeds covering the surrounding fields, got to the hash, took some photos and quickly made my way back to my bike. The local boys were surrounding it (thankfully not smegging around with the gears like most people), and gave me directions to get back to the road.

I offered to take a photo of them, most people being pretty keen for that, but I was refused and had a photo taken of me instead, strangely. On the walk back the main dude made obscene gestures while pointing to a nearby group of women, obviously under the universal impression that all white guys do with their lives is to try to pick up random girls falling within their proximity (although even I believe that after watching enough TV), and trying to extract 500 Rupees out of me. I gave the guy 5, and he felt that was fair after his further entreaties were refused.

On my return I tried to build up enough speed to hurl most of the mud off my wheels as the heavens released a pathetic squirting of rain. After getting horribly lost through the rather boring town of Satna I celebrated my success, the second Indian geohash, by eating half a kilo of icecream in front of Octopussy on TV.

All in all, this was one of my least enjoyable geohashes I'm afraid to say - I'm still a bit sick so I had a massive headache the whole time. But now at least I feel like I did something with the day.

Here is where I went - the return journey is a lot more jaggedey than I can remember to stick on Google Maps though.

Estimated total ride: 20 kms
Time of hash: About 2:30pm
Total time for geohash: about 1.5 hours.