The last few days
The last 2 days have been interesting. I didn't have internet access yesterday, and will just be making the one big update. Because of the problems we had the day before, I decided to see if Rocky would start. Luckily, he did so on the first pull of the handle. It was still early though, so I switched the engine off again. Big mistake, it turned out. When we wanted to get going, we couldn't start him up again. Even a few push starts didn't help. We checked the standard things, but nothing would help. Tony suggested that we had just flooded it, so we gave it 20 minutes, and he roared back into life again.There were just about 30km of the pothole- and truck-infested National Highway 34 to go, and we would be on a nice 4-lane highway. Of course, there wer the occasional smaller stretches where it went through towns and villages, but this didn't really slow us down. This road would go for 150km all the way to Siliguri. After that, we had a few choices, with highway 31 splitting in 2 routes, both going to Guwahati. They both seemed similar in distance, but we had no idea what road would be in the best condition. With still 500+km to go, we really had to get some good roads in order to make it in time.During one of our breaks, RRT suggested that we check in Siliguri if we could take a train to Guwahati, and put the rickshaws on it. We had heard during the training days that it had happened before, but took a lot of time to go through the paperwork. No matter, we would give it a shot anyway, as it could give us a possibility of arriving on saturday, in time for the football match, parade and finish line party.Once we got to the station, Bie and Tony went to check for tickets, while me and Michael waited at the rickshaws. I expected it to last a few hours at least, but in about 1 hour, they were back. 1 hour after that, there was a local train going to Guwahati, and the rickshaws could go on it. We had really wanted the express train, as that arrives around 8 in the morning instead of 11, but it was still a really good opportunity to make up time. We go the rickshaws to the correct platforms by driving them over the pedestrian bridges, and when that was done, Bie and Tony were off for the last of the paperwork. In the meantime, me and Michael got all our bags off the 'shaws, and drained the fuel tanks. We would not be allowed to take any petrol with us. That done, it was time to get tickets for ourselves. Me and Michael went to the ticket office, only to be told that we could not buy A/C tickets there, they had to be bought at the ticket office in a different building. By now, we were under time pressure, as the train would leave in 10 minutes. Once we got to the ticket office in the other building, they told us the train doesn't exist, even though we could see it standing on the platform from there, and the rickshaws were being loaded! After another few minutes, it turned out that there were no A/C cars on that train, only second class. Since our mobile phones were not working at that time, we sprinted back to the others to give them the news, and we decided that we wanted to be on the same train as the rickshaws, so second class it was. We got the tickets with less than 5 minutes to spare, found a wagon that was almost empty at the time, and settled in for the 17-hour ride to Guwahati. It took only a couple of stations for the wagon to fill up completely, but at 23:00, the train had a 4-hour stop in Alipurduar, and pretty much everyone left the train. We took up one bench each, and tried to get as much sleep as we could before the train would start filling up with people again.15 minutes after the train had left from Siliguri, it had started to rain. It seemed we were following a thunderstorm, as it wouldn't let up for hours. I have no idea when it finally ended, but when the train left Alipur Duar at 2:00, it was still going strong. We didn't expect this to be a problem, but despite the train being much younger that we thought it was looking at the worn interiour, none of the windows shut properly, so a lot of water would leak in.We all had an uneasy sleep on the hard benches, but it would have to do. Starting around 6:00, it would fill up again with people, presumably commuters. A few of them spoke English, and after our standard explanation what we were doing, they usually couldn't believe we had come that far in that short a time. We tried inquiring about the state of the road to Shillong, but unfortunatly didn't get far.The train arrived in Guwahati at 11:25. The stop was scheduled to take 15 minutes, but of course took longer. The rickshaws were unloaded after all the stuff they had put on them was taken out, and we took a closer look to check for damage. Apart from a few small tears in the roof, there was none. A man in a white shirt came to us asking for the packing slip, and told us to go to the parcel office to go to the parcel office at platform 8 to get a gate pass. Tony went looking, and we waited, unsure of what happened next. It took a long time for him to get back, and when he was there, it turned out nobody in the station seemed to know where platform 8 was, so it took him a long time to find this. With the gate pass in hand, we were looking for white shirt guy, but he was nowhere to be seen. Since we couldn't move the rickshaws yet because of all the other parcels left on the platform, Bie and Michael went to look for some fuel. They got back pretty quickly, and after fuelling up we decided to just drive to the end of the platform to look for a way out. This turned out to be exactly what we had to do, as there was a ramp there, leading to the road. A security guard asked for our gate pass, and we were out. By this time, it was 15:00. If we had known this was all we had to do after getting the gate pass, we would have been on the road so much quicker!Predictably, Rocky wouldn't be awoken from his sleep easily. On the platform he started immediatly, but once off acted up again, stalling often and refusing to get started again, even with a push. The moment we opened the engine compartment, some Indians came to try and help us by immediatly taking off the spark plug cap and pretty much dissassembling as much as they could using their hands. I know they were trying to be helpful, but we were not amused. Once they were gone, we could take a bit of time to see what was actually going on. Assuming it was flooded again, we waited 15 minutes and tried again. Rocky was finally awake, and we set off for Shillong. This lasted for all of 200 meters, when going up a bridge, he cut out again. RRT hadn't seen this happening, and continued on to the fuel station a bit further to do a proper fill-up. We both had had enough at that point, both just wanting to find a place to stash Rocky, and give up. While we were debating this, I had one more idea to try. There is a fuel switch on the rickshaws that we had never touched yet. There are 3 stands: off, reserve and normal. Reserve takes fuel from the lowest point of the tank, normal from a bit higher. Which was which was nowhere indicated, so we hadn't touched it during the trip. The 2 liters that we had put in should easily have been enough to get it to work on normal, but we tried reserve anyway. Lo and behold, it worked! We set off after RRT, but they were not at the fuel station, so we assumed they were looking for us. We refuelled while keeping an eye on the road for them. The tank was just about full when they passed, and we were reunited once more.We had heard from other teams by then that it had taken some up to 6 hours to do the 100km from Guwahati to Shillong. We wouldn't arrive on saturday it seemed. Trying to do as many kilometers as possible that day, we set off. We hadn't done any climbing with the rickshaw yet, but it worked out pretty well. Due to the big gap between the gears, most of it was at almost full revs in 3rd gear, with our broken exhaust really hurting our ears, but at least we were on the road.The road up to Shillong is currently under construction. It is being expanded from a normal road to a 4-lane highway. There is lots of work yet to do, but there are some beautiful stretches already. 17:30 is normally the time we would like to find a hotel, but we were only 30km from Shillong. No way were we going to stay the night that close to the target. It took us 2 hours to do these last 30km, but we made it! There was a big traffic jam getting into the city, and by this time, our clutch cable was shot. We got honked at a lot that last part, but that is India.Luckily, we hadn't cancelled our hotel reservation in Shillong, and found a hotel quickly. There was no room free for RRT though, but our hotel people found them a room in a different hotel. After a quick shower, we were off to the finish line party, but were informed that we couldn't park out of our hotel. They had arranged a place though, so we took it there, had a great time at the party, and went to sleep.The finish line itself was closed at 18:00, so we couldn't take it in on saturday. This morning, we went to the parking lot, and cursed ourselves as we realised that we should have just taken it to the finish line yesterday, and come back today for the paperwork. Why? Rocky wouldn't start obviously. We tried 3 push starts, before we realised that we were at the top of a hill. Just let it go off that, and after half a minute or so, he fired up again.We are at the finish line now, just done all the paperwork, and are debating what we will do next. We had reservations in the Radisson in Delhi, but cancelled that when we thought we wouldn't make it in time. We have untill wednesday morning 4:30 before our flight back home leaves, so plenty of time to catch up on some sleep and look around a bit.Thinking back to the last 2 weeks, I had a lot of fun, made great friends, but it was very though and frustrating as well. In a few months, those memories will get only better I am sure, but for now I am just glad and amazed that we made it. I love driving a rickshaw, but all the problems we have had have drained me. It's good that I don't have to go back to work immediatly, I still have a few days here in India, and back home as well.Thank you all for reading this. The support we got from you was amazing, and a great help to get us through the rough parts. Thanks also to the other teams that came to us yesterday evening in the finish line party, telling us that they had been reading our blog regularly. It means a lot to me.Bye for now, the next time I do something like this, I will let you know.
