Cycling from Mysore to Madikeri

Date: Friday June 19,2009
Location: Green Hotel, Madikeri, State of Karnataka India
Accomplishments: We rode 85 miles from Mysore to Madikeri! We left the city and flat rolling farms for the climbing hills!

Change is always everywhere and forever. It is in people from birth to baby to child to adult. It is in a seed of grass. I plant it and water it. I stand watching the vacant dirt. Minute after minute goes by and I feel that the seed will never sprout. However, in every second ever so small, change is happening in the seed and before long, it will sprout. As if by magic, a few days later there is a small blade o grass that multiplies into two blades of grass and finally a patch of grass.
Change is the scenery/landscape between Mysore and Madikeri 85 miles later. We leave at 6:30 a.m. hoping to avoid the mob of Indian traffic. However, the rickshaws, buses, taxis, and school children are already awake and zooming about. We maneuver around in and out of the city. Every so subtle, the big buildings and smog cannot keep up with our pedaling. Flat countryside, cows pulling wooden carts...We glide easily on the paved road in and out of a mobbed pueblo. Then the road is narrow. There are more potholes than pavement. The road begins to wind up, up, and up some more. My energetic legs become heavy and sore. The sun takes a nap behind the darkness of clouds. It rains and the drops pat my back. The road continues to wind upward. Then just when I think I cannot pump my bike, packs, and body up one more hill, the rural road curves down, down, down into a small but overcrowded crazy town of MADIKERI. A large lime green building with red trim called GREEN HOTEL becomes our home. I am so happy to have a bucket shower. I am looking forward to the change of replenishing my body and becoming strong again, ready to battle and conquer the next hills another day.