EPIC JOURNEY DAY TWO: "Guys... I'm not feeling too good..."

Jodhpur -> Jaipur Odometer: 636km

TIL: "Popping" into a big town for lunch is easier said than done; The Indian highways are only half done; Rickshaws have minimal suspension; Sometimes you're better off just going outside;

In order to avoid driving at night and the chaotic traffic in these tiny streets, we set off at 7. The roads were petty empty and we had lots of attention from people smiling, waving and even taking photos. We soon got onto the 3 lane highway where the rules of the English motorways simply don't apply: Trucks sit in the middle or outside lanes so you have to overtake them on the inside; no one follows the speed limit; lanes are subjective; Trucks have priority, whether you're alongside them or not; oh and you should expect missing road surfaces, ramps and missing bridges go be around every corner.

We made good progress on the highways, even and hitting 70 kph down hill! We decided to pop into a in on just off the highway for lunch, first getting lost, then getting stuck in mad traffic and finally realising that we had no idea where to find a decent restaurant. We settled on a place with "RESTAURANT" written in giant red letters and a security guard out front.. Pretty safe bet. That said, Matt had already been struck by Delhi Belly, but not so much that he'd go in the hole without a door, "toilet" my arse.

We got to Jaipur, got lost again (not having a map doesn't really help), followed another lovely Indian to our hotel, haggled the price of the room and settled in for a nap. Well Fezz and I did anyway... Matt stayed in the toilet making pretty rough noises.

After we freshened up we went out and met Moona, our Rickshaw driver and tour guide for the evening. We went round the city taking in the beautiful forts and palaces, before being taken to some back street "wholesalers of top quality jewels and fabrics". Yea of course that's why they're so cheap, nothing to do with them being fake or anything..

After that it was up to the swanky restaurant above our hotel (Matt gave the food a miss) and to bed.

EPIC JOURNEY DAY ONE: "Excuse me? Which way is Shillong?"

Jaisalmer -> Jodhpur Distance Travelled: 291km

TIL: The desert can get a bit repetitive; Our rickshaw is pretty fast; You might have to chase them but Australian Pirates settle their debts; Rickshaw drivers are better than you; Indians use the horn instead of indicators;

So this was it, the big day, the first step on the winding road to Shillong. Feeling appropriately hungover we got all our stuff together and got our asses down to the palace. There we exchanged photos and best wishes, had our photo taken on the podium and set off... Only to come to the first roundabout and take a wrong turn. But it was okay we weren't the only ones who didn't have a clue where we were going! Turns out our Mario kart friends were following us thinking we knew where we were going, how foolish of them!

Once we were on the open road tearing through the desert it quickly became apparent that our rickshaw was quicker than most (it was pretty new after all): as we overtook teams that set off before us and soon left the Mario kart behind.

After being on the road for a while, massive grins on our faces from the alien scenery, our booming sound system and the wind in our hair, we caught up with the Australian Pirates. Now we had a debt to settle with these pirates after selling them fuel for their craft on promise of payment at the start line that was not forthcoming. We drew level with their ship and demanded payment on threat of sabotage (they had already heard of our engineering prowess). Alas there was no battle to be had, as the sea dogs opened their coffers and with a demand for change passed their gold out over the open sea. [gallery] Drag and drop images you wish to upload within these gallery tags. [/gallery]

Further down the road, having stopped for a breather, we saw some pirates in distress and, being the gentlemen that we are ko, helped fix their vessel and told them to stay anchored for 15 minutes as everything settled. We travelled onwards and stopped at a roadside cafe for some lunch and to allow the pirates to catch up. While we were sat there we noticed dark clouds and some sort of haze coming down the road we just came. As it got closer we saw it for what it was: a giant wall of sand, hundreds of feet high. It looked like we were in for our second sandstorm. Rickshaws in the distance were giving it all they were worth to beat the sandstorm to shelter, but while we watched they inevitable disappeared into the sand. We battoned down the hatches on our rickshaw, just as the hurricane winds arrived, the sky went dark and we were pelted with sand. We waited out the storm for over an hour and set off when the sand had been replaced by rain, feeling a lot chillier than before.

After a further while on the road it soon became apparent that we weren't going to get to Jodhpur by nightfall. Driving in the dark was not fun. Trucks travelling at 20mph still required overtaking and it was almost impossible to tell whether the opposing traffic was a truck, bus, or two motorbikes carrying a ladder. We pushed on and arrived in Jodhpur, where thankfully they had street lights. We soon realised though that despite having a hotel in mind from our lonely planet guide book, we had absolutely no idea of how to get to it, and no map that showed the towns streets. This is where the friendliness of the Indians comes in handy: when sat in traffic we would ask a rickshaw driver for directions and inevitability thrilled by the fact that we were driving a rickshaw they were always enthusiastic to point us in the right direction! We got closer to the area of the hotel and it didn't take us long to realise that picking a hotel in the old town was probably a bad idea. The roads became narrower and narrower, but the stream of bikes, people and rickshaws coming the other way didn't falter. Despite hitting one bike, knocking over another and running over someone's foot, Matt did a sterling job of keeping his cool and navigating his way through the chaos. We came round one corner and found ourselves in the middle of a festival parade. At this point we'd been going up and down this road for an hour and resigned to taking any hotel that was close. We pulled over and asked a rickshaw driver where the closest hotel was, he said it was back the way we just came but offered to drive our rickshaw there for us. With a sigh of relief we handed over the keys and watched while he put our driving skills to shame, weaving through the streets with ease. It turned out that he was taking us to the hotel that we had earmarked and that we had come to within 20m of before hand. And what a place it was! Truely an oasis in the backstreets, not only was the room good and reasonably priced, but when we went to the rooftop for some food our mouths dropped at the beauty of the view. We could see right across the old town, the tiny streets squeezed between the houses all the way up the side of the hill, bright lights and sounds celebrating the festival that had previously blocked our path. We were so in awe of the place and thrilled to get a good meal that we quickly forgot about the day's troubles, went to bed and prepared for an early start.

DAY 2 to THE DAY BEFORE WE LEFT: "Is this it?"

TIL: The desert is hot; Camels are really tall; food is damn cheap in India; Rickshaws are cool; Sandstorms are a thing; Matt will loose his glasses; Cows ALWAYS have right of way;

The past few days have been manic, so much to tell and so little time to type it up!

Let's start on the train then. 18 hours is a long time but we all managed to get a good few hours sleep so it wasn't so bad. This area of the country is pretty much all desert so there wasn't much to see out the window, but we kept ourselves entertained with a game of "Goat, or far away cow?".

Off the train and straight to Tokyo Palace Hotel. Man was it hot! If we didn't stink beforehand then we definitely did now! The hotel was lovely though, with beautiful carvings apparently typical of the area. We dropped off our bags and headed to the Jawhar Niwas Palace to meet our noble steed.

We arrived and walked though a forest of brightly painted rickshaws, and there she stood, like a gleaming pearl against the obsidian sky... complete with racing stripes, awwwwwh yeaaaaa. " Basic", would probably be the less crude way of describing her. "Comfort" and "Sophistication" words unknown to the designer. The controls at least were simple, so we hung about no longer and took her for a spin, Matt first at the wheel. She was nippy! We all had a few goes round the courtyard of the palace, trying to get our heads around the controls, and concluding that we needed a fair bit more practice before we attempted to drive alongside the chaos in the town.

The next couple of days were spent painting, practising our driving and collecting supplies. One evening we took a look around the fort with its narrow passageways and intricate carvings. Walking through it felt like walking though the set of a movie, and our dinner at the sun set cafe would bring us the weather of one too. We sat on the rooftop in the fading light, enjoying views across the city and the lighting of a far away storm. At least we thought it was far away.. Just after our food arrived the wind suddenly picked up, at which point the waiter shouted "SANDSTORM! INSIDE! INSIDE!". Sand pelted our faces, all light disappeared and we ran for shelter. Inside, all power had gone, so our host lit some candles, sat with us, and with the hospitality and friendliness that most Indians seem to possess: entertained us until we had finished our food and the storm had abated enough to walk back.

Our penultimate day in Jaisalmer had us brave the roads in the town. I went first, managing to get back to the hotel without a scrape, but picking up about 10 shouting kids along the way. Matt and Fezz then went off to pick up some fuel, where they committed the first motoring sin of the trip... Matt put a jerry can down and I asked if it was mixed (2 stroke engines need a petrol oil mixture to lubricate the piston) to which he replies "Mixed?... Shit... Nah I forgot...". Consequences explained (severe indeed), we drained the fuel tank and tried again. Lesson learned... I hope.

That night was the party, to which we turned up in Mario Kart costumes (much to the envy of a team with a Mario kart paint job and no costumes themselves) had a few beers, got set on fire and had a 12 year old drive us back to our hotel for our final night before the adventure really began.

We have a blog!

Well hello everybody! I know we probably should have got this going sooner but hey it just means we’ve skipped out all the boring lead up! So, let’s start with what’s going on: We’re currently in Jaisalmer and will be hitting the road on Monday morning. The plan (if you can call it that) is to go Jodhpr, Jaipur, Agra, staying a night at each. If we find that we’re not driving all day and actually have time to take things in then we’ll look to head north to Nepal. We may well find that we have to absolutely rag it sunrise to sunset to manage that kind of pace, in which case we’ll probably have to get a bit more creative than ‘Hey let’s go to Nepal!’. We’ve got no idea if the internet exists outside Jaisalmer, let alone if we’ll be able to connect to it. So we’ll do daily-ish updates when we can and if you’re reallllly lucky we’ll throw in some pretty pictures of our gorgeous faces.

DAY ONE: How do you say "I'm lost" in Hindi?

TIL (Today I Learned): All airports look the same, even those in India; The smiling guy at the airport/train station is trying to con you; Indian roads don't have lanes, the white lines are just for decoration; Indians like photos with white people; India is hot... like damn hot.

The first part of our trip was an overnight flight from Heathrow to Delhi, which largely went without a hitch aside from the rather drunk, incredibly loud and unbelievably broody lady who felt the need to announce how cute each baby she came across was to the whole of the plane...

When we landed we had a good few hours to kill but figured we'd find the station and all that first, so we found a dodgy looking cab agreed a fare to New Delhi station (not the right one as it turns out) and set off.

Interesting is one way to describe how Indians drive, abstract might be better. You know the white paint on the road that supposedly tells you where to go? Turns out its just for decoration over here, as are the signs reminding you to drive on the left. But our dude seemed to know what he was doing so we figured we were safe-ish. In fact this guy knew what he was doing so much that he knew he was to take us to a ticket office to confirm our train time - How nice of him! We thought it was a bit weird but he'd been so nice beforehand surely he wouldn't be trying to trick us?! We walked into this lovely air conditioned office and were invited to sit down by a trustworthy looking bloke who spoke perfect english. He had a look at our tickets, checked them on the computer and.. "Oh dear. It seems your tickets are not correct." What a distaster! You have to book those tickets months in advance, how on earth were we to get to Jaisalmer?! Low and behold, our trustworthy gentleman had a solution, all we had to do was give him our tickets so he could cancel them and then he would book a minibus to take us down tonight for only 4 times the cost of the tickets - Ciao mothertukker! We're white but we ain't that stupid! We were out of there faster than you can say "always trust the nice guy"!

Thankfully we managed to make our way to a genuine tourist office and they confirmed that everything was alright with our tickets and that the charming man was definitely trying to pull the wool over our eyes! So with a sigh of relief we went off to find if we could find a tour guide for the afternoon!

We had a chat in broken english with our rickshaw driver and he helped us sort out a car that we could keep our bags in and have a brief tour of the city! We only had a few hours to take it all in but man what a place Delhi is! First up was the presidential palace - it's huge, and beautiful to boot! We definitely did not have enough time to take it all in. We hopped out, took a few pictures and did our best to take in the beauty and majesty of the place, while vowing to come back again when we had more time! Next up was the Red Fort, but not before a lap around the India Gate! Another fantastic piece of artwork and engineering it stands alone in a great park and over a road that leads all the way to the presidential palace, striking a very similar image to that of Buckingham Palace! Now I know I said the Presidential Palace was huge, but it's dwarfed by the Red Fort. Again we were pushed for time so we only walked around the outside wall, where you can get a real feeling of how foolish it would be to ever try attacking her! But what we really took away from that visit was what it's like to be white in India! We really attracted a lot of attention from the locals, with us not being able to go 100m without being asked for a photo! We weren't sure whether to feel uncomfortable or like celebrities but the intense heat and need for food quickly moved us on anyway. Next stop - Train Station (Old Delhi... Not New Delhi).

We grabbed an Indian McDonalds (I know, I know but we were wayyy to tired to find anything more interesting!) and hopped onto our train. Or at least what we thought was our train.. It had the right number on it and an Indian train man showed us to our cabin, so we thougthwe must be in the right place. And well how surprised we were! It looked like we had been upgraded to first class! We got comfortable, kicked our shoes off and happily greeted the conductor, who then proceeded to politely inform us that we were on the wrong train and that our train was due to leave in 5 minutes..... PANIC!! We packed up our stuff, ran down the station, franticly looked for our train number and made it with a minute to spare. Once we'd calmed ourselves we sat down, had some water and relaxed.. Now only 18 hours till Jaisalmer, time for some well earned kip!