Agra to Jaipur, the 'Pink City'

Leaving Agra, the highway is dead-straight, shaded by tall trees and travelled by buses who overtake slower vehicles in the face of an oncoming cyclist. Twice I am forced off the road by these great jalopies, the drivers of which at least have the decency to blast me with their airhorns as a gesture towards my safety. After 15 km or so the road opens out and a median strip appears, to my relief.

The terrain is once again totally flat, and I make good progress toward my first night's destination of Bharatpur. When I stop to eat lunch at the roadside, it is not long before a group of young boys is standing around my bike, with some insisting on playing with all the bells and whistles (i.e. gear levers, which shouldn't be touched when a bike is stationary) whilst others simply stare at me unself-consciously. I should be getting used to this scenario by now, but for some reason, this really disturbs my enjoyment of my food, and I shoo them off.

I reach Bharatpur with daylight to spare and after unloading the bike luggage in a hotel, I cycle around the centre a little and dare some more street food, to which my stomach withstands on this occasion - funny what we'll risk for a few seconds of fleeting pleasure!

I had noticed some problems in the drive train of my bicycle, and the next morning I give my derailleur a little bend and twist (I don't recommend it!) in the hope of rectifying this. The bike seems to ride okay until I replace the chain, which had stretched to the point where the gear sprockets start to suffer heavy wearing (1% of stretch).  I then find the gears skipping atrociously under torque, and I am forced to revert to the stretched chain after much experimentation, not helped by the efforts of several passers-by who have never seen geared bicycles (Bah humbug!).

The cycling is uneventful, besides a few more roadside monkeys, including 2 on strings being led by a child. I only make another 60ish kms to the town of Mahwa before dusk nears. Here the cows are joined by pigs roaming freely in the streets, eating the food scraps. A banana seller tries to rip me off in front of a large and delighted audience. I tell him he is a bad man but my words lack conviction - "before judging walk a mile in his shoes" and all that. For me it is easy to feel a certain guilt sometimes in being a comparatively rich Westerner. Keeping the footwear metaphor going though (haha!), if the shoe is on the other foot, I don't seem to feel any inclination to rip off those more wealthy than myself, but of course I never want for any of the basic material needs of life (and then there are the luxuries), and perhaps that's the rub.
 
Here I should mention that I've just completed 10 days of silent Vipassana meditation (which I'll detail in my next entry), in case you were wondering from where has this unexpected bout of contemplation and navel-gazing issued!

On my 3rd day I decide to knock out 120 kms and reach Jaipur, both to avoid one unnecessary hotel stay and to prove to myself I can still do a big day after my illness in Iran. I manage it and arrive in Jaipur with time to seek out a decent hotel for the night.

Thanks to the Wikitravel page on Jaipur, I am pleased to learn there is a Vipassana meditation centre just outside Jaipur and I apply for and am accepted for a course starting in 2 days' time. A good part of one day is spent trying to find a 5-8 speed bicycle chain, and having finally managed that, another day almost in its entirety fighting my bicycle to get along with this 2nd new chain. Neighbourhood children crowding around me don't help too much in this last, but this time I leave the new chain on and resolve to put up with it until I can fix whatever is causing the 'skipping' problem.

On several occasions I am invited by respectably groomed yet dubious characters to carry gemstones into a foreign country for a large sum of cash. I suspect deception, perhaps drug-smuggling, but the Internet tells me they insist on having your bank card details as collateral and then promptly clear out your account with fraudulent transactions, while the 'gemstones' turn out to be not.

Having stayed 2 more nights I find I've managed to avoid seeing any of Jaipur's many attractions bar the Pink City itself and the gemstone scam. I roll out of town, back the way by which I had entered it, and find the road to the Vipassana centre, which snakes into a rare cluster of arid hills clothed in scrub.