67 km.
A day of frustrations.
As I was going to bed last night I thought maybe I should take a rest day in Faizabad. So this morning I checked with the rception. No can do, hotel is fully booked. So I had to hit the road. Sore ass and tired legs already from the start.
I asked in the reception about Sultanpur and was told that there are several hotels to stay at.
The road was generally good today. It is classified as a National Highway, but has only one lane in each direction. Traffic was at times quite intense.
After half an hour I realised my watch had stopped. Probably the battery is finished.
A few hours later the damn bike computer froze again.
When I rode in to Sultanpur I tried to keep an eye out for the railway station. Often there are hotels and guest houses nearby. But I also checked both sides of the streets I cycled along since I seemed to come straight through the centre of town. As in Faizabad by far the most shop signs etc are only in Hindi though, and I can't make head or tail of them. When I finally came to a railway line there was a que waiting for a long train to pass. A man approached me to ask what I was looking for. When I said hotel he advised me to turn back and go to a small guest house not far away. There were however no vacant rooms. Then the man scribbled the names of two other hotels and gave some vague directions. The first one had a wedding booked and all rooms were occupied. Same story at the second. The manager there gave me a name to a third one. That also had a wedding, and was fully booked. He told me that this particular Sunday is a very auspicious day to get married.
I decided to return to my original plan to search out the area around the train station. Took me a while to come even close to it. Then I started asking from there. The first place I was sent to was the very same guest house where I had checked first. By then they had already started setting up a wedding reception. Then a policeman took some pity on me and gave me directions to another place nearby. Full.
A man there gave me two more names, and the name of an area where they would be. About two kilometers away he said. When I had cycled about one km I asked again, to make sure I was going in the right direction, I was told to go back about 500 mtrs etc. I was on the verge of giving up and was thinking of how much a taxi to Allahabad would cost. Probably too much since it is over 100 kms away. Too far to cycle since it was already getting late in the afternoon. And the train station had looked pretty crowded too so I had little hope of getting on a train.
Eventually I came to Ksheer Sagar hotel. Fortunately this place does not have a restaurant, or reception hall, and thus no wedding is booked. Here I got a room. Bliss just to get off the bike, and have a shower etc. He could have charged me double or triple and I still would have accepted.
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