DAY FIVE - THIRD DAY CYCLING

My best day. I was on a complete rollercoaster today. I’d been dreading it. For some reason I thought this day would be horrendous but I was buzzing and nothing could stop me. I had a complete blast today and the cycle itself was FANTASTIC! – All sorts of terrain – a fast first leg, following by some serious sand, which was loads of fun. The third leg was a long off-road, up hills and down – exhilarating and very exciting. Nice to have to engage brain as well! And the last leg – the one I’d been dreading – one and a half km climb – well – PAH! Since I was invincible at that stage I even got to the top still in second gear and could have done more! Of course, I had the Queen of Hills – Alison – in front of me, so I definitely wasn’t going to give up before she did. She pulled me along, basically – but we did it! And that was important – to me, at least. It was my own little battle and one more conquered.

Today we visited a step well. Now, I distinctly remember thinking “Pfft! Do I really have to give up part of my break to see a wishing well?” I shame myself! I still can’t believe that well. The WOW factor was enough to knock your socks off. In a tiny village, we were told the story of the everlasting water shortages around. Now, this village refused to accept any charity so the solution was to order the building of such a ‘step well’, which would provide water for miles around. We walked through a small doorway and the sight just knocked my socks off. It was like an inverted pyramid – and not too much smaller (well – you know what I mean!). An absolutely immense chasm, ‘stepped’ all down the sides so that whatever level the water was at you could reach it. We had a lot of fun in there.

Today was also Tiger Park day. Unfortunately, there are no tigers left since they have all been poached, but the scenery was unbelievable. Words can’t do it justice so I’m not even going to try. The plan is to introduce two new pairs of breeding tigers back into the park in the next couple of years but I don’t know how that’s going to work. Either they’ll be immediately poached for their value – or locals will shoot them before they kill their livestock which, again, although I’m all for the tigers, is still understandable.