After our penultimate day of driving from Mount Abu to Jodhpur yesterday, we have finally made it to this bustling city for our day off with our brakes still intact. We started the yesterday with monkeys and mist and ended the day once again being flagged down by a local family and being invited to lunch. The girls enjoyed giving us mehndi and even invited us to their weddings! It's super hot here but we're ready for our last day of driving on Saturday to Jaisalmer where we can finally relax!
This morning we explored Jodhpur's fort before it got too hot and we're now making the most of the AC in our hotel, which is a beautiful converted Hindu temple, before exploring some spice markets tonight!
After a soggy few days navigating around Mumbai on busy, busy roads, we are well and truly heading towards warmer climes! On our way to Ahmedabad this morning we were flagged down by a bunch of lovely people on a Hindu pilgrimage. They insisted on taking many photos with us and inviting us to breakfast. To top it all off, we even saw our first elephants and our first camels, getting us really excited for our camel trek once we've finished the drive!
We had a bit of a nightmare navigating ourselves round Mumbai. The roads are a maze and largely under construction, which made driving slow. We've also most definitely experienced the monsoon season. Our little rickshaw was almost flooded on occasion when we drove and we got stuck in flood related traffic for a few hours later. We are soaked through but now back on track after a successful day today in which we covered 250 km by lunch so we're now warming up in our hotel in Surat. We're also rather chuffed because we broke down this morning and managed to fix the problem ourselves!
4 more days of driving and a scheduled day off in Jodhpur. We're looking forward to the warmer weather!!!
Day 4: Gokarna - Malvan
Day 5: Malvan - Chiplun
Day 6: Chiplun - Alibag
We have a had a few eventful days of driving, particularly on the way to Malvan. Our map decided that public footpaths qualified as roads so we took our little rickshaw cross country and didn't see civilisation for hours! This was however the most fun we've had yet. The sparse scenery was beautiful and we had a lot of laughs (and on occasion screams) as we tried to navigate ourselves through huge potholes (almost tipped over!) and down super steep hills. The ascents were just as interesting, as the two passengers often had to evacuate the vehicle so that it was light enough to climb the hills! Safe to say we got a lot of exercise this day.
Today has been a rainy drive through the hills but the roads are of better quality. We may be soaked through but we finished driving at around 3pm so we've found ourselves a nice hotel and we've got some time to relax before navigating around Mumbai tomorrow. We're on track with distance and time so we can begin the second leg of the trip and head in land tomorrow!
On a side note, we've also learnt to play our petrol funnel (like a trumpet) which has provided many breaks worth of entertainment!
Instead of venturing into the rainforest we decided to make the most of the nice weather and stick to some beautiful little coast roads. We've ended up in Gokarna after a much more peaceful day of driving. However, we're starting to hear some odd noises coming from the rickshaw so will attempt some mechanics before we leave in the morning! If all goes to plan, we should hit Mumbai by the end of day 6. For now though we'll make the most of arriving in day light and rest our weary limbs on a beach packed with holy cows!
Today was an eventful one! After a 6am start we spent a couple of peaceful hours cruising along the coast road. However, we were soon to hit traffic and potholes galore. On the plus side, we discovered that our rickshaw does indeed survive at 55 kmph. This did unfortunately lead to us mounting a bollard as we tried to sneak past a toll, almost crashing into the back of a car when Emily missed the brakes and a lot of engine cooling, which the locals seemed to mistake for an opportunity to try and repair our seemingly sound rickshaw. We had to reassure them we weren't in fact broken down. What we learnt today: to start our rickshaw we must first blow into an oil covered tube that is found next to the engine. Currently eating Indian pastries in bed ready for another early start tomoz!
