We've picked up speed to get to the "Seventh Provisional World Parliament" in Chennai. This happens to be on the opposite side of India (southeast coast) from our bicycle destination, Mumbai. No, we didn't cycle 1000 miles across the country, but we did make it to Ujjain, where we packed up the bike and got on a train.

Our adventures continue to multiply. Cycling rural Rajasthan we encountered more camel carts than cars the first week. And sometimes the roads were more suited to camels than cars. One morning we encountered the "road from hell" - dirt and loose rock for miles on end, with nary a sign of pavement. "Road construction" we figured, but that didn't make it any more pleasant. This cut our speed by half or more and finally led to a flat tire. Fortunately, we've found a way to cut back the flats to one every day or two - put a little less air pressure in the rear tire and avoid, or slow down for, all potholes, speed bumps, and the like.

Meanwhile another bike problem reared its head - the gear cassette started coming loose. And we forgot to bring the proper tool with us. Of course, such a tool does not exist in India, as the bicycles are all single speeds. But we discovered that the cassette had a ring the could be tightened by hand, sort of, at least. Sometimes we've had to stop every few hours to tighten it up. We've now improvised tools to improve the tightening, and it can all be done without taking the wheel off, only taking off the panniers and trailer and flipping the bike upside down. 

Sometimes we imagine an imminent catastrophe, but India seems to operate on faith. Faith that somehow things will work out OK. So far, so good. Example: After the "road from hell", we crossed from the State of Rajasthan into Madhya Prahdesh. Suddenly we were on the "road from heaven" - fresh pavement all the way to Ujjain. In fact we rode 100 km our last day into Ujjain, arriving just at sunset, to find a convenient hotel by the busy train station. 

This countryside has been phenomenal for cycling – perfect temperatures in the 70s, flat terrain with occasional low hills protruding, green fields or range lands, curious and friendly people. Also clean, at least compared to the cities. The cities are often jammed with traffic, with roads lined with filth. Pigs and dogs take care of some of the latter, and poor people collect and recycle some items, but the era of plastic has posed a major problem for India. 

Here's what can happen in city traffic: At our hotel in Ujjain we noticed that one of the trailer tires was going flat, then recalled that an "autorickshaw" had bumped our trailer. In fact, these 3 wheelers routinely come within inches or less of people and vehicles of all kinds. One the way back from visiting an interesting Hindu temple in Ujjain, our impatient autorickshaw driver even cursed at pedestrians and cyclists who were too slow to move out of his way. We much preferred the earnest devotees at the underground lingam shrine to Shiva, with their offerings of garlands of flowers. 

Our plan was to catch a train from Ujjain to Chennai for this model parliament. In fact the schedule showed a direct train the next day. One minor problem – it had a waiting list of around 200 people. So we thought, if we can get to Mumbai, we can get a train from there to Chennai. That's because there is a "foreign tourist quota" for trains that leave from major cities, so we could jump past the universally long waiting lists. Then the agent said, no problem, except for the waiting list of 100 to get to Mumbai, and there's no foreign tourist quota from Ujjain. After a lot of hand wringing, the agent informs us of an "emergency quota" that the station master might be persuaded to use. So this is how we managed to get to Chennai the day after Christmas after a 14 hour train ride to Mumbai and a 27 hour ride to Chennai.

The good thing about trains here is that you can really sleep in the sleeper cars. The gentle sounds and motions of the train are the perfect way to put kids to bed – on both of these train rides we shared a compartment with a Hindu family with young kids who proved delightful. The train seats convert to 3 tier bunks on both sides of the compartment for overnight. The windows can be closed at night or in case of rain, but are mostly kept open to the outside world, only covered by thin bars. At stations people will offer to sell you all kinds of goodies, either directly through the window bars or by coming on board and walking down the aisles. Between stations, train employees walk the aisles and offer chai, coffee, all kinds of food, toys, newspapers, etc, with chant-like calls. Less savory are the beggars who roam the aisles asking for handouts, occasionally offering unwanted performances or services. You can even order cheap meals from the parlor car, but they don't begin to match good home or restaurant cooking. 

We've met some very impressive and dedicated people at this Parliament. They have put together a complete "Constitution for the Federation of Earth" over the last 40 years. Now they are working on elaborating "laws" on a variety of timely issues. For example, today we debated modifications to the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court, which would bring this statute in line with their vision for world law. Their vision has a World Supreme Court with several "Benches", one of which would be a Criminal Bench similar to the ICC. 

This group actually wants countries to ratify their Constitution and to form a preliminary world government when 25 or so countries can agree on it. We take the attitude that this Constitution will more likely serve as a model that countries may want to use as a starting point for negotiations when they are ready to get together; also, that this will probably be a long, drawn out, incremental process. 

The European Union has shown how such a process might proceed. We also have read that there is a "South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation" and that the Prime Minister of India recently suggested that it was time to begin a similar process here. An African Union is also being developed and similar ideas have been worked on in Latin America. However the obstacles have been much more formidable in the developing world. 

Countering these obstacles is the need to combine forces to challenge first world hegemony. Amazingly, this happened in Cancun (WTO talks) earlier this fall, despite powerful divide and conquer tactics by the US. This tells us that forces toward global democracy are becoming stronger, and are, in fact, being accelerated by Bush's unilateralism. 

We had dinner and a long conversation last night with a Mr. Menon, who turned out to be a long-time peace activist, teacher, anthropologist, and now novelist. When he talked about bicycling back and forth across India as a youth, then walking around the world in three years, a bell rang. Last year I'd read the autobiography of Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence Magazine in England, who, as a youth, had left life as a Jain monk in India to walk for world peace. Satish has also given many seminars in the US and elsewhere. Mr. Menon turned out to be none other than Mr. Kumar's companion in his 1960 world walk for nuclear disarmament!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all!

--Dick Burkhart & Mona Lee 
Bike for Global Democracy 
206-851-0027  
dickburkhart@comcast.net