Day 18 - Palakollu to Machchilipatnam, 120 kms

The route was beautiful again… bright green fields for as far as the eye can see interspersed with coconut trees. We had to sit in the lorry for about 5 kms because the road turned out to be extremely bad for that stretch. But end of the day we cycled about 115 kms.

Went first from Palakollu to Bhimavaram, about 22 kms. The team at Bhimavaram refused to let us go for at least 2 and a half hours.. Met some wonderful people. One of them made us stop all traffic on the road (twice) and shout slogans of "swatantra Bharat Ki Jai" (hail Independent India), "Jai Bharat" (Hail India), "Gandhi Ji Ki Jai" (hail Gandhi Ji) etc… the second time he realised that we wer not sayign it right.. so he corrected us.. when he says 'jai Bharat', we were supposed to say 'jai jai Bharat' :) We did not know about the second 'jai' when we shouted the slogans the first time.. it was fun :)

The 2.5 hours delay killed us after that though… The heat was unbearable, but we did cycle the entire distance. We reached Machchilipatnam at 5 pm and immediately went for lunch. Thereafter, press conference. Finally we had to force our way to our rooms (they refused to let us rest also). We were extremely tired that day, having cycled for almost 12 hours. And when we finally got our rooms, they were full of mosquitoes. None of the girls managed to sleep properly at night.

Our welcome at Bhimavaram before the road blocks and the slogan shouting and amazing breakfast of Pesarattu and upma..

Green, green and more green.. and what a green it is..

The Sai baba temple next to the place where we were staying..