The Rickshawallahs have landed

It's pleaure to see that the first of our intrepid adventurers have landed in India. A quick flight from London to Delhi. Another eventless flight to Guwahati, and then just a matter of taking a cab through to Shillong. What else should happen but a minor accident on route, our explorers help the taxi guy out with some duct tape. 

Finally in shillong, and in the Adventurists HQ we set our eyes upon the magnificient tuk, and the verdict is brilliant. The artist has done a better than expected job of our VW touring machine.

Feast your eyes on the VW bug 


And a quick look into the beast's bowels :)

  

Mapping the route

The daffodils are peeping out in the garden, and it's the first sunny day we have had for ages. Time to get serious and start planning.

On the fundraising side, we have Owais doing the heavy lifting. So, time to get cracking on the route map. We are aiming for an optimistic driving distance of roughly 200 km a day altleast, and 300 on 4 days. The power of Google maps showed us the most quickest route, and we are loosely sticking to the path. (psst.. googlie recons we can do it in 2 days with time for tea to spare) 

So, here is the product of our mouse and keyboards a'clicking. This is our optimised route, that panders through mostly safe countryside. Please be aware, achtung the naxals or dacoits in the northeast corridors, they recently blew up a police convoy with a landmine. Wiki has a brilliant but scary map showing the areas they are active in. [Naxalite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite)

So, considering well heeled advice like the one below 

" Owais Amiri to Ram, Mandar, me

Guys, I've been told Araria is a Naxal infested area. and there are quite a lot of areas in Bihar which must be avoided. This advice coming from a friend born in Bihar and knows Bihar inside out.. Even they don't bother with those areas of Bihar. And they said, don't even bother with Darbhanga.. If someone knows you are foreign, they'd inform the dacoits so that they get a cut.. What do u think guys? Can we afford to leave Ram with the dacoits so that the British govt can bail him out. I know the ind govt won't bother with me. 

The recommended route from Jalpayguri will be siliguri, barso, kishanganj, katihar, barauni to maukama through patna.Its on a national highway and hence safe. "

We present the first draft of out route map, and hope it is helpful. 

Time to scout the route!!

Hey Fellas, I am off to India tomorrow. Although I have ridden the mighty Tuk as a taxi on more than one occasion, I have never actually had a chance to drive one. This may be my chance to get errr.. acquainted with its finer points (If there are any) I will be doing a lot of riding through the country on a motorbike though. And the plan is Cochin -> Bangalore -> Hyderabad -> Delhi. This ain't going to be all biked, but the bit to Hyderabad does look promising with 2 days on the road. I shall be posting my pictures. Please note that I have omitted Goa.. Because mentioning anything remotely linked to the sun can get you killed in London :)  So, Adieu.. we shall meet again! Update: The drivablity is not bad, however, the machine I had constantly pulled to one side. Also there was very very little braking. Grip is non existant and it is ridiculously easy to tip over on fast corners. ohhh and there were also no front brakes :)