Swinging in hammocks for the pit stop....

Having travelled 2,000 km we retreated to Om beach to take some much needed rest in a hammock and treat the poor tired shaw to a much needed doctors visit. This it transpires was a good call as one of the engines fell out enroute to the beach down an incredibly narrow, steep rocky road. After trying to fix, towing and pushing it took the mechanic only 2 minutes of skillful rope binding to drive the invincible machine back to his workshop!  The people are so amazing here, our poor and very kind mechanic slept in the rickshaws overnight to make sure they didn’t get stolen and only charged a mere 600 (£8) rupees for the service.

 

After a couple of days of showering under palm trees, jumping off rocks into the warm sea and chilling in hammocks we picked up our marginally happier machines we set off on the final stretch to Cochin.

 

 

 

We have now made it to Kerala, which is the first place that we have seen traffic lights where people actually stop. Kerala is surprisingly incredibly hectic, today was probably one of the craziest days we have had. We set off early thinking it was gong to be a breeze but after a bit of bad tinkering (hmm we’re not quite expert mechanics yet), our engine continually over revved, stalled in traffic and sounded like it was going to explode – pretty hair raising on the busy roads! It even continued after we had stopped and taken the keys out which was interesting to say the least.

 

 

We had a very traditional thali for lunch today where we made balls of rice and curry served on a banana leaf with our hands. This afternoon we stopped to check out what was probably the most outrageous lorry crash yet – the driver had managed to drive over a bridge straight into the river; nice.  



 

The end is now in sight; we now have less than 200km left to go to the finish line.

  

 

 

The hills to Goa

Rickshaws certainly aren’t made to climb mountains, our poor little machine has been struggling with the windy hilly roads on route south to Goa and is now sounding quite tired. It transpires as well that it’s not really advisable to take them out at night; you are completely blinded when vehicles come the other way – probably scarier than Mumbai. After driving along for 30 minutes looking for a hotel in the dark we had to resort to staying at the local truckers inn. This is where we learnt that it’s not advisable to leave the door unlocked. We awoke to find a local having a nice kip on our floor, which was hilarious. He looked pretty shocked to see white faces and scurried our rather quickly when we booted him out.

 

 

On route to Goa we happened upon a troop of monkeys coming down a hill so we pulled over to take some photos. On closer look at their industrious and mischievous expressions as they bundled towards us decided it was best to drive on. We weren’t convinced that our ninja skills were going to be quite as good as theirs in battle.  

 

In Candolim in Goa with 1,800km completed we were exhausted so we decided to take a day off driving and disinfect our pretty feral clothes. Goa is not as nice so far in comparison everywhere we’ve been. Far too many tourists, limited local culture, people are definitely not as friendly and western food appears on the menus. The only good thing this place has going for it is the beach and cheap reflexology and auyverdic massages. Off further south today where there it hopefully be less packaged and to find somewhere to nurture our tired shaw before the Kerala home straight. 


 

 

 

Conquering the death roads

Over the past couple of days we have conquered the death roads around Ahmedabad and Mumbai. No road is now too dangerous for the mighty Shaw (well hopefully)!

And so it begins.....

68 teams started the race in on New Year

Jaisalmer

So today, we made it to the starting point having had a night in Jodhpur getting lost in a warren of narrow streets dodging fast moving rickshaws and motorbikes. The value of the horn was well and truly learnt and we had an amazing view of the fort from our balcony.

We arrived in Jaisalmer just in time to prevent the hostel from giving our deluxe room without running water away to fellow rickshaw racers. Apparently it is one of the best rooms in the hostel! 

Bags were dumped and we took ourselves to the starting point to register where our pimped rickshaw was waiting among 68 others (thank you for the cool design Greg – it’s looking good).

Beer in hand, driving lesson number one began, Al of course was a natural and after a couple of goes Emma managed to get the rickshaw running smoothly in second gear.  We had a quick 5 minute tour of the engine, fixed the brakes and requested a spare wheel! Cochin here we come! Hmmm a mere roundabout hurdle is yet to be overcome – tomorrow is another day.

Dehli

Well the adventure began in London when all trains from Clapham were cancelled, neither of us had mobile phone connection and Al was left waiting at Heathrow for over an hour thinking he had been abandoned.  Then all was ok when the mighty upgrade skills kicked in; queue jumping, free champagne, and horizontal beds.So, we are now a mere 1,000km from the starting point in Delhi and still haven’t finalized the plan to get to Jaisalmer. 

Today we met a very cool dude who showed us some Delhi sites and gave us some very good driving advice:

“There are three important things to consider when driving in India, good brakes, a good horn and good luck†then told us not to drive at night because everyone was drunk – including him quite often as it happened. The driving we have witnessed in Dehli has not instilled much confidence in the mission……

 We also heard quite a funny story about how he met his wife, which apparently his father arranged through a friend in the army. As with Hindi tradition, he didn’t get to see his wife prior to or on the wedding day, was barred from going anywhere near her the day after and finally she revealed herself. This was apparently a very unhappy day (although he did say all is well and happy with the Singh family now.) 

Off of to Jodphur tomorrow where we will work out how to get to the start point of the race.

Realnetworks EMEA SaaS send off

A great send off from the Realnetworks EMEA SaaS team. Many thanks for the huge donation and the helmet, which providing i can fit in my rucksack, will come in very useful :-)