Team Kiwi Rickshaw

Adrian Bullock
Of Kiwi Rickshaw
On the The Rickshaw Run Spring 09
HIGHLIGHT ON MAP
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no cell phones for your safety

Well it's been a while since the last update... and it's not like I haven't had the time or the content to write!

 

all Roaming sims have been blocked in the regions we have been in... as a security precaution...

 

The elections are on and go for a month, we happen to have gone through a couple of regions where they are voting this week so the whole place has been on high alert. The logic here is that if you block roaming cellphones then you stop the bad people from out of the area from coordinating their efforts to disrupt the elections (or worse). 

 

After 12 hours of driving and around 470km yesterday (and after finding a palace of a hotel at around 9pm last night) we decided to have a sleep in and to do a bunch of chores like washing, getting the Rickshaw serviced (it was running very badly) and trying AGAIN to get a local sim.

 

We have made it as far as Brampure (google maps calls it Berhampur). Some highlights from the last few days:

 

**Police action**

We have been embracing the lack of local observance of traditional road rules. The logic here is that as you approach a line of waiting traffic, your first priority is to see if you really need to stop... a single honk absolves any passing manoeuvre. Yesterday we approach another long line up of traffic queue and decided to follow some of the cars that continued to drive down the right side of the road as there was no traffic coming that way. This is common coming up to train crossings so you drive all the way to the front of the queue and then merge. Again, all is ok as long as you honk your horn. Well on this occasion it was not a train crossing but a police check point. Rebecca was driving (which generally makes most of the locals lose their minds/stare/walk into things etc). As we got to the front a small fat police man in a dazzling army general style uniform gruffed and waved us over to stop. Rebecca pulled up right next to him, he leaned into the rickshaw "AWHH! Where is your driver?!?!". "I'm the driver!" Rebecca responded. "No! Where is your driver" (I'm cracking up in the back seat). It was probably Rebecca's careful parking location, directly blocking traffic in both directions and the loud horns from trucks waiting in both directions that made the policeman give up his line of questioning and wave us on shacking his head.

 

Driving into Brampure last night it was my turn to have a police encounter while driving. It was very dark by this stage and the main street was blocked jam full with traffic. Nothing was moving and some cars infront were doing u turns to go back the way we had come into town. I decided "When in Rome". The correct reversing proceedure in a rickshaw involves operating a level that's part of the gear change using your left foot at a ninety degree angle up by your right knee. It is medically impossible for this westerner to perform the process as prescribed and as my U turn turned into a three point turn I knew I was in trouble. Bikes, cars and people appeared from everywhere and they all started honking. I was so packed in that even once I engaged reverse I couldn't use it because there were people all around me. Just as I was almost around... the police turned up.

 

The first man leaned in an whacked me on the back of the shoulder and started yelling in what I assume was hindi. It sounded a lot like angry. As I turned to look at him he fell back in to the traffic sprawl behind him in shock. Again we profited from having pale skin. Suddenly he was speaking VIP westerner. "Sorry, sorry" He yelled at his fellow officers and suddenly we had a walking police escort. They were even using sticks to clear people out of our way!

 

**Convoy**

We had been travelling for the first five days in convoy with the charming couple of  Chris and Lucy from Team 'Don't pass Goa'. At some point we lost contact with Bluey (our name for their rickshaw) so we pulled into a gas station, filled up our petrol tank and waited for them. a few minutes passed so we turned around and started back tracking to see if we could help out if they had broken down etc...

 

We drove for about 30 minutes before seeing another team in a gas station. We asked them if they had see Bluey and they hadn't so they must have passed right at the start. We started off to try and catch up when Frankie started to run really bad. We managed to limp back to the gas station and after some time diagnosed that our last tank of petrol had a particularly heavy concentration of kerosene (a bit of a hazard in some areas of west bengal where some gas stations can go for days without a petrol delivery)

 

It took 30 minutes to fully drain the tank and get some real petrol into Frankie but by this point our chances of catching bluey were gone. We hope to see them at some point in the rest of the journey but with Sims blocked it will be all down to luck.

 

Well that's probably all the time I have here so I'll sign off and hopefully getting a working SIM soon...

Adrian Bullock

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Rebecca Cooper

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