Agra

Ranjit lied - it lashed down for much of the day. There are times in your life when you.  suddenly realise that the forces of luck, fortune and serendipity are protecting you from the consequences of your own folly. When we checked in to this adventure, all the way back in Gangtok, yer man Matt chucked a folder at us and said 'these are your vehicle documents, they are important, you can go to prison if you haven't got them'.  So we filed them away without looking at them. Then we went to look at the rickshaw park, and picked out from the dozen-or-more unpainted rickshaws one that we liked the look of.  We asked the painter man to do his thing and all was well. Fast forward to today, when passing through Azmenuggardobharatganjpur or something, pausing to let a crowd or possibly a herd across the road, a policeman gets in next to Andrew as he is driving and indicates to drive on and pull in down the road.  Then he asks for the documents.  So we open the folder for the first time and show them, whereupon he walks around to the back of Custard and compares them to the numberplate.  Guess what?  They match.  We didn't realise our fortune for about 3km whence Andrew slowed HP McCustard to a crawl and said "how stupid are we?" We are now in the garden of a very good hotel (thanks Yvonne) drinking Kingfisher, thanking our ministering angels we're not contemplating the inside of some provincial nick, and wondering whether the poor sod we gave a steaming sack of 'emergency laundry' to has collapsed yet. Nothing like 5¤ - reception have arranged for HPC to have her own version of a spa day, having everything checked and greased. We might get the same treatment ourselves tomorrow. We've been to see the fort this afternoon, which is jaw-dropping, and tomorrow we're planning to go to the Taj Mahal for dawn. Another two Kingfishers please!

Kanpur

Arrived in Kanpur with an hour's daylight to spare, after a long day.  A bright start, cheered away from our hotel by two deranged Americans, soon degenerated as the rain came and we had a bit too much help with our route to the main road.  The policeman we asked confirmed that we should go over the bridge and right.  The correct way was under the bridge and left, but he did have a nice big stick. Over an hour and a half later we were off, but soon suffered our first puncture.  Andrew said "something bad" as he detected a subtle change in the Custard's handling.  This was the first of five wheel changes, two punctures, three inner tubes and a new tyre, fitted by three mechanics over a total of two hours with an aggregate of 652 observers.  Total spent on part and labour £25. Andrew's mechanical ability was discovered - he lifted up the tuk while someone changed the wheel. One constant we have noticed over the journey thus far, (and we are up to 1250km ish), is the unwavering disbelief and amusement displayed by the locals when we explain (pointing and waving) what we are doing.  This was best summed up by a toll booth (shack) operative who said "Sikkim. To Jaisalmer. And this is your vehicle.  Then good luck" and shook our hands. Just had a curry for dinner (amazingly) and another beerless night.  Wrong part of town for beer, although the porter cum waiter cum housekeeper has just offered us gin or whisk(e)y.  Having seen the local brands, and the slavering blind folk who drink them, we politely declined. Hoping for Agra tomorrow and a well-deserved service for the magnificent Custard.  I would like to point out that having employed three separate people to bolt the exhaust on properly I took it on myself to do so at the first puncture repair place.  250 km later and solid as a rock.  Yeah baby.  This means that the rattling juddery noise cannot now be explained.

Varanasi II

Having suffered night driving around Patna we were keen not to have to repeat the process in Varanasi.  Something we may not have mentioned before on the blog is that we somehow managed to leave home without guide book or maps.  Adam managed to photocopy some pages from someone's atlas on the morning we left Gangtok, but these showed nothing smaller than 10km across.  So on entering a vast, sprawling, signpostless place like Varanasi we quite literally have no idea whatsoever of the direction in which to head, the names of hotels, the roads they might be on, and so on. This led to all sorts of fun in Patna, including a two-hour search for an airport (because there are hotels near airports, right?) that we didn't find and neither of us thinks exists.  When we pulled up ten minutes into the suburbs of Varanasi, our spirits were sinking.

Then came an angel.  An unlikely angel, in heavy disguise as a rickshaw driver, and working under the assumed name of Vinod, but nevertheless clearly an angel.  He diagnosed the problem in excellent English, told us we wanted to be in an area of the city 7km away, then led us on an exhilarating chase through the city, ending at a very decent hotel within walking distance of the main sights, and he's coming back tomorrow morning to escort us out of the city.  The next rickshaw we took dropped us off outside a bookshop where we found a Lonely Planet guide and a road map!  Luck is with us.  But not right now, because it's raining like a, well like a monsoon, and we're stuck in the religious quarter:  the one that doesn't serve beer. So we've ducked into an internet cafe to read our fellow runners' updates and have a small chuckle at their misfortunes.  Small, because who knows what may come tomorrow?

 

 

Varanasi

Saw our first elephant this morning, coming the wrong way down the road towards us like any other bit of traffic.  We're heading from Patna to Varanasi today, another early start. We found out last night that a 'family' restaurant is one that doesn't serve beer.  After a 13 hour day, that wasn't quite what we had in mind. The hotel was a step up from Bhagalpur, but could not have been a step down and still had windows and a roof. We parked HP out front, then on returning from supper Adam was told to move her to the back.  He was then told to move her back to the front, whereupon he dropped one wheel into a drain. We lifted her out of the drain and went to bed, to be woken at midnight and told to move 10 metres down the street.  Then the man in the next room started a saucepan-throwing competition with his wife. 5am couldn't come soon enough. We found our way onto the right road ok, now we've learnt (and learnt the hard way) the three rules of asking directions: One - ask someone in, or with a vehicle rather than someone who has no shoes, clothes or teeth. Two - do not point in the direction you think it might be and say the place name as you will probably get nodding and smiling, which does not indicate that any useful communication has taken place. Three - ask a minimum of three separate groups or people and take an average. Then check 500m further on. Unbelievable, we have just been stopped at a Police checkpoint and told to remove the 6" by 9" Sikkim flag tied to the roof rack. Of all the traffic regulations being broken, flouted and ignored on all sides, they chose to enforce that one? And just had the exhaust bolted back on for the third time by a mechanic and his fourteen helpers.