......and then it rained!

So with a blessing under our belt and Tom at the wheel we were confident we would make the treacherous decent through the mountains to Guwahati by night fall, we had our convoy of three all together we had made it to the top of the mountain ready to head down when .........you guessed it rain that would make Noah sweat. Luckily our windscreen wipers were up to the challenge.... oh no wait that broke after about 2 minutes . So day 1 now consisted of a 5hour deadline to reach the bottom of a mountain in torrential monsoon rain, with only an hours driving practice under our belts , no windscreen wipers or doors , roads erroding under our feet, bridges under water and the knowledge that the same journey had taken 4and a half hours in a nice air conditioned car on a clear day just a few days prior. Still in the spirit of the run we just took every hidden pot hole, crumbling cliff edge and filthy tidal wave from passing trucks in our stride ... or right in the face if you are Camilla.

The rain soon cleared and before long we were safely at the bottom of the mountains our baptism of fire nearly over, when the beauty of the mountains ,lakes and jungle of Shillong , deservingly reffered to by the locals as "the Scotland of the East" parted to reveal the malestrom of Guwahati's busy city streets.  Where dodging mudslides and pot holes became, dodging motorbikes ,cows ,rickshaws ,cars, people...more potholes, lorries on the wrong side of the road, dogs, cyclists all aparantley desperate to occupy the very small amount of space  that our humble rickshaw  was trying to cling too. This is when we discovered the ace up our sleeves our horn, after half an hour of hell Tom was well versed in the Indian language of the horn and despite a few motorcyles falling victim to a member of our convoy ,a  u turn that nearly ended in disaster and some colourful language from Tom  we found a rather plush hotel to gather ourselves for day 2 which would be our first full day of driving.

Shillong, the start line and our mafia friend

Day two at the pimping ground saw By Hook or by Tuk's first official break down and it wasn't even in our Tuk, which was slowly drying safely away in storage. After running through the most likely causes of our stalling and failure to start it was obvious we were out of petrol. Not a single fume left. Leaving Tom to stand guard Camilla and myself hitched a ride back up the hill to grab a jerry can. Crisis diverted, first breakdown solved we continued to hone our driving skillz.

Day three and we were finally able to take our very own Tuk for a spin!!! The excitement could be felt for miles!!!!! It was short lived. Having made it to the bottom of the hill, our Tuk decided that was quite enough for one day and stalled, started up and stalled, started, and stalled and then point blankly refused to move another inch. Pleased with our attempts the previous day at rickshaw maintenance we set about problem solving. We quickly realised we needed help and summoned a passing team to send down the mechanics. Being sat on the side of the road for a while attracted quite a crowd and we were soon surrounded by a hord of school children. This was quite a re-occurance throughout the trip and spectators ranged from policemen, to beggars, children and random men usually with a camera phone.

Meanwhile the mechanics arrived, with no tools!, looked at the Rickshaw, went back up the hill, returned with one tool!, looked at the Rickshaw, went back up the hill, returned....thankfully with a carboreter which was replaced and had our little Tuk running again. Actually much more efficiently than before and we were grateful! We also had our gears altered, so myself and camilla could actually manage to change gear without the need for two hands and the windscreen wiper tightened. We were ready for the off!!!!

Whilst in Shillong we were 'fortunate' to meet a guy called Steve. Steve we discovered after a few hours drinking in the bar was a loan shark. Watching about 3million rupees go flying across the room in a rage, hinted at this and frankly scared the bejesus out of us a little!! But Steve took rather a fancy to us... Tom's fault intirely for being so god damn friendly!!!...and was from then on our go to guy. Or we were his, I'm not sure but he liked the popularity amongst the westerners...culminating in a speach at the start party and we liked the fact that he sourced us a 25litre jerry can. All in all we survived. And finally let out a sigh of relief as we made it into Assam and the relative safety of Guwahati.

THE START LINE!!

Sunday and the big off. Tom had nominated himself (sigh of relief from me and possbly form Camilla as we had seen the hill we had to go down on the way up!!) to drive the first leg. We arrived at the Pimping ground to collect the trusty steed, complete the pimping with the addition of some pretties (someone told me these were funeral flowers??) and kit the dashboard out with a model Ganesh. Which we then refered to as the Gashboard. We started the convoy to the start line, watched Travis of 3men 1Tuk drive over someones leg in the first thirty seconds!!, and with only one hiccup...actually nearly driving past the Shillong Club (official start) we were there. Ready, poised and eager to be on the road, we had a quick hindu blessing which we passed on to our Rickshaw and we were on our way.... Jaisalmer here we come!!

Uttar Pradesh, India

Arrived in Varanasi yesterday in time for lunch - perfect. Pool for us, mechanics for the 'shaws, while Camilla is leaving us for London

Bihar, India

1 camel, 1 drowned train, 2 punctures, 1 night drive, and we found a dominoes

Bihar, India

Day 3 - Tuk tuk booked into the mechanics. Don't touch the sheets in the hotel!

West Bengal, India

ex-wingmirror currently being used as crankshaft bolt. Day 2 complete.

Pimping and Test Driving

Apologies from us all for not keeping you posted on the events in Kolkata to Guwahati and so on but we have been having trouble with our internet access..promise to back date it when we have some more time. We are currently throwing our posessions back in our bags to haul them to the Pinewood Hotel after deciding we should rough it up there, where we are in the mix and able to stumble from the bar as opposed to living it up with the cockroaches down in Police Bazar.

More excitingly we went and registered our team this morning, met a few other teams and went to meet our trusty rickshaw. A slight clitch... suprise suprise...our rickshaw hadn't been pimped as they never recieved our design but thankfully I had remembered to put the original in my bag, so moments later the talented Indian artists set out to re-create our design and so far it looks smashing!! Can't wait to see it finished tomorrow. We set out on our first test drive after some instruction and so far so good. Tom got to be guines pig, Camilla went second and I came through third. Despite meeting a few buses, having diffiulites reversing, thinking the clutch was the brake and vice versa and some inevitable stallings. We all were rather pleased with our efforts. Still I'm not entirely sure what we have let ourselves in for...

More test driving tomorrow, a few alterations and we will all be ready for the big off on Sunday.

Also THANK YOU to everyone who has taken the time to sponsor us recently. Being in India and seeing first hand the conditions people are subjected to really hits home how important sustainable, safe water sources are over here. As a joint effort the Autumn Rickshaw Runner's have raised over £46,000 so far. This is a huge amount and really helps improve people's quality of lives. Thanks again.

Kolkata / Calcutta

We have arrived. Team Hook or by Tuk have safely touched down on Indian soil. Well nearly all of us Camilla has decided to take a litte de-tour through North Korea (as you do?) so if she makes it out alive will be meeting up with us a little later on.

Having had a few hiccups in the last few weeks;

 1) Our driving permits going MIA and the Royal mail blaming Australia post and vice versa. This led me to get very stressed, swear i was going to sit on abeach in Goa instead for a month and rant and scream a little bit. Although Tom would probably tell you i do the latter quite often. All was finally resolved thanks to Rosie and Angela's fantastic help at the AA and also Adam O'Sullivan from one of the other teams (sorry Adam i forget which one right now) who is going to fly them out to India for us. There was a HUGE sigh of relief.

2) Another sigh was uttered on the Thurday prior to our flight out on the Friday morning when our passports with Indian visa's safely inside finally landed through the letter box. I have a rather lot of hate for Australia post right now who seem to do everything so god damn slow.

...but that's all water under the bridge as they say and so we jetted off admist a mix of excitement and apprehension.

 

We spent three nights in Bisbane. Realxing, enjoying the creature comforts and eating an awful lot of food that would pass happily through our digestive system without the need to obliterate it. We then flew to Singapore.. I won't bore you with the details but highlights included, a peanut allegy on the plane that threatened a detour, having our feet nibbled on by those skin eating fish, realising our second flight had been completley changed since we booked it, praying it wasn't going to be Tiger Air (it wasn't!!) and arriving in Kolkata about two hours later than we had expected. But not actually realising it.

 We were met at the airport by a driver from our hotel/ boutique guest house the Bodhi Tree and had our fist glimpse of the Indian roads by night. It seems that red lights count for nothing, as long as you can sound the horn you can drive, the horn gives you right of way over any other traffic, be it truck, animal or pedestrian and one speed bump is never enough. In fact why use one when seven in a row do a far superior job. Oh and these aren't signposted!!! I may be driving out of Shillong with my eyes shut.

After a well earned sleep, we went for a wonder around the city. Mastered the metro, possibly the easiest in the world with one track going north or south. Found that you can buy any sort of clothing item imaginable as long as you don't want a bottle of water with it. One thats not been filled up by a tap and glued shut that is and discovered that Indian Mc Donalds serves cheese burgers purely made of cheese! I would like to point out that we didn't eat there we went in to see what the beef substitute was! but i am actually now quite curious to ty it.

 Anyother teams who may read this and are hitting Kolkata before the 4th. Give us a shout would be good to meet some fellow rickshaw runners.