My "down-day" in Aurangabad should have been a relaxing one, but the evil stomach gods intervened. It was torture to have a stomach ailment when the food was so incredibly good at our resort/kibbutz/bunny farm hotel. Our hotel looked like a little model of Irvine, California. Cute white bungalows set on immaculate green lawns amidst winding cement sidewalks plunked down in the middle of a rural Indian environment seemed out of place in Aurangabad. There was one other anomaly at our hotel in Aurangabad that wasn't immediately apparent. At our first meal a shorthaired and panted Indian took our food order and disappeared into the kitchen.
After [she]{.underline} left Andy and I looked at one another realizing this was the first and only female waitperson we'd had in India. Andy had asked the front desk to call a doctor for me at 10 am. When he did the clerk lectured Andy about our president's behavior, quoting the Koran. At four in the afternoon, when no doctor had arrived I summoned the last of my strength went to the office and gave them more to fear than Allah. Trudging back to the room with the clerk and his manager chasing after me with a flurry of apologies I nearly blacked out.
Soon afterwards the doctor arrived and proclaimed that I had amebic dysentery. The next day, against the doctor's recommendations, we were mobile once again. We left late, neither of us feeling 100%. We considered taking a non-bicycle form of transportation and rejected the idea. The riding day was lost in a fuzz of anti-amebics. What I do remember of the ride is that it was painless, on a smooth road with little traffic. We were both exhausted when we arrived on the outskirts of Amednagar, opting to stop at the first hotel we saw. There was no hot water, but the hotel provided us with a few buckets of hot water to wash with.
(This is often the case in India, where hot water is only provided in the mornings and evenings.) We both felt refreshed, ready to see Amednagar, off of our bikes. We tried to hire an autorickshaw with little success. For the first time since Delhi the drivers were trying to rip us off. We dispensed with bargaining and started to hoof it. A few meters from the hotel we flagged a horse cart, negotiated a price for a tour through a helpful bystander and were trotting through the streets of Ahmednagar towards the massive fort. As the sun set we turned back towards the hotel onto the main road.
Gripping the cart I watched trucks and cars dodge us on the busy highway. I'd regained my appetite, it seemed that the drugs were working. We were at the restaurant too early to eat dinner so we snacked lavishly. It was hard to concentrate on our food because we were again, big surprise, the center of attention. An extended family was also eating at the restaurant and the children kept changing tables to get a better look at us. When we began to play cards they stood over our shoulders giggling until their parents dragged them off into their vehicles and left us to eat our dinner in peace.