Day 17 - Run to Shillong
At 12:20 we arrived as team nr. 7 (of 82) in Shillong! We've completed the Rickshaw Run! Yay!
Day 16 - Run to Guwahati
Spent the night at "Hotel Raj" - maybe we were the first customers ever there: everything smelled freshly painted, nobody at the reception, after a while a guy came but he didn't had the keys to the rooms, later a second guy arrived with the keys, didn't knew how much to charge for the night, got a well price though... Guwahati is a nice tow - a bit different then the rest of the cities we've seen in india: rather modern buildings with rotten ones. In the evening we went to the Bihu-Festival, the New Years Event for a religious group here (only in the state of Assam).
Day 15 - Run to Gossaigaon
Spent the night at a trucker's stop - ultracheap but also ultradirty. The price for one person was 50 rupees (0.75 €)!
Day 14 - Run to Islampur
Started very late today, because our Rickshaw was at the mechanics, problems with the front wheel.
Day 13 - Run to Purnea
We've had a rather good journey yesterday, travelled through beautiful Bihar. The most "indian" landscape so far: palms, green wide areas, exotic trees. We can feel that we're about to enter cooler regions, no more 35°C as we've had the last days. Found a nice hotel in Purnea. Experienced some strange sounds coming from the front wheel, so we'll have our Rickshaw inspected and the journey will start a bit later today.
Day 12 - Run to Patna
As soon as we entered the State of Bihar the streets finally got really bad! It was tough for our Rickshaw and tough for the people inside, but we made it to Patna in the dark.
Day 10 - Run to Varanasi
Started at 5:30 am and made it to Varanasi. Will stay here for two nights. Tomorrow we'll take a day off, relax a bit and do some sightseeings like Golden Temple or Ganges River.
Day 9 - Run to Auraiya
Visited the Taj Mahal very early in the morning -it was worth it! Continued on the motorway to catch up some kilometres and ended up in a dark small town named Auriya who never before seem to have dealt with tourists. The whole place smelled of burning evrythings. The Hotel was ok and the people there very friendly.
Day 8 - Run to Agra
Late at night, after an exciting highspeed-drive through the night and city of Agra we stopped at a Hotel... Want to get up at 5 to see Taj Mahal in the morning hours..
Day 8 - Run to Agra, Stop in Jaipur
Visited the Monkey Temple in Jaipur - very impressive and beautiful.
Jan
Maria
Mircea
Ulf
Rickshakalakaboomboom, baby!