When I first started planning for a solo cycling tour – a what!!??
A long distance – cycling tour – SOLO. :D
When I first started planning for it in 2014,
If you remember from my older blog post, I consulted with the only guy I knew who had done such tours. I pretty much drained his brain with my plethora of questions. I needed assurance of feasibility for every small thing (as per him).
A lot of times he would tell me about ‘best practices’ but then follow it up by saying, you can do anything you like as long as you stay alive. That’s really the only thing – do whatever you want but STAY ALIVE.
That’s the benchmark of a good cycling tour – if we are alive at the end of it
:O
I wrote him off as a bizarre, hard core cycle tourer. I would, obviously, never cycle so rough!
I started travelling SOLO and as a traveller (not on family visits) since 2009.
A few years into it, my mom told me something similar. I had been solo travelling across India. Nothing adventurous and no cycling – simply travelling solo across India.
She said that even if a girl gets raped it’s better to remain alive. You shouldn’t kill yourself over it even though you may feel so bad about it. The matter will pass.
:O
These kind of things are hard to respond to. And already we women are freaked out about getting raped. How does one discuss whether to kill oneself after it or not?
Either case, Mom just wanted me alive :)
Since then, I had 3 close shaves with death.
One was on a cycling tour in Dec 2016. The next one was this solo hike in Spain – Dec 2017. After that, in a few months, was another one.
That really shook me up.
And now, this Covid Pandemic has happened. It is easy for me to feel nonchalant about the dangers. After all, young folks have high immunity.
But Sadhguru has been rubbing the point in, Stay Alive.
Be grateful that a pandemic happened and you are ALIVE.
Since last so many years, there has been a repeated reminder about Life (and Death).
It’s been an awesome ride – all this adventure stuff. But these reminders of life’s mortal nature brings a distinctive shift within.
And as I hear, for the nth time, about staying alive. All of the past years, when the cycle wheel zinged on the tarred roads beneath me, flash through my mind.
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