It was my mistake I guess. When I had first fixed the route, close to a year ago, I calculated that Chinna Ganjam (our original destination for today), as being 100 kms away (God knows how I got that figure. Maybe I was blind)… We come here and realise that it is actually 150… thereafter, Rotary was not able to arrange anything for us there as it is a very small place :( So we had to move another 40 kms ahead. It was way too much to cover so we had to cover some distance in the lorry. We cycled about a 100 kms and then got into the lorry. We still reached Ongole at 6.30 pm. As usual, the Rotarians were a wonderful team here.
At Ongole, the Rotary has a programme called "Assist" through which they are working on stopping child labour in AP as well as empowering women. Ever since the Tsunami has hit this place, they have been working towards helping rehabilitate the fishing community, especially the women, towards other professions, especially Dairy. It is great the kind of work that they are doing here. They were very happy to meet us and see women doing something like this, since they are so used to meeting the highly oppressed women of the fishing community in coastal AP.
As usual, our cycles attract attention wherever we go. We collect a huge crowd each time we stop for a break. They come to see the cycles and the crazy women who are cycling in pants and wearing silly helmets :) We stopped to have tender coconut and also some amazing hot vada's, chilly pakoras and banana pakoras.. Though the weather was quiet hot, we enjoyed them :)
In a way, it should be easier tomorrow as we have to travel 70 kms only.. keeping fingers crossed.
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