[Though not far in distance, this was the hardest day yet, both physically and psychologically]
Well, I got more than I bargained for – and not in a particularly nice way, either. It was the damned wind – a constant buffeting northerly gale gusting directly into my face at 30 km/h at 8 o’clock when I left St George, and getting progressively stronger all throughout the day. I’d only covered a mere 50km by 11am (15km/h in full-power TURBO mode, 7th gear) before I had to stop to recharge the batteries for 3 hours using the generator out in the middle of nowhere. By the time I got going again at 2pm, the wind had only intensified, and by 4 o’clock I realised I wasn’t going to make it into Surat before dark and I would need to find a place to camp the night.
After many anxious kilometers eying off the deteriorating weather and the depleting battery while looking for a suitable campsite, I finally settled on a nondescript spot on a washaway track off the main road near a low bridge – maybe not ideal, but at least semi-discreet and out of harm’s way.
I pitched tent on a grassy knoll (well, a few blades of grass on a patch of ground 2-inches higher than the surroundings, squeezed in between the washaway and a dry creek bed), and no sooner had I done so when it began to rain heavily in short bursts, as drought-breaking thunderstorms rolled on by. By 7pm there I was: miserably marooned in my little tent on a tiny island with about half an inch of freeboard above a gushing torrent, eating my miserable dinner of M&Ms (crispy ones!) and canned tuna. And I badly needed a pooh, too. But that’s another story.
But, happy to say, the tent stood firm and dry, the rain stopped, the wind died down and I did get a good sleep eventually. No pictures, musta been too traumatized.
