Day 5 & 6 - Darjeeling

So after a frantic first few days, we left General Rickshaw and Rickshaw Rickshaw Ghali at the station in Silliguri and headed to Darjeeling, tea Mecca, to recharge briefly. Having experienced the mountain roads by jeep we were glad we left General Rickshaw at the bottom as there's no way he would have made it!


The long ascent was well worth it though and we were treated to some simply spectacular views like this one, from our hotel room:

 

We took a trip to the [Happy Valley Tea Estate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Valley_Tea_Estate) to see the tea being picked and processed and sampled a cup of Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (SFTGFOP, a particularly fine grade of tea). Yum.**


Sadly we didn't have longer to explore as we needed to head back down to continue our journey. We got up at 4am to try and catch the sunrise over the Himalayas. As you can see, it was well worth it:


On our return to Silliguri, we were greeted with a most unwelcome sight; our rickshaws were still sat on the platform, the cargo staff having spectacularly failed to do their job. Our own train was due in an hour and the rickshaws should have gone the day before!

What followed was not pretty, but somehow we managed to get the rickshaws on the train in the nick of time. Assisted by about 20 Indian porters.


20 hours on the train gave us plenty of time to sample some of India's intriguing railway food:


Next stop: Kanpur, and the adventure of getting two rickshaws *off *a train bound for Delhi...

Jaisalmer, India

Finally made it to Jaisalmer and crossed the finish line to be greeted by a cold beer and a warm gin and tonic. We've made it through everything India could throw at us. Only a parade, cricket match and finish party left to survive!

Phalodi, India

General Rickshaw's exhaust now held on by blue electrical wire. Only 150km to go. Hope it holds!

Rajasthan, India

Well for a while there General Rickshaw wouldn't go higher than 3rd gear, which was tedious. Then we tried forcing him into 4th and not changing down which was interesting on a pot-holed back road in the dark. Then we tried fixing him. Yes! Option 3 is the correct course of action! Much better!

Jaipur

Our spare petrol tanks, full of petrol, which were stolen from our rickshaws outside the hotel yesterday have mysteriously reappeared this morning! Heading now to Pushkar, a holy town of Hindu pilgrimage and apparently some curious 'special lassi'. The voyage of discovery continues... @

Arrival in Jaipur

Probably our best day's driving yesterday. Good roads, only the one exhaust incident and 7 hours on the road. We find ourselves in Jaipur with it's pink old town, fort and other wholesome stuff. The good day yesterday gives us today to explore the town.

Rajasthan, India

What next? General Rickshaw's exhaust has come loose. Dreadful noise but luckily an easy fix. Finally get to use my 10" crescent wrench. Never leave home without one.

Uttar Pradesh, India

Brand new carburettor, spark plug, cylinder head gasket and exhaust gasket for General Rickshaw. He's running much better now and no longer leaking fuel all over the floor. Always a good sign! High hopes to manage more than an hour without a breakdown. Refreshed after some good South Indian food and more than 4 hours sleep we're setting off for Jaipur.@

Days 2 & 3 - Repairs, repairs and tea

Finding a good Internet connection and the time to use it has proved a challenge (we're mostly driving, eating, sleeping, waiting for General Rickshaw to be repaired or some combination of those). But here's a bit more on what's been happening and some photos.

Talking of repairs, we had our first taste of rickshaw repair, Indian style, when General Rickshaw simply stopped dead about 3 hours into day 2 and in the middle of nowhere. Not a great start! By good fortune a local rickshaw driver happened to be passing and despite a complete English/Hindi communication failure (but lots of arm waving and gesturing), helped tow us to his village and the local mechanic.

In a village that has only seen a couple of white missionaries 20 years ago, the tables were turned and we became the tourist attraction.


**Anthony and Aliisha lap up the paps.**

This continued until we'd had our photos taken with every single person in the village, in every possible combination. Then it was autograph time!

This is a complete carburettor strip-down, Indian village style:


Back out on the road, torrential rain made the driving conditions challenging. Some of the bridge crossings were particularly interesting...


Despite the repairs, General Rickshaw had trouble managing more than an hour without breaking down and even by day 3 we were starting to fall behind. This and the fact that the next state, Bihar, has something of a reputation for machete wielding bandits meant that taking the train through Bihar was the only sensible option.

Sensible maybe, easy definitely not. It took us about 5 hours of negotiation, bureaucracy gymnastics and gallons of sweat to arrange to get the rickshaws onto a parcel carriage on a train to Kanpur, literally the only train available to us for three days.

Here's Rickshaw Rickshaw Ghali and General Rickshaw waiting for their train:

 

We sadly don't have a video of us trying to get them onto the platform over a pedestrian bridge. Take it from us it was ugly.

 

Uttar Pradesh, India

General Rickshaw a very sick rickshaw. Forced to spend miserable night in cockroach infested hotel in Etawah. Stumbled to Agra this morning at 40km/h to get General Rickshaw repaired. Apparently there's a nice building here too which we might go look at while we wait ;-) @