Jaisalmer, India

And we made it! Joint 31st place with Nip N Tuk, what a fantastic couple of weeks.

Final night on the road

After a couple of days travelling along the smooth dual carriageways of the NH2 we decided to rough it and take the more unexplored route through Sambhar Salt Lake, Nagaur and Pholodi. 

We rock n rolled along a rather bumpy road to Sambhar Salt Lake where we took our little tuk-buggies 3x2íng across the pans. Some locals on their motorbike kindly lead us through the lake and pointed us in the right direction to Kucheman where we were without a doubt the only gringos in town.

Kucheman boasts a rather impressive fort which we toured in the morning before heading on our merry way to Nagaur. The road, once again, was rather rickety. So much so that Nip n Tuk lost a nut... to the sole bolt holding their exhaustpipe in place. Oh dear.

After some thoughtful inspection Steve and Dave repurposed some "spare" bolts and we rocked on to the city for the night, where we were once again, the only gringos in town. Local children ran after our tuk tuk for a glimpse of us before running away.

Today we took our time along the desert road to Phalodi. An Indian springbok crossed our path.. surely a sign that the boks are doing well in their rugby campaign.

Tomorrow we push on to the Palace for some G&Ts. Hoorah. 

Naguar, India

First unscheduled road side stop, Nip 'n Tuk lost a nut to the bolt holding the exhaust on the rickshaw. Steve & Dave are repurposing a nut from elswhere on the shaw... Looks like the roof racks may be a fit.

Sambhar Lake, India

Dune buggied our tuks through the salt pans. Awesome.

Achhenra, India

and so the desert starts. It is 9am and sizzling already.

Cow-Five

The new game on the road to break some of the manotomy of NH2 is cow-five.

Score as many points as possible by slapping cows while in a moving rickshaw!

Uttar Pradesh, India

2000km travelled over 7 days. Tuks still powering along nicely. Still en-route to Agra, heading to the Taj for sunset.

Cruisin' to Kanpur

After the rickety, pothole-ridden, dirt roads of Assam, we cruised today along a proper dual carriageway at a whopping 60km/h - our rickshaws cruising after the service we had done in Varanasi.

 Unfortuantely, Dave and Steve didn't quite get the fuel calculations correct and we ran our of fuel, forcing us to hobble to the next petrol statation (which luckily had petrol).

Bandit road to Patna

Patna and the road of the bandits

And we are famous... in Purnia that is. This morning, the local television crew filmed us loading up our rickshaws and riding off into the rising sun. We did not have any time to dwell on our rise to fame... we were in bandit badlands and all business as we gunned our engines out of town.

The Gerries caught up with us on the road. We all filled up our rickshaws at the outkirts of bandit highway and decided to drive in convoy through the 50km strip of bandit territory.

We had not even gone 3 km before our first (and only) bandit pulled up... the petrol attendant had jumped on a mate

Varanasi, India

Overtaking an elephant on the national highway today was by far one of the craziest things I have ever had to do :) We arrived safely in Varanasi and immediately hit the pool with a beer. Doing a bit of sightseeing tomorrow as well as a little maintenance on our tuk... the rattles are becomming louder and louder as we plod across India so we decided to check it out before more things fall off.