Headed out of Ahmedabad later than usual. We planned on cutting directly to Jaisalmer but we ran into another rickshaw at a stepwell on the edge of the city. After swapping some stories we decided we could make it to Udaipur.
Of course, in classic Ben and Dan style, we don't take the highways... we head straight through the mountains. Our rickshaw was a trooper though, not quite giving out on us. We did need to help push it up the hills some though.
We rolled into Udaipur right as the sun was setting and found ourselves a hotel looking over the water at the palace.
We saw the statue of unity which was outrageously impressive and large. They were still constructing the infrastructure around it. Got a good wander in around Ahmedabad as well and got a free dinner from a local restaurant.
Got to Surat today! We feel a little behind since so many teams passed through here a day or so ago, but I have a new phone! Lots of family stuff going on at home that it's important I stay connected for.
Had some weird problems with our accelerator cable today, we "fixed" it but it might resurface.
We've been avoiding driving in major cities, but we had to in Surat. You cease being aware of any individual vehicle and learn to embrace the flow. Still incredibly stressful. Ate a nice dinner and got some good sleep. Time to head north.
Since we missed Elora caves the days before, we planned on getting in at 6am right when it opened. We set off in the dark out of the place we stayed in the night before. It might have been too dark, the road got progressively worse as we continued. Disaster struck when our rickshaw decided it wasn't that into left turns and we went of a cliff!
Thankfully we bailed as it started to slide and the reduced weight of the rickshaw allowed the tree right there to catch it. We grabbed ropes and secured it to a few trees on the other side of the road. After some unsuccessful attempts at hauling it up, we went and fetched some additional manpower.
With a few locals assisting, we got the rickshaw back onto the road and after a quick breakfast headed to the caves. The rickshaw appears to survived unharmed with the exception of a slight lean to the left.
Ellora caves was definitely worth waiting around for. 30+ hand carved temples in the rock. Only downside was the large number of school children who seemed to think we were celebrities. They (and their teachers!) insisted on taking endless amount of selfies. We eventually managed to escape and actually see the caves though.
As we headed in the direction of Surat, we got stuck in traffic. It appeared that many of the tractors we're empty. I ventured forward on foot only to see piles and piles of onions all over the road.
Turns out, I had stumbled upon on onion farmer strike. They were very excited to see me and had me sit down on the ground next to the organizer while he read a speech. After this, many many more selfies of course had to happen. I probably was in over 100 this day alone, not including normal pictures.
We ended the day at a small hotel with a weirdly large portrait of Charlie Chaplain. Basic accommodation and good food, albeit too expensive.
Short day today! Powered up to Aurangabad in the early morning. Once in town we checked out the Bibi Ka Maqbara (The little Taj Mahal). Also saw the Aurangabad Caves, which were really cool. The original plan was to see the Elora caves but they are apparently closed on Tuesdays. Since we decided to hang in Aurangabad for the night, we'll try to see them when they open in the morning.
Highlights of the day included our lunch with a bunch of local med students and me nearly getting swarmed by a horde of lemurs. Don't go climbing with monkeys, it never works out.
We have ambitious plans to head to Surat to see if I can get a phone. For complicated reasons it needs to be a specific kind, which we think we can find there. So, with a long day ahead of us we're getting some rest early.
Another long day! We knocked out 375km today as well as going inside the awesome Gol Gombaz. Unfortunately we spent most of the day on the highway, which is something we'd like to avoid doing in the future. Still, it's a slice of Indian life I never thought I'd experience. We also got chased by 5 people on motorcycles who wanted slefies really badly.
Not quite sure how we ended up in Beed, but it'll do. We found a place with some solidly lukewarm water which is fantastic. I feel so clean right now.
On track for a short day tomorrow with some solid sight seeing!
Today was easily our most difficult day yet. We woke up nice and early in northern Goa and struck off inland. The coast had too much traffic and not enough vistas. We balanced our fuel mix with the help of our new measuring device, a plastic water bottle with a 350ml mark scored on the side.
We hoped that we'd solved our problems for the day, but they were just beginning. The route we chose inland was significantly steeper than our last ride through the mountain range. Our rickshaw wasn't performing as well as we hoped either and it's performance was degrading over the course of trip.
It got so bad that several times we needed to both get out of the rickshaw, start it rolling, then jump in once it had a bit of momentum.
Upon leaving the mountain range, we're feeling good. The rickshaw is still performing poorly, but at least it's flat. However the road we're on is busy and boring so we set off on some roads that look decent on the map.
They were not.
We'd found ourselves in deep sugar cane farming territory. Farms on both sides and truck after cow after truck hauling sugar cane. To top this off, the roads were in some of the worst conditions we'd seen, more pothole than road.
At some point along this bumpy route, my phone decided to go on it's own Indian adventure. It'll be a few days before I can get a new one.
All this while, our rickshaw was getting worse and worse. We developed weird clutching patterns to keep it moving and we could not let the engine stop. We stopped about 70km before our intended destination in the town of mudhol.
We are exhausted and look for the poshest place in the town, only to find some really creepy mansionesque building. We'd have been the only guests, so we noped out hard and found a more normal Indian guest house.
We take apart our carburator in the room, and find a clogged jet. We'd essentially been driving a 1-stroke engine all day! With surprisingly few problems, we got the rickshaw back up and running. We needed that win.
We didn't make it far today, but that's OK. We slept in and had a nice breakfast on the beach. We then spent a decent amount of time hunting down spare clutch & accelerator cables. Dan is convinced they'll go, so better safe than sorry. Finding rickshaw parts is surprisingly difficult for how many you see on the roads in Goa. We wound up bouncing between several places in Palolem beach until we got a definitive location for parts about 60km north.
Our rickshaw is beginning to feel the strain of it's trip. We realized the idle was running way too high and tweaked that down which should help a bit with some of our incredibly inconvenient stalls. The back window is mostly ducktape at this point, the plastic having cracked a bit. We're also having a bit of problem with our engine fumes. Our current theory is that we've mixed the oil and petrol in the wrong ratio (having lost our measuring cup the first day). We actually have a way of measuring oil now though, so this should be easily testable now.
We're in Old Goa now. Not as much old colonial architecture here as I hoped, but the church was a very impressive complex. Gonna get some rest at a lovely little guesthouse on the river. We have a vague plan of heading inland for the next few days which involves covering a decent amount of kilometers.
Day #1 was long to say the least. After my Frankfurt detour I finally arrive in India at around 2am. I slept on the plane but waking up at 2am is never fun no matter the circumstances. Between getting through immigration, waiting for an uber, and the drive itself, I get to Aadya farms, the launch spot, at around 4am. I promptly wake up Dan, which I'm sure was thrilling for him.
At around 6am, Dan gets up for real and shows me how to actually drive a Rickshaw. It's surprisingly intuitive, essentially like riding a motorcycle but with the clutch mechanism entirely in the left hand. We get some dosas for breakfast, I meet a few people and then we are off at around 8am!
We tagged along with a caravan the first day. 5 Rickshaws heading out attempting to get to Hampi. This was of limited success. We didn't make it very far the first day unfortunately, we did about 150km of driving only. We did see some awesome back roads and small towns though. We decided to stay the night in the town of Pavagada which is where we were as it was starting to get dark. The hotel we stayed it was a bit on the grimy side: no warm water, no wi-fi, no bedsheets without holes. It was great to sleep though. This day was grueling for me, the lack of sleep was making me cranky and it was good to rest.
Everything about getting to India that could go wrong, did. Despite flying out on Thursday, I'm still not there!
India rejected my passport because I didn't have two blank pages in it. Of course, they didn't reject me until I had already flown across the Atlantic from San Francisco. I got told I'd been upgraded to business class, I was in line to board the plane... and they would not let me!
Of course this had to happen on a Friday during holiday season. I wound up spending the weekend in Frankfurt/Hamburg. Thankfully, there are much worse places I could have been stuck.
Today was hectic and an emotional rollercoaster! I was the first person in line at the US consulate so that I could request an emergency passport. This actually went pretty smoothly, they took pity on the person who was clearly under dressed for the German winter. I was feeling pretty optimistic at this point, but my passport that was linked to the e-visa issued by India was now invalid. The US Consulate said this would be fine, but I wasn't taking any chances at this point. I called the Indian passport agency and they told me, quite rudely, that not only would this not work, I can't even get an e-visa (which is the quickest way of getting a visa) with an emergency passport!
I ran over to the India Consulate, who after some cajoling was actually pretty helpful. They worked with me on getting a normal visa despite the fact that they were closing. I wound up literally running between different buildings in Frankfurt moving paperwork and convincing people to not go home until I got issued a visa. I somehow managed to pull it off, much to my amazement. I can only describe how I'm feeling now as some sort of beurocracy high.
Thankfully my team mate Dan made it to India and has been getting stuff prepared. I'm just gonna swoop in right before the race and not to any of the work. Sad to be missing New Years Eve with the Rickshaw crews, but I'll at least make it before the race starts!
