India Bike Tour

Danielle writes: As West Coast residents, our bodies are unaccustomed to Kerala’s and Tamil Nadu’s level of relative humidity of 50-60% and 88-94*F. Just imagine how someone from the Southwest would feel!

When we bike, the apparent wind dries our sweat, most of the time. When we stop, we each become a soggy mess, whether in the shade or not, with sweat dripping down our red faces and soaking our clothes as our bodies continue to cool down. If there’s a natural breeze, the sweat becomes a lesser part of our overall experience. Eat a little heat, and that sweat reappears whether it’s spicy hot or temp hot.

We are hydrating with about 5 liters of water each per day. That’s 21 cups of water and most of that is evaporating! And even then, before going to sleep, we both drink another half liter because we’re still feeling a bit thirsty.

And water isn’t the only liquid we drink. We’ve been drinking one or two tiny glasses of milky strong chai tea (chai massala, the one with spices, is unavailable). Add a fresh-squeezed orange juice or a watermelon juice or both. Richard’s favorite is a fresh-squeezed lime soda (you can get a salty or sweet version, he usually gets one of each or a salty/sweet mix). So add that too. Fresh coconut juice, never my favorite at home, tastes ok, perhaps to satisfy the body’s needs for electrolytes?

We’re adding a Nuun tablet to at least one waterbottle a day. And a rest break is often augmented with some salty snacks, typically a bag of ubiquitous Lay’s potato chips, to keep at least our sodium levels up.

In the Northwest, this much water consumption would probably lead to water poisoning, something my friend Catherine told me about because she had been hospitalized for it many many years ago. I think we’re a far cry away from that, but we’re both thinking we should maybe try to drink even a bit more.

I had to go to the bathroom mid-morning the other day. TMI, I know and I wouldn’t normally share, but when on a bike, in a populated country, without a reputation for lots of clean public facilities, it can be a daunting thought! When there are people everywhere (Kerala), a bush and a shovel are not really an option. We feel relieved to have bowel movements before departing for the day, but our bodies are not 100% regular yet. To my delight, the problem was easily solved!

Honestly, that reputation for unclean public facilities does not seem deserved in Kerala or even Tamil Nadu in 2026. Of course, in the public facilities at a temple or park, India’s toilets aren’t the best, but they aren’t in the US either. Go to a restaurant, a museum, a hotel or homestay, and things are spotless. I don’t expect to worry about it anymore, our guts have been fine! (Superstition now demands that I knock on wood. Done.)

We’re taking a rest day in Tirunelveli, after riding five days straight from Kochi to Kanyakumari (the southern-most point of India, also where the majority of Gandhi’s ashes were spread, and where three seas meet—the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean) and then another day here.

Our sit bones are sore! So sore, in fact, that I convinced Richard (it wasn’t hard) we should ride our last 15 miles on the highway so that we could speed through the last miles of the day and arrive safely before dark. This one luckily didn’t have much traffic and was already fully constructed, but the beauty went out of our ride.

We were expecting Tamil Nadu to be dry.

It is, with thorny Acacia-dotted scrublands and iron-rich red soil. So it surprised us to bike past lots of backwaters (and birds). These weren’t used for navigation, the way they were in Kerala before roads were built—we’re not seeing canals—but big and small waters abound between Kamyakumari and Tirunelveli.

What we thought were barren soils are supporting a lot of beautiful small farms and orchards (coconut, banana, no citrus). We didn’t see any real farms along the coast in Kerala. Nor did we see any animals in lush Kerala, except an occasional non-holy cow (menus are packed with meat, chicken, and fish dishes) and dogs. Yet shrubby Tamil Nadu has goats and cows and chickens and dogs (and 100% veg restaurants!).

But we wouldn’t have seen any of this from the highway. Once we got onto Highway 44, the area looks like a wasteland. Did the State buy the property surrounding the highway or was it this way before?

Today’s rest day, unplanned and in what we thought was the middle of nowhere, put us square in the middle of Tirunelveli, which has an incredible set of stone temples and a fantastic museum, detailing recent archeological digs (3 yrs ago) that upend what we know about the Iron Age. Richard was awestruck, so I am sure he’ll post something about it.