Martlets Hospice Challenge

At the beginning of the year I read in the local newspaper that The Martlets Hospice were looking for people to raise money for them, in particular, by riding a bicycle across Rajasthan in northern India.  During my working life I had at various times undertaken either charity or voluntary jobs but now I was just enjoying life being Captain of the Dyke Veterans Golf, gardening, playing golf and sailing, I was not doing something for others. I had never been to India. Time to take action.      I therefore decided to pay a deposit to Charity Challenge and started to raise money. With Gilda’s help we had two Open Gardens and a Dyke Veterans Dinner for 40 at Adur Lodge.  I sold a mulligan, a drive off the ladies tee, a kick and a throw for £1 each on my Captains Day and altogether raised about £1,000.  I asked all my friends for sponsorship and by the start of the Challenge had raised a total of just over £6,000.

It was not an auspicious start when Mumbai was bombed and the whole expedition was nearly called off.  Mumbai is 1500 miles from Rajasthan and no insurance for the cost of the trip so on it went.  10 days start to finish.  By Virgin Atlantic to New Delhi.  The organisation was marvellous.  We were met at the airport by Matt the leader and then at a restaurant where we had a delicious vegetable curry by Sian the organiser.  During our stay in India we looked round Qutab Minar which has a 73m high tower built in 1209 as a centre piece in Delhi, the Taj Mahal in Agra, the City of Victory by Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri and the Amber fort at Jaipur.  The Taj Mahal was stunning.  The marble is inlaid with semi precious stones and the four towers surrounding it lean out slightly so that if there is an earth quack they fall out and not towards the main building.  We visited a Bird Sanctuary and a National Park of 1390 sq km where we were hoping to see tigers.  Unfortunately we didn’t see either one of those or any leopards as there were only 25 tigers and 30 leopards in the park.  We did see lots of birds in the bird sanctuary, plenty of storks and cormorants, a dusty eagle owl on a nest and a flight of pelicans.  We did see plenty of spotted deer, some samba deer, a couple of antelopes and some crocodiles in the National Park.

Now for the ride.  6 days, saddle sore, two days of a cold and one fall off the bike when I hit some loose sand at the side of the road and fell into the way of a tuctuc.  Luckily it stopped and I remounted with no damage.  I was lucky because of the 10 of us 5 suffered from Delhi belly, one so badly that he had to see a doctor, and one girl got sun stroke. Our total mileage was 415km and two days were 110km each,  that is more than I had ever ridden before in my life.  Matt said he thought there was a 75 year old last year otherwise I was the oldest rider to do this trip.  We went mostly on minor roads through small villages.  The roads were mostly single track tarmacadam with pot holes and cracks in them.  Not nice on ones bottom.  Some of the route was on main dual carriageway then, although the surface was smoothe, you had the traffic.  Towns were chaos with vehicles, bicycles, motorbikes and people everywhere.  Vehicles joined the road (driving was on the left) without looking and at roundabouts there was no right of way for vehicles rounding it.  At traffic lights mostly vehicles stopped but not always.

The sides of the road were covered in litter with pigs, cows and goats foraging for food in it.  People, mostly men, stood by the road doing nothing.  Woman were weeding in the fields or doing jobs.  We saw three 14 year old girls carrying bowls filled with dung on their heads, it is dried then used for fuel, six girls each carrying a bale of hay on their heads and a colourful group of girls washing clothes in a pond.  It wasn’t all female labour, we saw a man driving two oxen with a plough and only one woman driving a motor bicycle.  Otherwise it was the man with the woman side saddle on the back.  We would stop every 20km for a pit stop and were surrounded by several children standing watching us.  This even if we seemed to be miles from anywhere.  The terrain was fairly flat with open fields or desert with only the last few miles beautiful through trees with mountains ahead.

Accommodation sounded good on paper.  Two Maharajas Palaces, several good Hotels and a tented village.  The best was the tented village.  The hotels were two star at the best and the Palaces were run down with only a few guests.  Food was porridge for breakfast and curry for dinner with packed lunches on two days otherwise more curry.  The worst thing was the plumbing.  Only one plug in the basin and three days with cold showers. The other 9 riders were very nice and I think we all got on well.  There were two young couples, two ex army sergeant majors, a German woman who lived in England, a man who owned a motor cycle spares shop and a 67 year old woman who had sadly just lost a son to cancer.

In addition to Matt and Sian we had two native Indians riding with us one of whom was always at the back with the 67 year old woman.  There was one who rode in the jeep with Sian and a driver, his son and a mechanic who were in the bus which followed us.  The jeep would go ahead and provide the pit stop snacks and the coach would follow with the luggage and pick up any stragglers.  I think only three people took advantage of this when they were suffering from Delhi belly.  It couldn’t be much fun crawling at the back.  After visiting the National Park to see the tigers we got a lift 50km to where our bikes had been taken.  4km before we got there the coach broke down with its fan belt broken and we had to hitchhike on a farm vehicle with a two stroke engine.  It also had a problem getting to the airport.  It had to be filled up with water from our water bottles every 20 miles so we were nearly late for the plane home.

India was fascinating but the ride hard work particularly on the bottom. I was thankful I had done a lot of training as it really paid off.

With many thanks to my sponsors who made this all possible and to whom the Martlets Hospice is most grateful.