More publicity

Got a bit in Motorcycle News web site - possibly in the weeks paper too.

MCN

 

Indian newspaper

One of those moments in life when I had the opportunity to go to a news stand and buy every copy of the morning's paper I was in.  Can anyone translate?


Getting to Kathmandu 1. class.. -ish

Soo.. From Gangtok to Nepal which was our next stop is basicly a jeep to the border (3 hours) and then an overnight-bus to Kathmandu. The problem was though, that since the tailor who made our some suites we ordered wasn't that good at  keeping a time schedule, so instead of cathing a jeep in the morning and go the direct way to the border we ended up doing a detour through Siliguri and from there catch a bus to the border. The trip was only suppose to take an extra hour or 2 so we shouldn't get any problems on cathing the overnight bus to Kathmandu.

BUT.. Since the weather God in Sikkim really likes Danes he made a smaller thunderstorm (ie. ripping up treas, making mudslides, and making more or less impossible for us to reach Siliguri within the planned 4 hours) just to keep us longer in Sikkim. This was rather insane. Everyone stopped driving due to the madness of the weather conditions, except of course, our jeep. Beacuse the driver wanted to get back to Gangtok where he lived, he drove like crazy and even though he barely could see the road and the trees on it due to the rain he just drove on like Michael Shumacher..  But even though our lives had been in danger a couple of dossens of times we reached Siliguri after 6 hours, 2 hours behind schedule. To catch up we hired a private car to get us to the boarder faster and by this we caught up with 1 hour. This and the fact that the rain more or less had stopped we still hoped to make it. The only problem was though that the driver was one big f**kin C*nt and drove us all the way to the boarder instead of stopping at the Indian side to make it possible for us to get stamps out of India, and trough that make it possible to get into Nepal (there is about 1,5km on a bridge between the 2 posts). And of course the rain had started again as soon as we got to Nepal. It costed us almost an hour to find a car to get us back to the Indian side (wierd enough the same car, but another driver.. Oh yeah.. And Karma works... The car got a flat tyre while driving us so he got his punishment for cheating us), get the stamps and hire 2 local guys to let us sit on the back of their bicycles back to Nepal. So there you have it. We sat on the back of a bike from India to Nepal.

When we finally came, drenched, into Nepal and looked for the bus to Kathmandu we realised we were to late. We got a hotel rather easy though, but because of their lack of Western toilets and my lack of squating skills I managed at 2 am to knock of a water tap and basicly waking up Mathias while a vertical water fountain turned our bathroom in to a place where whales would go on vacation. It took an hour to find a guy and get the water shut down... And get the last jelly fish through the drain..

The following morning we got feed up by traveling by roads and got (through coverage of beeing Danish fashion Designers in Nepal to visit a Nepaleese Fashion Magasine runned by the hotel manager at the place we slept at) a plane and, only 4 hours delayed we got to Kathmandu..Sweet, tourist-friendly, good-food, nice-people Kathmandu.. Mhh..

Arrived.. And drunk..

(a blog before this is right now missing, but I can't simply recall what happended so right now you have to whait for Mathias to right it.. )

After our small day of in Darjeeling we first went downhill to get visas done. We came to the conclusion that rickshaws are not ment for downhill driving either, which is why their brakes gets hot after 5 minutes and from there you got youself a nice and scary 1 hour drive downhill without..

After we got the visas we once again started climbing and just as the day before a lot of pushing were nescesary to get to the finish line. But around 1300 Mathias took the last stint and Rebekka crossed the finish line hand in hand with Shercarn (the english guys' rickshaw)

At the hotel we got ALOT of beers and heard some of the stories from some of the other teams and it sounded like we got through without that much struggle. Some of the more exciting stories are told by Sikkim the Head and Moby Rick.

The next couple of days got used on getting some more beers and talking to some of the other teams. One Sunday we had the ":Congratulations.. You made it" Dinner and after that one crazy party.. Half way through we got called to the stage to recieve the reward for the best Pimped Rickshaw.. Ohh Yeeahhh! This just meant people started buying us beer, and we got... Well.. Just for once... Incredible drunk! I got no clue at all how I managed to get myself the 10km from the party back to the hotel, and Mathias woke up the entire hotel when he got back to get them to make him breakfast.. Which he then got... Lovely and nice staff:p

Monday: Hangovers and loads of sleep

Tuesday: The zoo.. Quite awesome.. Lots of read pandas and some cool animals whe never had seen before.. For some reason the zoo claimed they got a Musk Deer which I got quite excited to see (seriously google that animal.. Ot looks SO cool!), but at the end of the zoo no Deers where to be spotted.. We got into to a bit of a bad mood so we descided to get back up by getting some Tibetan food and a beer.. Due to lots of rain and a powercut we descided to stay at the bar a bit longer.. And POP.. We got drunk again..

After this we got Matt drunk (the guy who runs the Rickshaw Run). He then gave us the score board from the Run which we gladly took, packed our stuff and went towards Nepal the following day.