Day 13 and 14 or This is the End
In short, we made it. Over 3200km in a rickshaw, brought to an end in the fantastic surroundings of Rajasthan's "Golden City" Jaisalmer. We arrived at midday on Saturday, after an easy drive up from Barmer on some beautiful roads; no more floods, just even more extreme heat. To extend our time in the city, we didn't actually cross the finish until Sunday, a bit of a privilege as some teams had to rely on others to drive out into the desert to tow in their expired machines.
But with our hotel across the road from the finish venue of the Jawahar Niwas Palace, it was easy to pick up on the atmosphere of over 200 people finishing a pretty remarkable two weeks. An arrivals board featured select moments particularly enjoyed by each team - changing a tyre in a tiger reserve was quite familiar, "EXPLOSIONS" a little more confusing.
We traded many such stories over beers and made the most of Jaisalmer's food before the final victory parade on Sunday afternoon. With close to 87 rickshaws driven around the city fort by idiots, the police were unsurprisingly out in force for this event, and predictably most groups got lost, broke down or caused a scene in some way. Returning triumphantly, with a couple of final donuts around the palace grounds, our last task was to return our faithful machine.
It's difficult to describe how this feels. Ours looked after us very well (especially given what we put it through), breaking down very rarely, and having now taken a five hour taxi in a proper car, I can say that a tuk tuk is actually probably less terrifying on Indian roads. But ultimately these things are just slow, sweaty, damp and useless... which is probably why they're so much fun. Though it's hard to class almost wrecking the thing near Bangalore as either a highlight or lowlight, our little spill did at least earn us the award for "Best Manoeuvre" from the organisers. Worth it.
India itself is mad. It's a completely alien shock to the senses in almost every sense of the word; the country's name itself came to be our answer at any time we were confused by something happening. For example, a man reversing his pickup at full tilt three hundred metres down a busy highway because he'd missed the slip road - "India".
The nice thing about this is it's never boring. I don't think I can begin to list everything that we saw or experienced across food, landscapes, buildings, people or our stupid method of transport, so I'll end with three examples we witnessed directly outside our hotel on our last day in Jaisalmer:
A team's arrival at the entrance coincided with the appearance of a four foot cobra. Neither was harmed.
Another team, just about to set off to hand back their rickshaw, was hit head on by a local rickshaw. Brake failure. Most damage that team sustained all trip.
We watched a beautiful sunset from the roof, then had to bail indoors to shelter from a vicious thunderstorm. It lasted less than 45 minutes and the skies then completely cleared.
For the final time, Muppets signing off.
Day 11 or Sweatfest 2k17
Thursday was all about distance, traversing the vast majority of Gujurat past Vadadora and through Ahmedabad, our third and India's sixth largest city. Surprisingly this far north, we were able to find dosas in a truckstop for breakfast by the real highlight was their version of "pakora", essentially a deep fried curry sandwich; Tom has promised to perfect the recipe when he's back in the UK.
I was really keen to do some city driving, so we allotted three hours to get through Ahmedabad and headed in around lunchtime. We had some great conversations with other rickshaw drivers as we picked our way through the interior, yet the real highlight was an elephant. Not in a reserve as you might expect, just tramping through the streets. Our wildlife counter is finally off the mark!
It wasn't as busy as we expected, but what it was was hot. Really hot. When we left we were "viscous" in Tom's words. I only discovered quite what he meant when we reached the hotel and my back was revealed...
The final section of highway up towards Palanpur was equally warm, punctuated by a pure veg lunch and a roadside photo with a bus of schoolkids. We fell slightly short of our final target for the day when we happened upon several kilometres of unexplained standing traffic. Deciding this wasn't for us, we pulled a U-turn through traffic and retired to the inappropriately named Hotel Fourway for a cool down and more pure veg. On the home stretch.
Day 8 or Where we're going, we don't need roads
Leaving our prison cell at the crack of dawn, we ventured out of Udgir early and made 5km of fantastic progress before the accelerator became suddenly and irreversibly stuck on full. Brief analysis led us to determine this was definitely a problem with our accelerator cable, so not the fault of our wizard mechanic and his service the day before, the obvious choice to help solve our new predicament.
Tom finding himself incapacitated in the woods, and Phoebe not wanting to go on her own, we flagged a rickshaw heading back to Udgir for me. I found the mechanic in the gym next to his shop - he was happy to help and we were soon heading back to the stranded three wheeler. It became apparent after the carburettor was stripped twice, that the problem was not the cable, per our expert diagnosis, but a stuck inlet; easily fixed we were back on our way having only lost a few hours.
The day turned out to be another wet and cold one, so it was thick clothing and "waterproofs" when we weren't driving. Despite this, local Maharashtra pakoras and some very nice Gobi Manchurian for lunch ended a morning of serious progress after our breakdown, and we set off buoyed to reach Paithan, a town we believed to have a "luxury" hotel and a nice lake.
Unfortunately, India's roads had other ideas. Presented with two choices of road, we opted for the shorter more direct "state highway", which sounded pretty decent. To say it was the opposite would be an understatement. Starting off poor, to the point we considered turning back, the road got steadily worse in the middle, and became frankly abysmal towards the end. It was so bad, it had evidently claimed the life of at least one car, evidently long abandoned as plants were growing out of the almost closed windows.
After 31km, three hours, a terrifying bridge and spines vibrated to dust, we emerged through our third festival procession back onto the superior national highway just before dusk and bailed into the next lodge we saw. Phoebe's and my room was infested with ants, but the attached restaurant did serve beer and was kind enough to provide torches when the power cut. Joy.
Day 6 or Counting Tigers
Up early, we stormed into the nearby Nalla Malla reserve by mid morning, a place that redefined rainforest for us. We were deluged as we drove up precarious mountain roads, through "death zones" and into a cloud. This proved all too much for our wiper, which eventually gave up twitching at the side of the windscreen and had to be hastily fixed.
The wildlife reserve itself promised a huge variety of animals, announced on billboards throughout the sixty of kilometres through the forest, including; tigers, leopards, porcupines, mongeese, skunks, pangolin, bears, kingfishers, meerkats, deer, otters, various types of gazelle and tarantulas. We saw precisely none of these, but this didn't stop us expecting a mauling at every corner - running out of fuel took on a whole new sense of paranoid urgency.
After our escape, we recuperated with vast quantities of dhal and bindi, served on Visa branded foil paper plates. The main highlight was a huge dam in a massive gorge, situated not far from the popular Indian tourist destination of Srisailam, a very holy site for Hindus. This also marked our departure from Andra Pradesh, crossing into Telangana in the early afternoon.
The drive to the state capital, Hyderabad, was uneventful, the roads quiet and well maintained (something we've learned to very grateful for since). However, on arrival, we determined that three wheelers were banned from the equally pleasant and flat Nehru Outer Ring Road forcing us to head for the Inner Ring Road through the worst traffic that our second biggest city had to offer. Regulation didn't stop us accidentally speeding around 10km of "raised expressway", but a policeman at the next exit did. As has happened a lot, announcing our departure point and eventual destination earned us raised eyebrows and a hasty shooing back down to ground level.
I'd communicated our intention to stop in Hyderabad to some old colleagues, whom we met for dinner at a branch of the famed Paradise biryani. They delighted us with their hospitality, insisting on dish after dish of the spiced rice and a huge variety of sweet desserts. It was a real pleasure to catch up with these guys nearly two years after leaving the company. Sai, Ramesh, Prakash and Anvesh, if you're reading this, thank you so much for your generosity, we really appreciate it - we'll be back for another visit soon!
Apologies for the lack of updates - Andra Pradesh 2G and our phones were not hugely compatible.
Day 4 Part 1 or Crapple Turnover
OK - nobody panic...
We pranged it. Or more accurately, three ruffians on a motorbike torpedoed our rickshaw from a side road and flipped it. I mentally prepared myself for a number of experiences in India; finding myself hanging upside down from the side of an upturned three wheeler chassis was not one of them.
Fortunately, though the perpetrators made off in a hurry, a huge number of friendly people from the local town of Sidlaghatta were on hand to assist us in getting the vehicle upright, while Tom was hastily taken to a clinic with a gash to the head. Despite our initial assumption that our adventure was over, incredibly the rickshaw started without a hitch once back in neutral gear, so Phoebe and I were able to begin the drive to the local mechanic amongst pieces of increasingly damaged roof and windscreen and copious blood from my knees. Having seen some of the wrecks on Indian roads thus far, we were incredibly lucky to only suffer cuts and bruises.
Luck aside, that we've continued as we have is more due to the timely appearance of Vinaya and Manjunath, two Karnataka government officials, who happened to be in the district at the time and saw our crash. After leading us to the mechanics, these two delivered us to the hospital for treatment, and set us up in the home of Manjula, an extremely generous friend and colleague, so we could rest while the rickshaw was fixed, AND then took us in convoy to the next town for dinner later in the evening.
More on what turned out to be an increasingly surreal day in part 2, but really just want to say a special thank you to these guys - absolute heroes the pair of them.
Day 3 Part 1 or How not to be a tourist in Mysore
Our arrival in Mysore was somewhat dampened by the immediate and aggressive arrival of the monsoon, which turned our hotel car park into a lake. Resolving to push all of our activities to the following morning, we ate a range of fried starters at the adjoining restaurant and retired.
We woke promptly at 6am for two hours of early sightseeing. First we took in the Devaraja Urs market (barely open because of the previous night's rain), proceeding to the legendary Mysore Palace (closed until 10am) and then the Jaganmohan Palace (closed until 8am).
With a really good sense of what it would be like to be a proper tourist in Mysore under our belts, we packed up and left for the outskirts of the city to meet my friend Pallavi, wife of Prashanth, a mate of mine from a previous job in the UK. We found the family home far more easily than expected amongst the complicated residential layouts, and were warmly welcomed for tea and treats.
This was a highlight of the trip so far, an absolute pleasure. We're very grateful to the Murthy family for their hospitality, advice and mosquito repellant. After some photos, we ventured on from Mysore, along the Bangalore highway, stopping only for Maddur vada and the briefest of spark plug torture.
Day 1 on the road - No Blame Culture
We've made it as far as Palakkad, the last big town before Coimbatore, the state capital of Tamil Nadu (we think...). Splitting the day between some hairy highway driving out of Kochi, and coasting through a peaceful, rural, mountain route, it feels like we've barely scratched the surface of what India has to offer.
We had our first "breakdown" less than halfway through the days driving. Losing drive in a tiny village, a crowd descended to inform us that the clutch wasn't completely buggered, as I had diagnosed with pessimistic certainty, but that our HT lead had come loose. Worse to come for sure, so we've instilled the no blame culture so noone is ever at fault for anything ever.
Tomorrow we're striking out for Mysore, with a view to a more casual day sightseeing into Bangalore on Wednesday.
Muppets out.
Shout out to Mr Chifamba
Tom avec les français (for the doubters).
Kingfisher ultra, fire eating and anchovy fry before the off
