Day 123: Kekri to Jaipur

One huge day

I’d think nothing of riding 139km normally - but throw in that we’re on a tandem, we have around 40kg of luggage and it’s 40˚C by midday - that is one big day. My legs currently feel at least as damaged as they would after a Bandidos Dots ride, or the last day of the Two Darls classic when we’ve fought a headwind all the way home.

It was a tough day I tell you.

We knew it was going to be tough, and we’d originally planned to do this in two days, but unfortunately it turned out there were no hotels anywhere near where we’d have to stop and eventually Sarina (who’d ignored Tiger saying it a few minutes earlier) said “Why don’t we ride to Jaipur in one day.” So we did.

We had a go at making it sensible. We aimed for an early night last night. Unfortunately no one had informed the temple opposite and they embarked on a “sing-very-badly-a-thon” which, to our suprise, they managed to keep up all night long. Thanks guys. I hope the festival went well. Keep working on the singing.

We then got up at 5am to leave at daybreak, with a brekky of fruit and bickies already consumed.

Proper early!

We caught the sunrise over the wheat fields.

We went pretty hard early on, whilst it was cool, and managed to knock off 90km before 11am - which is pretty good. The downside was, we still had 50km to go, and it was now very hot.

I don’t think three people have every consumed more water - we’re like dry sponges, absorbing litres at a time and then we’re parched again 10 minutes later. We went through at least 15 litres over the day, and were still desperate for more when we arrived in Jaipur.

Jaipur is so picture postcard it’s unreal. Riding into the Old City through the pink gates (Sarina says “That’s not pink, it’s orange, but I’m going with popular wisdom) is pretty spectacular. Hopefully we can explore more tomorrow.

After our mammoth journey, it was very pleasing to discover our accommodation here is a palatial apartment. A huge bedroom for all three of us, sitting rooms to take tea and it comes complete with Govinda, who’s our breakfast wallah, chai wallah and all round very helpful member of staff to sort out everything we might need. It’s very much like being a Maharana in our city apartment, which is exactly right, because the apartment is actually owned by the Jaipur Royal Family.

Proper grandeur befitting of three atherletes recovering from their ride to Jaipur.