100 km to go...

We've almost made it! According to my calculations (boo boo beep), we should be arriving at the finish line early tomorrow afternoon. Whoa! We are staying at the Krishna Inn in Guruvayoor tonight, a sizable town centered on a large temple. Today was an interesting last full day...we were planning on meeting in the coastal town of Ponanni, where we would try to find a beach to camp on. However, as usual, the two ricskhaws got separated, as we were once again having some fuel-line problems. The national highway is not very well marked, but we managed to stay on it and got into town. Vamanos ended up on a state highway and bypassed our goal altogether. We had some interesting encounters along the way, including a rickshaw full of men who gave us a bottle of brandy and driving through an Indian Communist Party parade, complete with elephants! I've noticed a lot of communist logos (hammer and sickle) around here, which is pretty interesting. There is also a very sizable Muslim population in this state, resulting in beautiful mosques in almost every city we pass. 

Getting to this hotel was quite a trip. Vamanos had gone about 30km the wrong way and we were planning on meeting in a small city where there was a hotel, allegedly. At the city, we stopped at a roundabout to ask people where we could find a good hotel. Just then, Vamanos rolled in behind us. Sometimes, I can't believe our luck in finding each other- running into each other in the middle of a winding city after being separated on the road for hours is pretty amazing!

Will update again tomorrow, hopefully from the finish line! 

Kerala

I really hope our rickshaws make it to Kochi in one piece...the roads got better today but have given us all we can handle. We had our rickshaw checked out today because it was making all kinds of weird noises when turning. We thought that the front wheel was loose, but it turned out that our muffler was banging against the hood of the engine, which the mechanic fixed for 20 rupees. On top of that, our engine keeps sputtering out in the hills and even the cloth of our roof is slowly tearing off. 

Today wasn't too eventful- our rickshaw has a pretty weak gas flow and was stalling out in the mountains, which was a bit un-nerving considering that it was a two-lane highway with big-rigs coming out of the blind corners. We stopped for lunch to let the rickshaw rest a bit, and the waiter cut down coconuts for us with his machete so we could have coconut water. It was a little bland, but I think it makes you live forever or something, so I tried to enjoy it. 

We pretty much lost Vamanos after lunch, and met up with them somehow by using locals' phones to call Gopi, as my phone's battery had died. It is really hard to communicate with people here, as few people speak Hindi. We are staying at the Pearl View Hotel in Thalaserry, less than 300km from Kochi. The hotel is right on the side of a river, which should be a promising view in the morning. The rivers are really beautiful down here, lined on both sides by forests of palm trees and dotted with wooden boats. We had a pretty awesome dinner at the hotel restaurant and plan to get about 200km of travel tomorrow before arriving in Kochi the day after. 

Almost there!

We are only 440km from Kochi! Every day inches me closer to home, where MCAT prep awaits, eww!

We spent two nights in Agonda beach, a small, secluded spot a few km's off the highway via a really crappy road. We were planning on leaving after one night, but it was so inviting and the food was so good that we decided to take a rest day (I'm sure the rickshaws appreciated it also). 

The quality of roads between Goa and Karnataka dropped meteorically. There was one stretch where every few meters the road was totally torn apart, so we were driving on jagged rocks. I'm surprised we haven't popped a tire yet, although I probably just jinxed us. We are now in Mangalore, almost into Kerala state. The plan is to look for a nice beach to camp on today, and if that does not work, stay somewhere around Calicut, which is about 200km from Kochi. We hope to roll into Kochi sometime tomorrow afternoon, which gives us a few days to hopefully explore some sweet backwater lagoons and shop a little. We have heard that the roads ahead of us are pretty bad, so here's to a safe next few days!

Goa!

Goa! reminds me of GOALLLLLLLLL! But anyways, we have made it to the tropical paradise of Goa. Well, Beth's brother has a rented flat on a secluded beach a few hours south of the 'proper' Goa, so we have been there today, relaxing and eating awesome food. The scenery is right out of a Corona commercial, and to top it off, everything is super cheap! We had a huge lunch for 6 for about $20. There are so many amazing oceanside towns here! Our town has a lot of European tourists. I am typing this from an Internet cafe, as I do not have signal on my laptop, but hopefully I can get some sweet beach pictures up soon. We'll get up early to try to catch the sun rise, and spend the afternoon relaxing here before heading out again. We still have about 700km to Cochi, and about 4 days to do it. We didn't have any problems at all today, which was amazing, so if we can keep that up, we shouldn't have too much problem getting into Cochi around the 15th. There is a nice massage parlor here that gives an hour massage for less than $15, so we might indulge in that, as well as hitting up the barber shop and getting this stubble chopped off. This place is pretty awesome!  

Traveling through Maharashtra

The past few days have been quite busy, so it's been hard to update this blog! We have almost crossed the coastal state of Maharashtra. We passed Mumbai without too much problem yesterday, but Vamanos' rickshaw had been breaking down everyday going up hills. Two days ago we rolled them into a police station that pointed us to a repair man up the street. The cops have been pretty friendly for the most part. We usually just roll past them, even when they seem to be indicating for us to stop. Whoops. 

 After Vamanos broke down last night, we decided that we should take both rickshaws to a nice repair shop today and get the royal treatment for our vehicles, which we have pushed pretty hard for the last week. We had a rickshaw diver lead us to a rickshaw specialty shop, and they fitted both 'shaws with new mufflers, changed the oil, and cleaned out the carburetors. It seemed to do the trick, as both worked flawlessly today. Traveling through Maharashtra has been amazing- it is an extremely lush state, and the highway we are on is a mountain one that runs through the jungles of the state. We saw some absolutely picturesque villages against the mountains! Hopefully we can find a place with fast internet soon so pictures can be uploaded. 

 The plan for tomorrow is to head to the beach city of Goa (about 80km away) and hopefully get a relaxing day in the city. Other teams seem to have been able to camp on the beach, so we will be on the lookout for a good spot to camp in the next few days. I've never camped on the beach, and the weather is great right now! :)  

Golden Arches, Crossing States!

Not much time to update today. We are about 50km from Mumbai, and are getting up at 6am to beat the traffic and get through to the south of the city, where we have been told there are some mean mountains. Ate at McDonald's today, and our rickshaw broke down again and we had to roll it to a mechanic's shop off the road. The mechanics have all been really nice to me, and ask for very little money (today's bill was less than $1). Hopefully we can get get a good 8 hours of driving tomorrow to make up for all of the lost time these past few days. Team Yoga Fire from the U.K. helped us out when we broke down on the road and are staying in the same hotel with us. Hopefully will have more time to update (and take a shower) tomorrow!

 

 

Updates Galore!

Wow! So much has happened in the past few days; we have experienced the spectrum of accommodations. After leaving Barmer, Vamanos' rickshaw broke down in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, as always, many people stopped by to help, and we were able to get a mechanic to ride his bike from town to help us out. He told us that his home was down the street, so we were able to push it over there where we spent a good while hanging out with the locals and playing frisbee on the highway. The mechanic took Dan on his motorcycle back to his shop to get a pin that had fallen out of their rickshaw, and after a few hours we were finally on the road again. We made plans to get to the next big city, and of course their rickshaw broke down again, this time in the dark and REALLY in the middle of nowhere in the desert. So we took a look around and found a good patch of sand to pitch our tents, and had a little campfire and sleepover under a million beautiful stars. I gave the mechanic a call and he was nice enough to find us in the dark and fix the rickshaw, but we decided not to risk going further at night and called it a day.

The following day was pretty decent. The highlight was stopping on the road and visiting a very traditional hut complex. As we walked over, a lot of kids gathered to meet us. I spoke with the oldest boy, who could speak Hindi, and he was kind enough to show me his house complex. It was a small enclosure of a tall straw fence with about 5 clay huts with thatched roots. He told me that his family had built the complex about 10 years ago and it took about 5 days to build each hut. It was a very cozy and simple society that they lived in. An elder lady was there, and though she couldn't communicate with us, she made us some amazing chai and we spent some time playing with the dozen or so kids that had showed up. The boy told us that they were a farming community, living off the land. It seemed like everything they needed was grown in the vicinity. The animals lived with them in their complex, and there was a well right outside with water.

At the end of the day, we made it to some crappy hotel in some small city that charged an exorbitant rate that came out to about $2 a person. I'm pretty sure we were the only people there. Our room said "THE DRILLER" on the door, in black marker- this was cause for considerable concern during our stay. We left the following morning in tact, and made it to Baroda the next day. On the way, we got separated in Ahmedabad, which is a considerably large city of 6 million, and over a hundred square miles. We lost the girls' rickshaw at a turn, and waited for them for a while. While we were waiting, a local pulled up on his scooter and talked to us in English. He ended up being the manager of some engineering company and took me on his scooter to look for their rickshaw, while giving me a brief tour of the city. With no luck, we just went on ahead, hoping to meet them along the way somewhere. This was no easy task...the way out of the city took forever, and involved me asking tons of people, who all told us different directions while at the same time asking to take pictures, especially with Dan (a 6'5" white guy calls a lot of attention in India). We ended up on an expressway, which is like a super-highway for 4-wheelers only, and the toll gate signaled us to go back, so we had to actually drive back on the expressway against traffic. Awesome! On the way out of the city, we were stopped by the cops. They asked to see some pollution sticker, which we didn't have, so we played the American tourist card. The police supervisor came, and I told him what we were doing and he totally forgot about the sticker, shook our hands, and told us the directions out of the city. Great success! We ended up meeting the girls in the evening at some ice cream place. The girls decided that we should get a nice place to counteract the previous night, so I asked around and ended up at the nicest hotel in town, a luxury place that charged 5,000 Rupees per room. It was worth it- the rooms were most excellent, and the service was great.

 

This leads us to today, the 5th! We had to get our rickshaws to a welder to fix the frames of our rickshaws, which had both broken. The guy charged us about $3 to weld and install the bars. Awesome! (except one of them broke again later in the day...) We also found out that the guy who had led us to the nice hotel the previous night, and I had chai with him at his motorcycle repair shop for a while. He was really friendly, and told me that he had been doing auto repairs since he was 5. We met to have lunch with a lady that the girls had met while they were waiting for us yesterday. She worked for UNICEF and her job was to support educational programs in northern Gujurat. Although we had a late start, we have made it past Surat to a city called Navsari. We are hoping to get to the Mumbai area tomorrow, which should be interesting. I'm really grateful that we have been able to have some many experiences, some light-hearted and others challenging, and always find local people willing to help us out. I apologize that my accounts have not been very well thought out, but it has been hard to find time to update this blog, between not having time and not having good connection. Thanks for reading! Check out the gallery page for some pics- will upload many more when I get a place with good internet!

 

 

Waiting for the girls on the side of the highway


Getting ready to camp in Rajasthan

 

 

No Sleep Till...Barmer!

Woohoo! Our first day on the road! After hastily painting our rickshaws and throwing everything on top, and after an extremely long wait at the starting line (including a rather non-impressive speech by the maharaja of Jaisalmer), we were finally off!