The three days of forced break in Dar are good for me as well. I especially enjoy it to go on tour on my own since quite some time. That is to say although Elke is not well and she spends more time on the toilet than in bed. I provided her with the best medicine and for her the ting to do is staying in bed. In the early morning, after the muezzin called me from my bed, I stroll through the loud and narrow streets. I try to suck in all the teeming and swarming around me. The deafening noise of the bus-station is hardly bearable. Thousands of people are standing around, waiting for the bus. Every company announces arrivals and departures via loudspeakers. And while they are at it, they try to be louder than everybody else. I walk past a lot of fruit-stalls. They sell mangoes, bananas, pineapples, melons and pomegranates; some of them produce delicious fruit juices.

Next to our place Indian bikes are being repaired. They don’t have any similarities with our bicycles. Each of them comes in only one size, which means it’s up to you how to cope with it; only the saddle is adjustable. In vain one is looking for gears, because the power transmission works via one gear only. But it’s surprising what Indians achieve with such a translation. For instance in the case we overtake one of these snail like bike drivers we can observe the transformation of a tired biker to one Lance Armstrong. He literary merges with his iron vehicle and tries as hard as possible to catch us, even though he’s going to be out of breath after 500 metres, lying at the side of the road like a turned turtle. The brake pads, mostly a piece of hard rubber, push either from the top on the tyre or from the sides onto the rims. Since most of the Indian bikers have lost their pads, braking goes on by pushing sandals or flip flops on the tyre or on the street. The price of an Indian bike lies at around 30 EURO, which makes it very difficult to tell the prices of our bikes, something we’ve been asked a lot around here.

To the owner of the bike store I show the bike-pack I brought with me. He looks at the hole that’s been eaten by rats and nods briefly before he starts looking for an extra large bike-vamp. In the meantime I am offered a chai by the tailor next door. The blacksmith as well as the vendor cross the street and other interested people join us. Everybody is discussing about how to fix the rat eaten hole in the proper way. One hour later the hole is perfectly vulcanized with a lot of glue and a vamp for trucks. Prize: 20 Rupees.

Afterwards I’m looking quite desperately for an internet access. In a backyard I finally find what I was looking for, operated by some computer nerds. While I am getting into contact with friends and family some boys are just downloading pornography, something that’s punished quite hard around here. In a small shop I buy some cookies, cola and bananas for Elke’s dinner, hoping it will stop the diarrhoea.

After Elke recovered, we mount our bikes again and start pedalling towards Ratlam. They assure us, that although street works are going on at the moment, the road is passable. Well, we shouldn’t have done that. Ahead of us lies a construction site that stretches for 125 km and has nothing to do with any European road work, whatsoever. It all looks like a bombed lunar landscape in which one tends to forget where left and right is. Five hours we push, pull and lift our bikes through sand tracks and pebble stretches. We sweat and we swear and are dirty all over, as if we had been pulled through the mud. It is quite unreasonable what we are expecting from our bikes. It takes 60 km before it happens: I am just passing under a half built bridge when suddenly some terrible noise at my rear wheel forces me to stop. A spoke is broken next to the gear rim. Instantly the brakes are blocking - no chance of going any further. In boiling heat I dismount my rear wheel to have a look at the damage. Of all things the spoke broke next to the gear rim. It is only reparable with a special tool, which I don’t have with me. I left it at home, because Gerrit, my good friend and bicycle-expert, was convinced that such a special tool is available in most bike-stores all around the world. Which was nearly right, only in India it isn’t. Because Indian bikes don’t have gears and therefore no gear rim, which means no special tool to dismount the gear rim. I dismount the hydraulic rear brakes to continue, hoping that not a second spoke will break.

With lots of luck we arrive at Ratlam. Instantly we are looking for a place to stay and a bicycle store - which proves to be quite difficult. After searching for hours I am able to find a specialist who agrees to help me. With horror we discover, that not only a spoke is broken but the whole rim is warped with a huge bend in it. With lots of patience he is actually able to fix the broke spoke. But we both know, that it’s not going to be any good on any other road than a really good one, and it won’t especially be any good for cycling around the world as we are planning to do. The same evening we phone to Gerrit in Erfurt: "SOS - We need a full new rear wheel, ASAP." A short time later we have the answer: "No Problem, consider it done. Where should we send it to?" Elke’s been told over and over again from an Indian in Deidesheim: "If you have any problems in India, call me!" Now we have a problem. The next day we have an address and a place to go in Jaipur, where Gerrit is going to send the new rear wheel to. Considering that we have another 3-4 weeks before we arrive in Jaipur, everything can be organized without time- pressure. Our only hope is now, that the wheel is going to last for the next 500 kilometres...