Leaving Pondy, I turned my maps app on, just to get onto the main road. I mount the phone in a clear front pocket on the tank bag which is directly in the sun and at one point, looking down, I saw that the screen had gone blank. Muttering a few oaths, I carried on without it and managed not to get too lost. When I was able to stop, I noticed that the phone had shut down due to overheating. Blimey, it's quite hot round here.
Right, so there's a chain of coffee shops in India called Cafe Coffee Day (silly name but still). Attentive readers may recall a hot pink fairy cake with a tendency towards landslides - Well that was the same mob. They're trying to be trendy and aspirational and jolly good luck to them (although the tea and coffee was a bit grim). I guess they are like Buckstars in the ROTW, only they probably pay their taxes......and don't have extremely litigious libel lawyers.
Anyhoo, I'd just got out of Pondy and onto the big roads, when I sailed passed a CCD outlet at the roadside. As I say, not the best coffee on earth but clean and air conditioned and very welcome on a hot day. It was too late to pull over safely (although when has that stopped anyone in India?) but I made a mental note to keep an eye out for another one along the road.
Sadly in the next 180kms, I saw only the most grim places where you might stop if you were on the GI diet (Gastro Intestinal diet or the "Sh1t Yourself Thin" diet). Eventually, I pulled over (outside yet another nasty cafe) for a swig of water and a gander at the map. But...Stripe me! There was a nice CCD outlet just 30 metres away.
Sadly, as you may be able to see from the photo, it was on the opposite side of the road and between us stood 4 lanes of psychotic traffic and a couple of concrete walls. Forget riding over there - To make it on foot, I would have had to post Team GB Olympic qualification times for every event in the heptathlon (including, and especially, the ones where you throw things at people). So I took a quick photo but then, to really rub it in, when I turned back, a dog had trotted out of "my" cafe and was having a big sh1t near my bike. Hmm!
So over there, was a nice place with tea and air con, whilst on my side of the road was the Dog Shit Cafe. It has to be said, God, that as metaphors for life go, this one really lacked your usual subtlety.
Still, nil desperandum: I was nearly at my hotel but I had overshot by a few metres and tripped over the Hotel Splendido Marvelloso. Ooh, it was lovely! Clean, modern rooms, hot water and reasonably priced. Obviously something would have to go dreadfully wrong. Ok, the Wi-Fi wasn't working but who cares?
Ok, the neighbourhood needs a bit of gentrifying and that new flyover will be a problem but still, showered and happy, I went to the bar....to discover that it was closed for Republic Day. Arse!
Never mind, I shall try another bar. Double Bottoms! Every bar in town was closed for Republic Day!
Aside:
Prior to leaving, I'd been told that drinking milk in India is pretty well equivalent to licking a rabid dog's back end. Not keen on such things, I'd brought 500gms of Tesco Cheapest Powdered Moo from the UK. After one day, I realised that the whole milk thing had been misrepresented (and possibly even the dog's bum bit), so I left the powder in Bangalore. (In Carruthers' gearbox as he'll no doubt discover).....End of aside
Soberly, I trudged back to my room for a cuppa and an early night. Hotel S-M had supplied many tea bags in the room, so Jackie Collins and I were going to enjoy a quiet night in (I feel wrong just writing that). But when I looked, I had tea bags, sugar but no milk.
As the speccy braniac in Scooby Doo says: "Jinkies, some days, Ganesha really has it in for me!"
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