Belinda Chin

Belinda Chin
Of Tuk and Roll
On the The Rickshaw Run Winter 2012
HIGHLIGHT ON MAP
MORE FROM

Boo for Incomplete SMS Updates

So, our trip hasn't been updating correctly through SMS. I'm just going to go ahead and blame Vodafone and give the full update here in additional to today's post.

On day 2, we had to push on in the dark because we had to stop every 10-15 km to blow out the fuel line since there was dirt in the petrol tank. So needless to say, it was slow going all the way from Barmer to Sanchor. In Sanchor, we stopped at a mechanic but he couldn't understand that we wanted him to flush the petrol tank so we ended up going to a hotel to eat at the restaurant there and someone else there showed us where another mechanic was. Kim and I watched the bags while we sent Garrett off with the guy to find the mechanic. The mechanic was eating lunch then so Garrett just came back and had lunch with us. Then we all went back to the mechanic afterwards. We got him to flush the petrol tank and it was 100 rupees which seems to be the standard mechanic rate. At this time the Italian team also ended up there since they had no brakes. We were finally on our way again and were excited when we didn't have to stop after 15 km. We attempted to stop off in Tharad while there was still daylight to find a hotel but they said that we needed to push on to Palanpur and that there wasn't places to stay there. So we continued onwards in the dark again which was a great deal of blind driving since people seem to all drive with their brights on. Our lights also stopped working at some point during that drive so we were just driving with fog lights on. Sadly, that was better than the regular lights. Finally, we ended up in Deesa and pulled off at the first hotel we saw and stayed there. It was a whopping 600 rupees and definltely not the cleanest of rooms but we were so excited we weren't driving anymore that it didn't matter.

On day 3, we drove from Deesa to Vadodara. At some point during the drive, we lost a functioning speedometer and it started making a crazy annoying sound when it wasn't working. We tried to get on the Vadodara Expressway but got turned away since we were in an auto. We ended up taking some backroad way to get to Vadodara. But that was not important enough to stop for! In Vadodara, we unfortunately tried to find a hotel that was in the city center which was a huge mistake. It ended up with me sideswiping a car as we went up a one way street the wrong way. At that point we just started driving around and ended up staying at a super fancy hotel for 7000 rupees a night. It was so ritzy, it was the first hotel we stayed at that had toilet paper and a bathtub and actually hot water instead of lukewarm water. It also included breakfast!

Today, we made the push from Vadodara to Daman. Got into Daman and checked into Hotel Gurukripa along with a bunch of other teams. It's awesome since it has Wifi here so i can do a proper update for once. Today's drive wasn't bad. It was the first time we got into town early enough to unwind. We're planning on making tomorrow a shorter day and relax a bit.Â