India - Part 2

Over the many many years that I've cycled, I've built up a resilience of sort.  It's not a hurried thing, and because I cycle alone I don't really know how fast I go (or more accurately, I don't know how fast others go).  But I do know that I can grind out a 200 if I need to, I know I can climb, I know some tricks of the trade.  I had a giggle when days into the ride, the guy who ran the support-van team (no loaded bike this time) confessed that when we were getting ready to go he and his colleagues were looking at Big Blue (which is basically a dik-wiel with all the trimmings of a working bike, heavy, mudguards etc) they were thinking "I'm not sure about this guy, he's brought a delivery bike, hope he can handle the distance..." - which is funny because I was thinking looking at everyone else's bikes "Jesus, flat handlebars, mountain bike, gel seat ...hope these guys know what 100kms is going to feel like on that ".  What I was not prepared for was the challenge of Mumbai traffic and roads (which, for want of a better short description, is like a bad acid trip with extra pollution and a topping of chaos) - or just the sheer scale of the city.  Mumbai has 20 million people.  That's 40% of the total population of SA.

A breather in Mumbai, Kaustubh, Shreenivas on the phone, Raj (the irrepressable) Vikash, Gaurav and Hemal.

The first day was short - I think around 80kms, and once out of Mumbai, it was much less hair-on-end stuff.

The important bit

The bike ride itself was an Investor Education drive.  Finance, and in particular mutual funds are relatively new in India, and these are arguably effective long term investing structures (or they have historically been).  In the spaces in-between however, in the developing market environment, there is plenty of blue water for sharks, and an uninformed public is rendered an open water swimmer.  I was impressed with both the methodology and the intention.  It's too easy to say of a population of 1.4bn, why bother starting with a few thousand people?  Fortunately human progress has not been blighted by opinions like this.  Public consciousness is a viral thing; you start, it spreads, and eventually develops its own momentum.  Getting it started however takes a particular sort of leadership; someone to tell a story which inspires and galvanizes people.  That leadership was provided in a number of key figures.  Raj, whose idea this all was, leads Advocacy volunteerism for our CFA Society of India.  Vidhu, our India country head, and Shreenivas, who is a director in our India office were all instrumental.  I don't want to diminish this primary purpose in my focus on the riding and the country - that part served as a curiosity to bring people in the towns and villages that we rode through out to the activation points - "the show" if you like.  There were several of these each day, and one of the support vehicles was a mobile stage, on which a travelling troupe of actors delivered key messages in the form of industrial theatre, and then the cyclists were available to mingle and ask and answer questions of the people who came out for the show.

The DIVINE Gaurav, my sometimes room-mate, bed-mate, and general bringer of cheer and wisdom, at the first activation point.

The players get under way... It was really cool, and a feat of organisational mastery (1400kms, several of these each day, with a bigger evening event each night in one of the local town halls.

By the time we reached Khopoli, I had got over any concerns.  The un-baggaged bike was easy, I was feeling very comfortable on the bike, could have done another 150.  But with all things adventurous, there are always surprises.

With Shreenivas, meeting his mum in Khopoli.  Shreenivas has a challenging job, supports an NGO in Khopoli (his home-town) and is also an organic farmer and advocate.  He is utterly remarkable, capable, kind, warm, funny - and also speaks Japanese (from having lived and worked in Japan).  What it means to be a man.

After the show, with Amit Joshi, on the left, Vikas in front of him, and members of Shreeniva's family and the NGO he supports.

The surprise on leaving Khopoli was a pretty decent climb.  If you cycle in Hong Kong all you do is massive hill work, so it was a nice change of scenery and pace, but it was heavy on some of my team-mates - and I think that is where I started seeing the first splashes of toughness that I would become increasingly familiar with.

If you've not done huge amounts of cycling, pulling 60+km on a mountain bike or  hybrid, with a chunk of those in Mumbai traffic, some activation points along the way can be a bit daunting.  Then to be confronted with a ~20km chunk of proper climbing, and the cruelty of several false summits can lead one to ask what on earth one is doing.  Here there were just smiles between the puff and pant, and oh well, if it gets too hard get the van to come and pick you up, so don't stress...  At the top there were glimpses of the valley that we had come up from, Big Blue looking daisy-fresh.