Day 0 - Kickstart

We landed in Port Blair, checked-in to the hotel and had good time to walk around Port Blair. We toured the cellular jail and came across most of our fellow flight passengers (me too, you too moments). During trips, I love to connect to the place, not as a tourist but to be more part of the place/locals. Our itinerary was planned to include off-beat places avoiding popular tourist stops, and so we would have options to connect with the place. Andaman had a slice of India (mini-india), settlers were from Tamilnadu, West Bengal, Andhra, Northern India etc., it made me wonder, aren’t there any natives?

We met other participants during the evening briefing session, professors, doctors (human doctors & a cycle doctor), even businessmen (with a guitar), quite a few teachers/professors, sports head from Auroville (Pondy), kids, fresh graduate, and some from IT industry. It was quite a diverse group from different professions, different cities, and age groups (13-60), unlike Bangalore events that are swarmed with IT folks. It was encouraging to see two teens, Semmal & Darshan (13 years) accompanying their parents. Given that my daughter will accompany only if her friends are in, it was good to see  a change (Semmal his Dad, Ganesh and Darshan his Mom, Uma). Kick-off event was chaired by local bureaucrats, businessmen and cyclists promoting, offering extensive support to tour Andaman on bicycles.

Almost all the fellow participants were brevet cyclists, doing casual 100KM during weekends. Chidu (Chidambaram) helped me recollect that my last long-distance cycling (Anchetty) was a year and half back, the inevitable thought “do I fit-in” kicked-in. Chidu cycles 60KM daily, we call him Tarzan and so will not be an issue for him. I had no choice but to use the first day as my prep/warm-up day.

The evening ended with Samarth (education professional turned businessman) strumming his guitar to Shruti’s (joined as volunteer accompanying her mother Dr.Shailaja) beautiful singing, my daughter would have connected with those songs. Vellore doctors also had their own band, Darshan calls them kewl doctors (cyclists and musicians).