Author: Garry

Garry McGivern Travelsonabike2 is cycle touring in India on Tuesday, 18th-October-2016. In Dhule. The doctor was pleased with my progress and said that I should be okay to move on in a few days. And he’s given me enough tablets to take whilst I’m in India. As if I didn’t have enough tablets to carry as it is!

One thing I’d forgotten to mention about when you go and see the doctor is you wait in a waiting room, which is normal. You are then called into the doctor’s room where you take another seat and sit in the same room along with him and the patient in front of you. You then get to hear about all their ailments. When they’ve finished they go, and he starts his consultation with you whilst somebody else enters the room and waits. Listen to your problems! I hope it’s not like that in the gynaecology department!

Out For The Evening

After the hospital, I got invited out to a party with Deepam’s family. The party was on the other side of town so we went in the car.

I think that we may have been the last to arrive as everybody was already eating when we got there.

It was being held on what I could only describe as a small sports field. It just had that feel about it. But apparently, it was somebody’s garden and they just rented it out for parties. 

There were two big tables, one with the women on and one with the men on. Kalpana went and obviously sat with the women whilst Pradeep, Deepam and myself went to sit at the men’s table. It wasn’t formal seating everyone was just sitting in a random manner around the table.

After being introduced to everybody, I was given some food. The dish was a dry dish, a mixture of puffed rice mixed with chutneys and Bombay mix. It was very tasty! On the table, there was also some tomato soup in cups. Some deep-fried bits made from gram flour and some chillies fried in batter, which I must admit I didn’t realise what they were until I’d bitten into one!

Thinking that this was the food, I had another bowl of the puffed rice. It wasn’t until I’d nearly finished that I got told that this was only the starter and the main course was inside!

There’s More?

Inside was like the sports hall (I think I thought that because I’d already made my mind up about the way the outside looked) the food was all laid out on a long table. On it, there was rice, salad, dal, masala, vegetable kofta in a sauce, breads and a sweet dessert that you poured milk over.  It was all extremely tasty and very enjoyable. 

After the food, we once again returned to the tables outside where the normal party banter started, and I kept hearing the odd reference to myself. After we’d sat around talking for a while, somebody said that we were all going for an ice cream; a bit random, I thought (it was about 11 o’clock by now), but hey, why not! Thinking it was just outside and we’d walk, I was a bit surprised when we all got into the cars and drove to this ice cream parlour about a mile away.

After enjoying our ice creams, it was time to go home. What another truly wonderful experience! I am so grateful to Pradeep, Deepam and Kalpana for inviting me along. 

Went to the market in Dhule this morning, which runs along the old main road running through the town. There are fruit stalls, veg stalls and all manner of different stalls in fact I think that you could possibly buy almost anything you wanted! What a thoroughly hectic and manic place! I loved it!

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Garry McGivern Travelsonabike2 is cycle touring in India on Monday, 17th-October-2016. In Dhule. I got invited to go and have breakfast with Deepam and his parents in their apartment this morning, which was really nice.

It was an unusual mixture of English and Indian cuisines. On the one hand, there was porridge, cornflakes and toast, and on the other hand, there were sweet things like dates and shortbread, fresh fruit, lentils, fried cheese and potato and a dish made from flour.

It was all washed down with black tea with ginger in it. It was all really tasty and so nice of them to invite me.

I’m Famous

No matter where I am, be it in the hotel or outside, everybody seems to know me and knows that I’m not very well!

People, whenever they come up and talk to me, are always asking the normal questions like where am I from, where am I going, do I like India and so on. And now they ask how my chest is!

Went to a gentleman’s parlour this afternoon! Which isn’t quite what it sounds like; it was a barber! Decided to go and get a shave more for something to do than anything else. The monotony is starting to get to me a bit now!

That was an ok experience, although I got a bit more than I bargained for! After a shave, he proceeded to give me nearly every other treatment he had: face scrub, head massage, upper body massage, and steam bath on my face; he even put some cream on my face to make my skin fairer! Like, I needed that! I came out of there exhausted, but at least it passed an hour or so.

Off to the hospital again tonight for a follow-up appointment. Things seem to be getting a lot better now, and I’m thinking of starting to cycle again on Wednesday.

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