Today easily qualifies as one of the worst riding days ever.
I’ll keep it short. The road, part of which I had ridden on yesterday in the opposite direction when coming back from 26N92E, was again busy with traffic of all sorts. The majority, however, were laden open coal trucks going one way, and empty ones going the other way. The road was being enhanced to dual-carriageways, but most of it was still old, narrow, and of bad quality. On top of all that, the countryside was hilly, the temperatures high, and the cycling slow.
The plan was to reach Shillong, but when the sun set it was clear that this was not going to happen. It was pitch dark when I eventually found a hotel, a kind of resort actually, at the shore of Lake Umiam less than 20km from Shillong.
For those readers who think cycling in ‘these’ countries is dangerous – it is indeed. I nearly died when having a shower because the shower pipe had a leak, from which the water, at the right water pressure, in a steady stream shot directly onto the switch box that fed electricity to the boiler. I hadn’t noticed this, though, and was happily washing off today’s dirt when I suddenly felt a tickling sensation on my skin…
Cycled: 84 hell’ish kilometers
