DAY SIX

This was my day of personal battles; the hardest day for me. Physically, I can’t complain. I started taking Arnica Day One to prevent bruising, muscle problems, etc. and I know that’s helped me avoid the worst – but today my legs just didn’t really want to turn around and I found it increasingly hard to convince them that they had to. The bus just wasn’t an option. This was the day I had to ride with my head rather than my legs and I can’t tell you a whole lot about it. I spent most of today with my head down in my own little world fighting my own battles and probably upset loads of people along the way because I didn’t talk much, communicate much or interact much – in fact, not at all! Anyway – apologies. It wasn’t intentional. I just had to get on with things my way today.

Today we rode through a ghost town, which was quite ‘haunting’ (‘scuse pun).

Today we also visited the ruins of a palace/royal village with a great story attached. The princess who lived here was interested in the Dark Arts. She sought a Master of Tantrics to instruct her and he built a little house on the hill above the palace. He fell in love with the princess and swore that if she didn’t marry him he would destroy the village. The princess and her courtiers left the palace immediately. That night the entire village was destroyed. No bodies were ever found and to this day no Indian will enter the village gates after dark. The story goes that somebody DID spend a night in there several years ago – and was never seen again (what a surprise!). Anyway – great story – and a fantastic place to visit.

It was only later in the day that I discovered we rode for seven hours between breakfast and lunch today – which could account for some ‘faltering’ in the energy stakes.

Due to my retreat into my own little world today I also found myself cycling on my own at some point after lunch. Now, we were never supposed to cycle on our own and mostly we managed to stick to this but sometimes some of us did get separated from groups for one reason or another. Not to worry, though, since there was always somebody behind and it was only a matter of waiting for the next group to come along. Anyway, as I was plodding along on my lonesome, I had two encounters that were a little more exciting than I’d bargained for and which hastened my retreat to the next cycling group.

My first meeting was with a rather frisky bull. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. Worse, I don’t know much about bulls. I know you don’t run from snakes and I know you whistle when bears are around – but what to do with a bull? No idea and it was a little late in the day to be finding out. I decided against a stand-off, since I had no red cape with me. I considered throwing my bike at him and hoping he’d get caught in the spokes or something equally ridiculous. I have no idea what he was considering doing to me as he pranced around in the road in front of me, snorting and having a bit of a tantrum. Happily, he believed my story that my fellow cyclist was far plumper and would make for lots more fun and I was allowed to pass to the lush pastures beyond. Something like that, anyway.

So, with adrenalin already pumping and just recovering from my lack of knowledge of things animal, my next encounter was of the LONE CYCLIST v. JEEP FULL OF WANKERS variety (sorry). So … I saw the jeep come over the hill and the jeep saw me. It drove to the opposite side of the road from me, then turned diagonally, directly towards me and came straight for me, the sole intent to run me off the road. This wasn’t a time for indecision. I came straight off the road and was quite happy with that – until the idiots screeched to a halt 20 yards beyond me. Quick thinking. “Never play the victim,” we’d been told, again and again. “Never play the victim.” That was all I could think of, so without giving them a chance to get out of the jeep I did my best performance of the week. I turned around to face them, flung my bike to the ground with as much conviction (hopefully) as I could muster, then started marching towards them, fists shaking and screaming a load of absolute and utter rubbish which I hoped they’d interpret as menacing rather than the ‘Oh my God I’m going to die’ that I was feeling.

They left.

And me? I stayed and waited for the next group – and had the laugh of a lifetime as one by one the entire group of about seven cyclists …

Guess what?

(note to reader: please engage voice of incredulity): They all went sailing past me! All of them! Never even acknowledged my existence. Didn’t ask if I was OK, if I needed help, if anyone was with me … Nope. Nothing. Completely invisible.

As I said before … you gotta larf. You just gotta larf.

So I did.

And I cycled on to the next stop – alone!