The end of The Saga

Following on from our previous blog Friday was the final day of driving (we hoped) with a 300 km day or thereabouts. After an earlyish start we proceded to wind our way out of Jodhpur and towards Jaisalmer. No mean feat first thing in the morning as some of the streets were only as wide as the rickshaw plus maybe 3 inches either side.

Things got a little better once we hit the main streets and soon we were proceeding apace with morale high and our beloved sounding excellent. The roads through the desert were spectacular long, fast, sweeping, "Topgear" type roads which provided an excellent backdrop to the daily conversations (which revolved mostly around foods we were looking forward to as well as under-estimated vegetables which should be more highly regarded. The swede for example.). We ploughed on with not even a hint of a problem other than our own eagerness to arrive (and that moment where I nearly drove head on into a bus to avoid a pot hole, sorry chaps!).

Once we arrived in Jaisalmer we found a stunning little desert city/town, very obviously boosted by considerable tourist trade. This was excellent news for us as it meant a plethora of out of season hotels willing to bargain for our business. We consulted "The Book" and came up with a couple of options which although clean enough and very cheap were a little drab for our final nights in India. We were at a loss as to where to go and were beginning to slowly but surely make our way through the local hotels until a friendly passer-by recommended to us a fine hotel by the name of Lal-Garh Palace. They had a lovely room with a huge bed and A/C as well as huge window seats the size of a double bed, not to mention a resturant with the most spectacular views over Jaisalmer and the fort and THE most helpful staff in the world, ever. We sent in the big guns and with a combination of charm, persistance and sledge-hammer bargaining we got a very reasonable price sorted too. A quick unpack and it was time to drop off our super reliable steed and toast our extraordinary abilities, generally strolling about with egos the size of silverback gorillas.

And that was it, the end of our little jaunt. We spent the rest of the day shopping and relaxing, before a well deserved night's sleep.

Of course when I said that was it, that was a slight lie, there was still much showing off to be done and so we rolled up the next morning with all the other teams for a bit of a cruise about town. To this point our rickshaw had done 3024 kms and had not even a nick to the paintwork, but of course that would not do and so one of the other teams kindly obliged by driving into our side scratching up our beautiful machine. No names will be mentioned, but thanks for that tiger girls! Our cruise about town was a somewhat confusing afair with the 70 or so rickshaws generally causing a proper nuisance as they went about, I can't imagine why the local police didn't want us driving about town in them all weekend. Of course a finish line isn't a finish line without a suitably exhuberent party and so it was we found ourselves in the grounds of a nice out of town hotel until the early hours where I think it is safe to say the dancing was terrible but the company was great.

This really has been a fantastic trip for us, we have seen many things across the pleasant/unpleasant spectrum and have met some very nice people along the way. Congratulations to all the other teams who finished, hopefully they got out of the experience as much as we did.

Final distance covered 3030kms in 13days. Anyone who has not yet donated but wishes to hit the donate button on the right of the screen, we still have time to chip it up a bit further. 

Thankyou for reading, I hope to bore you with the stories in the flesh very soon!

Charlie

PS: Walker, cough up!

Pushing on via Pushkar

So at the last count we were settling in to a promising hotel in Jaipur. You will all no doubt be pleased to hear that the hotel lived up to its promise, and proved to be excellent and vermin free, which for me in particular was excellent news!

We have had somewhat of a turn in fate in the last 3 days, brought about by "The Rough Guide to India", an excellent book for those wishing to travel this part of the world (not so good for a holiday in Japan though apparantly). It lists all the main places you would want to visit and has some excellent recommendations on place to stay. The only problem we have found with our little trip is that crossing the bredth of India in an auto-rickshaw is not your typical travellers idea of a good time (pansies). As such we have found ourselves in areas of the country not often frequented by travellers (Bihar) and so not covered in great detail in guide books.

That is all behind us now though! We have left the Golden Triangle (although we missed one of the corners - Delhi - so perhaps it is the Golden Line?) and ventured further into the mighty Rajasthan! It is excellent here, the people are friendly and speak much better English and, crucially, the roads (touch wood) have been very good too. Our fist stop following Jaipur was supposed to be Ajmer, a city about 140kms away. On good roads turbo-speeders like our beloved can hit 50 fully laden and so we decided on a late start to Ajmer allowing us to take in another sight in Jaipur: Jantar Mantar. A park of old astronomical instruments, not so fun you might think but these things were mad! Some were maybe 3 or 4 floors high and so impressivly accurate given their age, it was fascintating to see. Not much can be said for the drive to Ajmer, it was painless and quiet with our fixed exhaust and we reached there easily by late lunch with a decent hotel already picked out of the book. We found said hotel and...it was full, so we went to our second choice and...full. This was not in the plan, I had already picked my lunch order in my head and now we couldnt find a hotel room. We consulted the book, and the map and worked out Pushkar was very nearby and also had some good listings, the plan was set. How glad I was to be! The drive to Pushkar was a treat of a winding hilside road with the only interruption being from a routine police stop which didn't even require a bribe! Immediately I was warming to the place. We arrived and found our hotel, which looked reasonable and had a decent price tag (Rs 900 for all 3 of us - about 14 quid) we unloaded and I was taken to drop the vehicle in the secure parking. A 5 minute off-road drive ensued culminating in my parking in the local farmers cow yard. The cows had big horns and looked fierce enough to ward off any trouble. I returned to the room and then I found the sun terrace! What manner of hotel can afford to give you a sun terrace for less than a fiver a head! But there was more...a pool too. This was all getting a bit much and when I started seeing a white rabbit on the grass I thought maybe I needed some water and a lie down. All these things were real and very much present though, much to my joy! We wandered out into Pushkar, a very religious place with a lovely Sikh temple as well as a massive amount of Hindu temples. We were guided through town by a very friendly gentleman who showed us the temples and the shops and took us down to the lake side (not the shopping centre) to get blessed. I am pretty sure what followed was the worlds greatest blackmail con as we were relieved of some fairly generous donations in return for blessing for our family (Mum, Dad, Liz - I do have a receipt let me know if bad stuff happens and I will get a refund!). Feeling somewhat lighter and to be honest a little miffed we went for a wander followed by a lovely, almost authentic, pizza. We are so cultured.

The next day we were back on the road for our penultimate driving day. A 240ish km trip to Jodhpur. Again the drive was fairly uneventful once we had navigated the strangest diversion in the world. That is until I took the bars. This heralded the return of our nemesis, the pot hole. I hope (REALLY hope) it was an anomoly but there were tons of the little blighters. Not a patch on our first few days but still bad enough. I do hope the exhaust is still in the right place (it isn't, not even a chance!). On arrival we found yet another lovely and cheap hotel and even managed to get up to the fort. It was fascinating to walk about with the excellent audio guide, taking photos and seeing some very impressive exhibitions. For some reason though I just could not get the song "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors out of my head...

Tonight is a night for food and rest and then back on the road for a final blast in Jaisalmer which we are all very excited by. Not long before we are all back with you boring you all to tears with our tales...

Charlie

Days 1 - 3 Shillong to Darjeeling

 

Following an earlyish night on Saturday we all rolled up for the off on Sunday morning and by 12pm we were ready. 1 auto-rickshaw, 3 men and many many kilometres to cover.

By midday all the teams were assembled and made quite a sight as we were sent of in convoy through the town headed by a stunning 40's Jaguar. A police escort pointed us through town and on to the main road North and we were off, left to our own devices. the plan was initially to head to Guwahati which seemed to be about 5 hours away by our cigarette pack calculations. Initially it looked to be a lovely run. Lovely weather, lovely scenery and OKish roads. Then the rain came. And came and came and came. It rained so hard at one point we were driving through water, turned red by the mud, which nearly came up to the bottom of the rickshaw (not nearly as impressive as it seems when you consider this thing has wheels the size of side plates).

We pressed on through and made excellent time, passing a couple of teams who had already broken down. I did feel sorry for them standing in the rain with next to no cover but that wasn't going to get me out of the limited cover to help them, anyway we had places to go! 

At 4pm we were approaching the town and figured as we were making such good time we would get a jump on some of the other teams by cracking on a bit further. Initially we intended headed for the next town along the river that needed crossing (don't ask me what it is called!) but we found ourselves crossing the river and heading north on a road that shall be forever known as 'Mystery Road' since it did not seem to appear on any map that I have looked at. Again we consulted the map and did some calculations and found a town a bit further west called Nalbarri. It was about an hours drive and we had about half an hour of light left and so we figured we would crack on and just do the last few kilometres in the dark - how hard could it be? Well in answer to that let me give you this advice: Unless you own a tank, never, ever drive in India in the dark. With the possible exception of a shark/elephant lovechild it is the scariest thing known to man. Trucks, cars, buses all seem to be driven by maniacs intent solely on blinding you with full beam headlights and then killing you by running you off the road.

Still we made it and were looking forward to a bed and a hot meal. Sadly the hotel we eventually found lacked somewhat in the charm department. And the cleanliness department. and most other departments.It was cheap though, and there, so we took it, electing for an early start the next day (4am) and charge on to Siliguri.

People who know me will know that 4am is not my best time so when I grumpily arose to sit in a confined space with 2 other people for a long time my thoughts were merely centred on not killing anyone which, as we are all still here, I achieved. We also reached Siliguri that day which we though was about 350 kms. Turns out it is well over 400, bad times! The auto performed admirably hardly skipping a beat, as did the drivers. The roads did not play ball though. To say they were rough in patches would be like saying the world's fattest man was a bit soft round the edges; at one point there was a 15 km stretch which was essentially an offroad playground, great if you have suspension, a big engine and good brakes. We had none of these and so we had to make up for it with driving ability. Luckily we have this in spades, and so we made it through unscathed (we don't know how either).

As we neared Siliguri we realised we would not reach there before nightfall. Given the previous day's experiences on a good road at night any sane person would stop and find a bed for the night where they were. It seems we were jaded by the lure of air-con and a clean bathroom, if I were in court my plea would be temporary insanity. As you may have guessed we ended up pushing on past nightfall, again. And it was 'interesting',again. If driving on good roads at night is tough, driving on roads literally made of potholes at night is nigh on impossible. Once again we called on our driving ability. Once again it prevailed. I think in a previous life we were rally drivers. Really good ones too!

We reached Siliguri at around 1830 and found our hotel of choice by 1930. We then universally agreed that the auto deserved some attention and love as a reward so decided to get it checked over. Before we could sort anything we all fell asleep.

We sorted a service first thing this morning and that gave us a free day today and so we have, in true adventuring style come up the hill to look at the pretty scenery and drink tea and eat cake in a posh old hotel while we wait for the rickshaw to be back on the road. Our excuse is that we would be terrible at driving if we were tense and tired and so really it is part of the service for the rickshaw to make sure we are as relaxed as possible. I don't know about the vehicle, but the drivers service is going down a treat!

 

Time for more cake.

 

Charlie

 

PS - The donate button seems to have disaapeared, I will try and restore it but in the meantime the address is [www.justgiving.com/gentsontour](http://www.justgiving.com/gentsontour)

 

 

   

Preparation

First off apologies, it has been a while since my last blog post, but that does mean there is much to tell you about! Firstly, My very generous employers Energyhelpline.com have agreed to sponsor our team by paying for the Rickshaw for the event, which obviously we are incredibly grateful for, as it leaves us with only, food, fuel, repairs and accomodation (in that order) to worry about.

As well as this we are happy to welcome a new addition to the team! This does not mean I am going to have a child, despite my current physical stature, but it does mean we will be joined by our very good friend Tim for the trip. Excellent news as it means less driving, and someone to seperate us when (not if) things come to blows! Good to have you on board mate!

In terms of preparation We all have flights to the start and stuff sorted and I think the boys are well on their way to getting Visas sorted, in fact short of packing and deciding what extras to take we are pretty much there apart from one thing...

The elephant in the room throughout all our preparations which we have desperately tried to ignore is that we are trying to raise money. Illiciting donations is not in any of our natures but I have decided for this once to set my reserve aside for a bit. I/We will never be the people to cajole people out of their last penny, however this is a charity event and if you have a spare pound or 5 we/I would be incredibly grateful if you would support the cause. As I have mentioned earlier the reason I wanted to do this is to raise money as a kind of thankyou to India for putting up with me. I know in a recession pockets are tight and you probably have a thousand people guilting you into donating money that you might or might not have, but in a typical charity cliche, this is a fantastic cause and will really go a long way to helping people less fortunate. If you find you have a bit extra on pay day sling some this way and I might even buy you a drink on my return!

Shameless money requests over I will leave you to the beginning of your weekend.

Charlie