The art of freeways
Namaste dear friends!
Apologies for not sending more frequent SMS updates, but apparently obtaining a cell phone in india is a little like gettiung a visa. I haven't given up yet though!
Anyhow....Day 4(?) finds us having complete any epic distance from downtown Ahmedabad to downtown Surat, pretty much entirely on National HWY 8, since we needed to make up some time from the first 2 days. Asd a 3 tuk convoy, we find ourselves pullinmg over frequently to effect roadside repairs of one sort or another. Grant (canucktuk1) has a carburetor rebuild down to 11 minutes. We think he has a sub 10 time in him, and have taken to standing around and watching in large dense groups, indian style (Tamara apologizes for the previous zombie comment, though the visual is bang on...people come out of nowhere!). Balraj the beaver has been purring like a kitten at 58km per hour today, albeit, a very loud, slow, wind-buffeted one.... The morninmgs are the best time to go through the big cities due to minimal traffic, but is very cold until about 10am, at which point it gets too hot. In terms of scenery, today was an industrial facory tour from hell, which make the tar sands look like a rose garden. We are pretty sure that we will need our lungs aspirated when we get to Goa (a destination we are all anxiously pining for after today). Quite a few exciting traffic scenes today: many fresh accidents on the highways, but no apparent deaths.  Our convoy is getting quite good at ignoring the policemen waving sticks telling us to pull over (probably just looking for a "fine"), and have mastered bypassing the toll booths and ripping down the sometimes 6-lane HWY 8, which we are fairly certain tuktuks are not allowed on, but then again, neither should herds of cows, bikes, camels pulling cars, etc... and they seem to use it at their leisure).  The road signs never cease to entertain with ther butchered translations, though today we were a little unsre about the one that sais "Weak bridge, drive slowly".
The food continues to be incredibly good, even at the sketchiest looking places without menus, thanks to Matt's knowledge of indian dishes, and Ted's "bring us a bunch of food for 8 people" style. We attempted to take a slight break from local fare in ahmedabad by hitting the mcdonald's (yup, they exist even in mostly vegetarian countries!), which turned out to be a fairly bad idea (predictably, i suppose). McMaharaja, anyone? I think it was mutton.
We head for north (but not in, hopefully) Mumbai tomorrow....inshallah.
Cheers,
Marc (aka Captain Oscillator).
