Contai is a pretty small town so getting out of it was a breeze… almost immediately, we found ourselves on rural roads through the countryside, surrounded by green and palm trees. There were cashew processing factories throughout the area, and we saw a lot of communist party (CPIM - Communist Party of India (Marxist)) flags in this area.

At one point, we stopped near an intersection to buy some samosas from a women and of course the crowd gathered again. Most people are just curious, some know a few words of English, but the funny thing is that the crowds get big enough that they start kind of causing traffic jams. Anyway… we really enjoyed the interactions and are always trying to support the women owned businesses.

We also get asked for selfies all day long. Sometimes it’s someone riding on a scooter next to us and they take the picture while driving (normally it’s one of multiple passengers taking the picture). Sometimes it’s when we stop. Today there was someone that, i think, wanted us to pull over and stop just to take a selfie with him. But to me, the most entertaining is when they want a picture with us, but just on our phone… and they don’t ask us to send them anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Like every journey, there are ups and downs. Late in the afternoon, Fran’s pannier broke off while riding which caused him to swerve and hit me. Luckily neither of us went down, but we did have to do some roadside troubleshooting to keep going. Then, a bit later, a truck full of police officers pulled up next to us, asked us to pull over, and started asking a bunch of questions. We continued on after this short interrogation, but you never know what to expect. 

We pushed on and the last 25km were unremarkable, just a long straight big road. Balasore is quite a bit bigger than Contai and the accommodation options are much better. We found a great place (Hotel Nishi , if you are ever in the area) that’s super clean, has a good restaurant, and staff that are really nice.