Day Six: Doing No Reservations in Wachau

 

This a late post for day six (Thursday) but there's a couple of good reasons for the delay. We left Melk quite late since we were trying to figure out how get cheap train tickets from Vienna to Prague for the next day evening. The Czech railway website wasn't behaving and after an hour of trying to book the super cheap tickets we gave up and started riding.

The plan, like the day before, was to take it easy, and depending on where we reached by 5pm find a place to stay for the night.

The Donau route took us through the Wachau valley, Austria,s wine growing region which is littered with vineyards and wineries and little outlets selling their own produce. 

 

It was therefore a day on which we put aside riding rule #5 (the one about not mixing drinking and riding) and stopped in at several places to sample wine, even buy a bottle(which was quickly polished off later in the evening), learn about why cheese and wine go together so well, and sit under apricot trees and sip the Wachau local. 

 

By 5pm we had done a measly 45km and reached Krems where we managed to bag a cheap room at the second hotel we knocked on. The fact that it was cheap, was located bang in the middle of town and offered complementary breakfast and offered a safe place to store cycles (even if it was where Count Dracula also slept) far outweighed the fact that the place was run by the most crotchety set of old women and that it looked like the hotel that Hans Christian Andersen and Dracula would have designed had they run a partnership in the hospitality industry. 

For dinner we decided to give pigs and the local cuisine a break and do what all good Indians do when they miss home food – go find a Chinese restaurant and get some chilli chicken and fried rice. 

 

Maybe it was the Chinese, maybe it was the Wachau brew or maybe it was just the weird statues and dolls displayed around our room, but we all had strange dreams, mostly involving ghostly medieval Chucky-like dolls getting up to no good.

 

Tomorrow - Vienna waits for you.

Day Three: The Three Lakes and Lessons in German

The morning in Salzburg started with some bike servicing. The previous day's ride from Zell am See had been mostly off-road on gravel and rough surfaces. As a result the derailleur on my Brompton was jammed with mud and needed cleaning, and Naveen’s bike had a puncture, but thankfully the tire had deflated slowly and gave in only once we reached the doors of the hotel we were staying at in Salzburg. 

We were sad to be leaving Salzburg having seen so little of this beautiful medieval town. The narrow lanes and tall buildings, the castle atop the hill, the Mirabell gardens is what we managed to experience as we ride through the town on our way out towards Mondsee.

The list of things we didn't see is much longer – Mozart’s house, the many museums and palaces, Hellbrun palace, Salzburg Cathedral, the Von Trapp house. But we were sure that better things awaited us on the route to the three lakes. 

The weather forecast for the second day's 95km ride from Salzburg to Gmunden was grim but not severe, so we thought we would be ok with multiple layers and waterproof gear. The first 20km was a constant and gentle but unrelenting climb through meadows and villages. As we emerged from the climb and joined a road it started to drizzle so we thought that would be a good time to stop for coffee or anything hot.

We found a little café that we initially thought was a church. As we crossed the road to investigate a lady emerged from the café and smiled at us. She asked us if we were going inside, and when we said ‘yes’ and that we were going in for some coffee she seemed a little disappointed, but as she walked away she encouraged us to try the local food “Ees fery gut,fery fresch,  allso fery cheep. Ja?”

Walking into the restaurant was a little bit of like one of those scenes from an old western. As the strangers walks into the bar everyone goes quiet. All eyes turn towards you. No one smiles. Everyone just stares, wondering who you are, where you're from, and why you're here and if you're going to mess up their cosy hangout. 

We eventually were given a table in the corner, and although the service was a little slow to start with, it picked up speed and got a lot friendlier once the waitress figured that our efforts at translating the menu wasn't just to practice our German. What followed, was without a doubt, one of the best meals of our lives.

After a very heavy lunch we were blessed with a series of long downhill stretches, but our going was slowed down by the search for toilets. We luckily found one at a small café. It was here we got our next serious lesson in German. 

As Naveen walked out of the café he was murmuring to himself ‘Bach gaye’ (‘that was a close one’). I won't go into the details of what happened next but it's just important to clarify the following. Damen in German doesn't mean ‘The Men’,  and Herr in German doesn't mean ‘Hers’. 

We soon reach the first of the three lakes we going to be crossing starting with Mondsee which was beautiful. 

This was followed by Attersee which was stunning and this section involved the highlight of the day. Transecting the 1.1km cycle tunnel at Sankt Gilgen. 

As we got closer to Gmunden the rain starting coming down harder and harder. With the phone stored in the waterproof case we struggled to find the right direction and eventually too shelter in a petrol pump convenience store. Stepping inside and seeing the small crowd of men who drinking and smoking it seemed that this place also doubled up as the local pub. We loaded up with drinks and snacks, but seeing that the light was fading fast we decided to make a last dash for the hotel which was barely 5km away. 

We reached the hotel soaked, shivering and sore from a long days ride in the rain. Thankful that the room was cosy and warm, we unpacked and settled down to enjoy a tasting of the local wine, and then slightly drunk and very tired, I wandered of to sleep. Dreaming of the days ride and the adventures to come tomorrow as we would finally reach the blue waters of the Danube. 

 

Dinner in Zell am See

After a long journey on trains from Munich to Salzburg and then again changing trains to get to Zell am See, the big topic of discussion, once we have checked into our hotel, was what we were going to do for dinner. 

There are many options. One option was to head out to the local bar where clearly it seemed everyone who was awake at 9pm was hanging out and there was loud music playing and the kitchen promised to be open till midnight. The second option was to go to the Basmati restaurant and savour the local version of Indian cuisine served out for Europeans by people from the Middle East. And then there was the option of going down to the local Billa convenience store and picking up a couple of bottles of wine some sandwiches, some salads and yoghurt, and heading back to the room to enjoy dinner in the lap of luxury the warmth of being  amongst friends. 

We thought about what might be expensive and what might be cheap, we thought about what might be tiring and what might be relaxing, we thought about what might be fast and what might take a long time, but most importantly we thought about what would help to get our bowels moving in the morning. And so as we sprawled on the carpet in our room sharing a salad and eating it with our hands because we couldn’t find a fork, and sipping wine from from tea cups because there were no wineglasses, we marvelled at the fact that we were enjoying Bavarian wine at Rs.500 a bottle, that roughing-it-out could be so relaxing.

As we all turned in for the night in under the fresh duvet covers we looked forward to the ride from Zell to Salzburg that promised to be “mostly downhill , and to the outcome of chewing lots of green leafy vegetables early next morning. 

 

Advice on Chasing the Northern Lights

I’ve been chasing the Northern Lights for the last three years. I finally managed to see them somewhere along the Norway-Finland border in the Arctic Circle. Since then a lot of friends have asked for advice on how to do this tour. Here are my pearls of wisdom.

- Tromso is one of the best places in the world to try and see the Northern lights. That’s largely because it is in the Arctic Circle and is a small town with decent infrastructure to travel and stay there. There are probably far better places further North, or in Russia and Finland, or Greenland, but most don’t have daily flights, a range of affordable hotels and tour operators. You'd have to mush it out there with a pack of dogs and stay in an igloo and go without room service. That way Tromso is really nice. 

-   Chasing the Northern Lights is a lot like fishing. Even if you are in the best spot, you need a lot of luck. There are a multitude of factors that determine if you get see the Lights. How active the sun has been as that determines the level of magnetic activity that causes the Aurora. How many hours of darkness will there be and how much light pollution since this affects visibility, If there’s a lot of cloud cover, the show may be pretty mild. And finally patience. You just need to hang around outdoors in the night sky and wait for the magic to happen.

- Given that it’s not a sure shot, it’s probably best to plan for a 2-4 day trip to Tromso to make sure you get to see the lights. I did 2 days and 2 nights, but I would have liked to spend another day just to wander around the area and see the fjords and countryside.

- If you want to see the Lights – don’t go in the summer. Remember it’s the Arctic Circle so it never get’s dark in the summer so you can’t see the Aurora.

- Since the Northern Lights are only visible late in the night and most of the chases only start after 6pm, you have a lot of time in the day to do other stuff. Use that time well. There’s a lot to see and do in and around Tromso if you plan ahead.

- Be aware that from October a lot of the tourist infrastructure closes or slows down since this is considered the off-season so you will need to check websites to find out what’s on.

- There are plenty of Northern Lights chase groups. I used the Chasing Lights group which is run by Trisha and Thomas who were simply fantastic. There are however plenty of other operators and it’s likely that your hotel will have a tie up with one of them. Some friends went with the Green Fox group. They all offer the standard fare which includes a pick up at your hotel, a drive that could go as far as northern Finland to see the lights. Winter gear, shoes and gloves, a camp fire and reindeer rugs to sit around the fire, tripods for your camera and help with photos, a dinner and hot drinks out in the middle of no where as you wait for the lights. I had booked two night trips, but since we managed to see the lights on the first night and the outlook for the second night was not that great, they were kind enough refund the second trip.

- One tip is to avoid going with the tour operators who have the highest ratings and may end up being the ones with the largest groups. In a larger group of 10-12 people you’re bound to find some who can’t stand the cold, some who are impatient to see the lights, some who are sleepy and want to get back to their hotels, some who get travel sick, and some who are just not fun to hang around with. Two friends who used a smaller tour operator ended up having the entire van, driver and guide all to themselves. As a results their group did not get rushed and probably had a better sighting than my group. The size of the groups is probably related to their rating on Tripadvisor or other travel advisory sites.

- There are a ton of hotels in Tromso and across a wide price range. I stayed at the Comfort Xrpress Hotel. It’s very comfortable, cheap, stylish and with really small rooms, so if you are travelling alone (and you have a small suitcase) it’s fantastic. I got a tiny room with an attached bathroom, a really comfy bed that had a view of the snow capped mountains.There’s a small cafe at the reception, plenty of restaurants in the same block and a very friendly team that runs the place. There’s free wi-fi in the hotel (I found that most of Norway had free wi-fi) but what was really neat was that you could pick up a pocket size mi-fi device from the hotel reception – for free!!! With this I was able to to connected to the net even when I was a 100 miles from Tromso, at no cost. They also have a bunch of new cycles that you can rent for about NOK 150 for the whole day that are great to get around town but also for day trips to see the fjords. I did a short ride to a place about 15km from Tromso where I got amazing views of the fjords and countryside. There are very few shops out in the countryside so be sure to carry water, snacks, rain wear and gloves.

- There’s an Ice Cathedral on the outskirts of town. Beware. It is not made of ice and it’s not much of a cathedral. It’s nice to look at from a distance, but a bit of a let down when you actually get close (which involves a long hike over the bridge that spans the bay).

- There is another older chapel right in the middle of the town square and as we passed the place on Sunday evening we stuck our head inside and found that a choir was singing. We checked the posters and learned that a group had flown in from Oslo to sing Mozart’s Requiem. I realized that there is a lot going on in Tromso that does not fall on the Tripadvisor top 10 list of things to do. The locals are generally friendly, so ask around and talk to people. Frankly I found the cycle ride along the coast and the choir singing to be even more spectacular than the Northern Lights.

- The strength of the Northern Lights can vary a lot. Sometimes you see the colours dancing right in front of you with the naked eye. Sometimes it’s a gentle glow in the sky that shows up when you take a looooong exposure photo. Don’t expect to get good pics through a phone camera. You will need a proper SLR or a high end compact camera that can manage a 25 second exposure with a 1.4 f-stop aperture. Don’t worry if you don’t have one. The tour operator will have one and will take your pics and email them to you.

- Things are super expensive so pack all the warm clothes you need from home or buy them before you get to Norway. I found everything was about 50% more costly than even London!

- There are daily flights to Tromso from Oslo and probably from other places in Scandinavia. The airport is connected to the town center by taxi and a more affordable bus service that leaves about 15 minutes after every flight lands takes you to most hotels in town. It's a sleepy airport, so if you miss the bus or the small line of cabs you may end up waiting till the next flight lands and the cabs and buses come back for their next round of passengers, to get another ride into town. 

- If you are there on a weekend, beware that most shops and restaurants are shut on Sunday so your options will be limited.

In the end, I actually felt a bit sad that I had seen the Northern Lights and checked off a big item on my bucket list. After all it was only because of this crazy chase that I had ended up going to such out-of-the-way places like Tromso, or the Isle of Skye, or trekked from Glenfinnan to Mallaig in the Scottish Highlands. My next plan had been to get to Greenland to try and see the lights. I guess I don't need to do that now. Or do I?

Good hunting!

A Pakhwada for All Good Causes

 

I was visiting a Primary Health Centre in Baisi block of Purnea district in Bihar recently and came across this sign. It says 'Pariwar Kalyan Pakhwara', which means Family Planning Fortnight. The Pakhwada or fortnight, has become the favoured unit of time for many government supported interventions these days. We currently have the Diarrhoea Control Fortnights that‘s an effort to get health workers at all levels, especially in villages, focused on treating diarrhoea among under-five children with simple solutions like ORS and Zinc. Solutions that can save more than 200,000 children's lives every year. Policy makers understand that a two week focus will not rid the country of diarrhoea, but our public systems have become used to working in a “mission mode”. Building a habit for doing some basic things doesn’t come easily, so we try and get people to do things for a fortnight with a hope that some of those activities stick.

 

There’s a wide collection of Pakhwadas. The Measles Fortnights and the Intensified Immunization Fortnights. We even have 'Wajan Pakhwadas' or Weight Fortnights when we try and fatten up kids in 14 days. There are the ubiquitous and much dreaded Hindi Pakhwadas where people will spend much of their time flipping the pages of a Hindi dictionary to make sense of the memo they just got, hopefully adding to their vernacular word power in the process.

 

My favourite is the Janasankhya Sthirita Pakhwara (the Population Stabilization Fortnight) where we try and Stabilize the Population for a fortnight. For some reason I have this image of a billion people trying to stay standing on one foot, with one eye on a two-week calendar, counting down the days till they can go back to being themselves and procreating. And somewhere near AIIMS a digital billboard releases steam as the population clock takes a breather. If only that was true. Then we could just do a fortnight, every fortnight.

In Search of the Perfect Cuppa

Some people do it to get fit, some do it for the thrill of speed, some do it to test their limits of endurance, some do it for the love of gizmos and technology, and some do it to for the love of the outdoors. Everyone's got a reason to ride a cycle. Me? I do it for chai.

We scour the countryside for the perfect chai and chai-wallah. The tea shouldn't be too sweet, too milky, too strong, or too light, and it's best if it's really hot and made with cows milk. The neater the chai-wallah and the quieter the surroundings, the higher are our ratings. Over the years we've been lucky to find quite a few great chai spots, but still nothing that one could say was perfect. There's always a few shortcomings and as all good property dealers will tell you, it's usually all about location.`

Chai-wallahs like to in places they can find some customers, which means they like to be in busy places. So you won't find any of them in those tucked away patches of the Aravallis that are truly spectacular and scenic, or even in small villages or empty country lanes. There was this one chai-wallah on the road that leads to the Golden Green Golf Course that many of us said came close to being perfect, but he eventually shut shop probably because he figured out that running a chai shop in the middle of nowhere was not a viable proposition.

The idea of riding to a remote spot in the hills and making your own chai has been one that we've talked about for a couple of years. The ideal place in my mind was somewhere around the Echo Point we discovered last New Years Day near the New Mangar Mandir. Miles from anywhere, at the edge of a gorge, lots of rocks to serve as a fire place and as stools to sit, plenty of dried shrubs and trees for firewood, complete silence. Tranquil. And it was the destination for the 2014 New Years ride.

Seeing that I was set on trying my hand at campfire tea-making, my wife graciously agreed to sacrifice a pan and some party-ware including paper cups and spoons. I finally found that all those tea bags and sugar and milk sachets that I had scavenged from the complimentary coffee/tea makers in various hotel rooms could be put to good use. And having watched Bear Grylls light many a camp fire using nothing but chest hair, nails and teeth and true grit, I decided to take the easy way and packed lots of news paper for kindling, a box of matches and a Bic lighter for backup. 

The ride up to the Mangar plateau may have been a bit slower than usual, but I was so distracted looking for dry firewood along the way that I just didn't notice it. Amazingly all the wood we found was bone dry and Rajesh managed to get a fire going with one sheet of news paper and a single match stick. 

After that Saurabh played master chef and turned out an amazing concoction of English Breakfast, Early Grey and some regular Tetley tea bags that delivered a unique flavor. 

The accompaniments of Christmas cake, orange cake, digestive biscuits and Tiger glucose ensured that this was a New Years morning that no one was going to forget easily.

My New Year Resolution for 2014 - to create a map of chai spots across the Aravallis around Gurgaon and then go there and make and drink chai.....

Photos courtesy Abhinay Pochiraju

A Suitable Seasonal Greeting

I walked into our favourite local bakers yesterday evening because Medha and I decided to treat ourselves after having run some successful errands around town. The bakers was packed. Almost everyone was in there buying cakes, and when they were asked if they wanted a message written on it, everyone would say "Happy New Year".

There was this one guy, looking slightly agitated with the whole place being crowded, finally gets the attention of one of the shop girls. He points at a smallish chocolate cake. She says "four hundred rupees". He reluctantly nods. She takes the cake out of the fridge and asks him if he wants a message on top. He fixes her with a stare that says 'are you serious?' and then shrugs his shoulders his and with a dry grin says "see if Happy Basant Panchami fits on...."

Just in case it needs saying again. Happy New Year everyone.