Flat Tire

Today we drove. A long way. Over some of the worst roads I've seen so far. I mean, at times the road was basically a dirt road. Actually, a dirt road would have been better. What we ended up driving on much of the time was a half-dirt half-paved road, which is even worse. Along the way one of the tires got punctured. The driver pulled over to a road side tire-fixing-guy-station. It was basically a shack with an air compressor. For whatever reason, it took half an hour to fix the flat even though they had nothing else to do.

The flat-tire-fixing-guy (I would hesitate to call him a mechanic) used a sledge hammer and a couple of crowbars to remove the tire. I guess they've never heard of a manual bead breaker in this part of India.


I was surprised to see an inner-tube in our radial tire until I though about the quality of the roads. It kind of makes sense to use an inner tube in that case. Also, if a sledge hammer and crowbars is the way every shop removes tires, (I've since learned that it is) an inner tube is the only way the tire could ever be expected to hold air...


I finally got a good photo of farmers using traffic to thresh grain. In this case they are processing raggi (sp?) It's a millet like grain. Why buy a threshing machine when there is a constant supply of bus traffic?
A nice ox team.


These guys were moving camels from Rajistan to Bangalor. (He hit me up for fifty bucks just for a photo)



My view from the Boulders Resort outside Hampi.



And my cabin:

The owners home really is his castle... At least it looks like one.