Delhi, India
We made it to Delhi. Traversed thousands of kilometres rickless and felt the withdrawals acutely. Left Bede and Harriet this morning and the se ** some text is missing **
West Bengal, India
It's 9:30pm. We're around 700+km away from the finish line and the deadline to make the parade is 11am tomorrow. We've resigned ourselves to the reality we'll miss it, which was summed up succinctly by Matt Lockie when he announced to the team huddle at the petrol station an hour ago, "F*ck the parade", which Harry and Jono then promptly turned into a gangsta rap. We lost so much of today when our mountain road out of Darjeeling got blocked by an enormous digger and too many boulders to count. We had to back track nearly an hour and we reached Siliguri in darkness. We are throwing caution to the wind and are about to embark on an all night escapade of balls to walls driving highways in the dark to get to Shilong in time for the party. Kiwi 'can do-ism' is at an all time peak high. We've stocked up on litres of fuel and oil, bought snacks to last a lifetime, sorted out shaw interiors for sleep shift optimability, tyres have air, spark plugs have been tinkered with and we're on the road. We will update progress through the night.@
West Bengal, India
4am, about to go and watch the sun rise at Tiger Hill. Everyone is wearing just about every layer they brought with them as the cold is arctic. We've compromised on only a half day in Darjeeling of exploring before hitting the road again. Still don't think we'll make chaparty time though
West Bengal, India
We made it over the mountain. The drive through the villages was utterly magic. The people are so happy and generous with their smiles and when we reunited with Stray at the end of a long day it was pure and unadulterated joy. We love it here so much we're thinking of ceding the deadline in order to savour Darjeeling for a day. Ka kite.
West Bengal, India
What a day thus far. Both The Voyeurists and Entouraj broke down at about 9:00am. At first we thought dodgy petrol had been given to us but it turned out to be a spark plug issue for Entouraj and a clutch tuning problem for The Voyeurists. The Stray boys were leading the pack and were at least 20km into the distance before they realised they'd lost us. Then Matt Lockie decided to take on a nail with his tyre and Entouraj got a flattie so now it's 2:30pm and what was going to be a cruisy stint to Darjeeling by the early afternoon is now looking like another four hours possibly of steep mountain terrain to get to Darjeeling. We've been warned by locals that one road is too steep to traverse in a shaw and from the fractured phone conversation with Jono earlier, it sounds like Stray weren't given such sage advice so it's anyone's guess if we'll all make it there in one piece tonight. Great day of some overdue and inevitable obstacles. We're just being awesome about it.
West Bengal, India
Day 12 and we just left Raniganj, headed for Darjeeling and some seriously good tea. Yesterday was our hump day. 16 hours on the road not helped by the fact that we lost Stray for a good half hour at the end of the day when we were already losing light and struggling on some shitty roads. We assumed they'd got stuck behind a truck so we were a little frazzled when they finally caught up and it turns out they'd valiantly tracked back a few hundred meters when they saw a small, technology-esque black object fall out of the back of The Voyeurists shaw up ahead. Turned out to be my empty Polaroid film cannister. Sorry boys! Then Bede got muscled off the road by an overtaking d-bag and we ended up having to do an hour or so of near-blind night driving to get to a place big enough to house our forlorn selves. Two days to go...
, Ganga
We just crossed the Ganges. Jonny and Jared jumped out to get a wide shot on the other side and got told off by station guards wielding guns. So no wide shot then.
Orissa, India
3am start = many a grumpy face. Especially on a few of us who retired late as we finally had good mobile modem in Barang so we made the most of it by uploading photos and videos to our facebook page and website. However, driving through the dark this morning into one of the most beautiful Indian sunrises and all was beyond forgiven. This country knocks your jandals off with its vistas. We're really getting to see the most amazing variety of landscapes and so many of them remind us of Australia and New Zealand. We're heading for Medinipur for a pit stop and really hoping we can do a huge day and end up somewhere like Joydev Kenduli for the night. 500km here we come.
Orissa, India
We pretty much blew all the plays today, the last one of which was the realisation that the sun was setting on the wrong side of the rick. Upshot being that we went backwards. Morale is low. Money was shelled out for Dominos Pizza to boost it and we've made the call to resign for the night, get up at 3am and nail 300km before lunch tomorrow. Balls to walls.@
Orissa, India
Day 9 - After our regroup last night we decided we should spend more time seeing the sights along the way. So we set off from our beautiful beach spot Golpalpur this morning with the Khandagari Caves in sight. Turns out the Stray Boys can't read beyond a 15mm radius on a map so while it looked like the left, pink, scenic route was the one to follow, on greater inspection it would have been wiser to take the right fork that led to, you know, Khandagari. So we missed that play and now we're flagging cultural and heading back on the highway. We're aiming to hit Bhadrak tonight, which will mean another 300+ kilometre day. Suffering from mid-trip rickshaw cabin fever so we're planning a little musical chairs team swap to jazz things up.
