Had breakfast/lunch and left Jawhar around 12:30pm. The road now certainly was one of the narrower variety. Asked an older fellow on a motorbike for directions and he offered to show me a shortcut through his village. Dunno if it really was shorter, but seeing his village and riding the even smaller, even less travelled road was worth it.
Passed by a quarry, or so it seemed. Working there were old women and children. A girl crossed the street in front of me, maybe 8 or 10 or 12 years old, walking to the stone pit, staring at me. I’ve seen the same shit in Madagascar. Those people lived next to their ‘workplace’ in tents. Turned my stomach upside down. Asked myself what the f*ck am I doing here? Cycling through their land and life, watching them working and staring. F*cking sh*t.
Made it to Silvassa and decided to call it a day. Found an ATM to stock up on cash. Inside the ATM area was an old dude, the guard, who wanted to help me, even though there was no need. Anyway, he didn’t leave and watched me pull out 15.000 Rupees. Quite a pile if the biggest note is 500 Rs. Poor fella couldn’t get his eyes off the money. I tried to behave as if that amount could feed me for a life-time, too, but I don’t think it worked nor that he cared.
Check in at hotels is ridiculous. Not only do folks write down all sorts of personal details in huge registers, some of them even make a ‘xerox’ of my passport, and once I had to pay for the copy.
The guy that wanted my phone number a couple of days ago in Anjur Phata called when I was having dinner to check how I was doing. Funny.
