The next morning, our massive dairy input seemed to catch up with Colin. After several mad dashes to the bathroom and a couple of anti-diarrheal tablets, he felt okay enough to ride. The ride was another typical Indian road experience- some smooth sections of pavement punctuated by really rough spots, with a lot of traffic driving as erratically as we've come to expect. We made it to Mangalore, a largish coastal town with no compelling sights to see by late afternoon and stopped for the night.
Colin was really not feeling well, so he lay down in the room to cool off while I unloaded the bikes. When dinnertime rolled around, we decided that maybe something a little blander than our usual selections might be in order, since Colin was still not feeling 100 percent, and I had determined that it wasn't the dairy that bothered me, but the blisteringly hot meals I've ingested. So we found a Pizza Hut. Figuring that the sauce would be similar to, if not the same as, that in the States, we thought it would be a good, relatively bland thing to put in our stomachs. It was, and in special recognition of Thanksgiving, Colin got his with corn on it. It wasn't until after dinner that we realized it was actually Friday. Which meant that this year's Thanksgiving dinner consisted of beer and Magic Masala flavored Lays potato chips (we were too full from lunch to think about a real meal for dinner) we ate last night.
Colin woke up feeling bad after a rough night. He started on a course of Azithromycin to knock out what is most likely a case of “Delhi Belly.” Since we weren't riding far, only to the town of Kannur, we waited until about 10:30 to get on the road in order to give him a chance to feel better and the sky to clear.
Once we hit the road, we had a pretty ride along the coast and across bridges over waterways. The pavement was of variable condition, traffic was extremely heavy, and it took much longer to get to Kannur than we anticipated. When we finally arrived and began calling around for a hotel, they were all full. Instead of investing more time into riding around town in hopes of finding a room, we decided to press on to Calicut (another sixty miles), since Colin said he felt okay, and riding kept his mind off his gut. For whatever reason, traffic into the city was horrendously heavy, and it was dark by the time we got there.
We arrived in Calicut around 6:00 pm only to find the same situation with the recommended hotels. All of the ones where we wanted to stay were full except for one of the higher-end hotels. Tired and not feeling well again, we decided to spend the 50 bucks on the fancy hotel and rode off in search of it. We knew the general direction, but unfortunately ran into a series of one way roads that sent us off into the unknown. Fortunately, some friendly local people took pity on us and drew us a map to the hotel. As we approached the hotel, Re spotted another hotel two doors down. While I waited with the bikes and chatted with the crowd that gathered, Re walked to the other hotel and found that they had nice, air-conditioned rooms for around 22 USD. Sold! Since the road we were on was one way, we did like all good Indian motorcyclists, and rode the wrong way up the one way street, spending equal amounts of time on the road and on the sidewalk. By now, I hadn't eaten anything all day, but my stomach could not face the extremely spicy Indian food served in this area. Lucky for me, there was a KFC across the street. Re was kind enough to head across the street and returned with a chicken sandwich, coleslaw, and a Diet Pepsi before heading out for some dinner on her own.
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