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| Two bikes, Two cities, 1200 kilometers, One goal: change the world by teaching kids to read |
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| Food: We'd try anything |
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| A philanthropic adventure. A geographic adventure. And a gastro adventure. The Ride to Read had it all. CHINA: Among the many food thrills we had were the 'Chinese Hot Pot.' You enter a restaurant. You grab a bunch of sticks with different kinds of meat (what kind of meat is that? and that?), vegetables, seaweed and fishy things. Then you take those sticks and put them in a vat of boiling water/oil/unknownliquid full of spicy peppers. Eat crispy thing on end of stick when patience runs out. Everyone in the restaurant laughed at us (we weren't sure what we were doing wrong, actually), but we sure had fun. |
| TIBET: In our updates, you heard a lot about some of the foods we came into (very) frequent contact with in Tibet. Here, Nicolas experiences several for the first time: - Raw Yak in tomato sauce (bowl of red stuff on left) - Fried Yak (plate with chopsticks) - Tsampa (bowl of powder in lower right. it's actually barley flower with ground tea leaves...you roll it in your hand, like Nicolas is doing, and put it in your mouth, which he is done, and then wonder how to swallow something so dry, which is what he is doing now) - Butter tea (bowl of yellow stuff next to Nicolas' hand. this is butter, tea leaves and salt. we kind of got used to it, although the taste has been described as closer to wet socks than to tea) |
| You're never quite sure where you can buy stuff in Tibet. Up around Pede Dzong (altitude 4,400m), we had been riding for about 5.5 hours. We came upon this little house in the middle of nowhere (as most things in Tibet are...the middle is pretty big). Turns out the house turned out to be a grocery store (er...shop in a living room) where they sold coke. Thank God. |
| And here is a typical lunch stop. Usually, we'd be riding for about 3 to 4 hours, and we'd come upon Tenzing and Pemba, who would be hanging out by the truck. They'd ask us if we wanted to eat (YES!). Then we'd fire up our little stove, heat up some water, and have noodles and butter tea. It would usually be so windy, that they'd have to use that little cardboard box you see there to shelter the stove. |
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| NEPAL: Our buddy Mingmar, successfully steering us out of a small street riot, had us stop at a local Kathmandu restaurant for some Nepalese Dal Bat. Everyone in Nepal eats Dal Bat. All the time. Essentially, it's rice, dal, some curried chicken, some veg, some pickles, that sort of thing. Mingmar (left) shows the proper way to eat Dal Bat - with your hands. After several coaching sessions, Dave finally mastered the 'thumb under, pop in' routine. |
| ON THE ROAD: It worked like this...we did some shopping for canned meats (what kind of meat is that? nobody seemed sure) and dried noodles with Tenzing... |
| ...then Tenzing would stop at somebody's hut along the road wherever we were riding and pay them a few cents to use their family kitchen... |
| ...and then we would have a nice hot, if oft repeated, meal of noodles with meat (?). Here, Tenzing and Pemba enjoy a bit of their own cooking as we set off to finish our ride (don't worry, they'll catch up in the truck) |
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| Breakfast was usually really nice. We'd wake up, heat up some water and have some coffee (thanks Nestle!). Food was usually a couple of powerbars. The colors would be fantastic as the sun came up, although it would usually be pretty cold, still. |