April 10th: Tegal to Bumiayu – 64.3 km

Day 179

I woke up today and had a giddy melt down and admitted to Cher that I didn’t want to get on the road. Heading south, we entered the mountains with still a glimmer of hope and soon found that although the traffic was lighter the lanes were narrower. We still had to avoid huge ruts. Since there was no shoulder, we had to pull over regularly to let buses and trucks pass and of course dodge the kamikaze motorcyclists driving the wrong way into traffic.

As soon as possible, I pulled over, opened my map, and located the nearest train station in Bumiayu. We were done with cycling in Java. However when we got to the station, we learned that this one didn’t allow us to take bikes on the train. When I told Cher the bad news she looked stunned. I was afraid that the news had broken her. For several seconds she was staring off into space until I called her back to reality. She was holding onto the hope of getting a train then and there probably a bit too tightly.

Storms clouds began to gather and we hurried to find a hotel. Stuck in yet another traffic jam, a women on a motorbike must have read our expressions with magic power and simply asked, “can I help you?” “Yes! Is there a hotel in town? “1 Kilometer on the right,” she answered. We were overjoyed, since the only hotel we marked on Google Maps never materialized and the next one seemed to be another 18km away.

1km later, we moved into an average room with a bucket shower. Basically a waste high tiled basin filled with cold water that you scoop out with a bucket. But this was good enough for us to throw a victory party: we survived!

Soon after our shower, I got diarrhea and every twenty minutes I was compelled to get out of bed. It’s going to be a long night, and we still have one more day before we can get a train.