Vicarious Touring

[Andre Jute]

Instead of sleeping, I've been reading Andy's Cycleblaze report of his 2025 tour of part of India. It's organized as very short takes, hardly more than captions to the photographs, some of them startling, others hugely interesting, quite a few breathtakingly beautiful (try https://images.cycleblaze.com/r76s77y9ixuljjgwris0bd6ex3f_2000.jpeg). You can see that tour here:
https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/india2025/
On a practical level, I come away from it with a conviction that the cyclist taking the road less travelled had better set his daily targets modestly, especially if he's planning on maps which may label a "road" that keeps disappearing as a grand "highway"; hell, here in West Cork we wouldn't even describe the rare parts of the "highway" with tarmac on it as a lane, and the council employee who hasn't improved it yet would be looking for a new job!

There's another tour by Andy on Cycleblaze too, which I'll get to when I've slept:
https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/india24/

[Andyb1]

Thanks for the post Andre.
The travel parts of each Journal were written after the day’s ride with a few tweaks later on.  They made a public diary for each trip.  They also gave me a bit of security as others knew where I was and if the worst happened where my pieces might be found!
Photos were taken by my ancient iphone 5SE.  Sadly now replaced as Apple would not allow it to take current ios updates.
I am starting to plan out my next trip - Sri Lanka in 2026.  This time on a Raven Tour.  The Sherpa I used in India earlier this year is now owned by another member of this Forum and has a new life.

[Andre Jute]

Photos were taken by my ancient iphone 5SE.

We still have an iPhone 5s in service, and also an SE* from 2016 for bike use, explicitly chosen because like the 4S, another venerable iPhone still in service with my family, it is a compact yet lightweight (113gr) phone carved from solid aluminum and thus particularly sturdy and suitable for sporting use, specifically including bike use. The SE also takes particularly good photographs. IMO, the first SE was the best iPhone Apple made until many years after the SE's official obsolescence, and the unchallenged best value ever. Personally, I hope my SE sees me out; IOS 15,8.5 is perfectly good for operating the health and map functions I need on the bike, and operating various alarms, and timers when I cook, and I don't care that Apple no longer supports it.

* Apple confused everyone by squeezing the gubbins of the iPhone 6x into the Aluminium frame of the iPhone 5 so that the SE -- that's the whole name of the A1723 series -- looked like a series 5x but worked like the series 6x, where x stands for some development or upgrade. There never was an iPhone 5SE though quite a few owners will earnestly assure you that there was, and whip out their SE to show you what a "5SE" looks like.