Behind Schedule.....

Ok, so we have reached Hyberabad. For those of you who dont know where that is, its sort of south of the middle of India. Population: 5.5 million.

Quick summary, since we are running behind schedule...

Day 1:

Started racing at about 1pm, and promptly drove around the corner to meet a convoy of 6 rickshaws. Starving, we headed to the only food place that was open. Pizza Hut. Oh yes. Then we got back on the road, swerving around motorbikes and trucks left right and center, and headed out of Pondicherry. Lost 2 rickshaws on the way out, oops! And then headed up to a town called Gingee where we stayed the first night. Crazy place, we found a bar in some back alley (the only place that sold booze) and had some drinks in a garage with the locals. Good times! 

Day 2: 

Took a wrong turn, and ended up in the middle of nowhere, going along roads that had more potholes than road. Headed up to Chitoor, and lost the whole convoy, only to miss the destination by 16km. The sun set, and we had to drive back 16km in the dark, which is a nightmarish experience! Every truck, bus, car, and cow-drawn-cart had their highbeams on. But we made it, and found a decent hotel. Met up with the rest of the convoy, and got a massive feast at the hotel restaurant. Chicken Tikka is the favourite so far, but Kounju is the most intriguing (some kind of small bird I think, judging by the cooked result!)

Day 3:

Attempted to drive to Kurnool, but ended up stopping at an amazing restaurant along the way. The sun set again, so we had to pull into a small town (Allagadda) along the way. Found the ONLY hotel in the whole town, which also had a bonus of monkeys hanging around inside and running around the stairwell. Gareth decided he didnt feel good so went to bed at half 7, haha!

Day 4: 

Got up at 6am, and left the town at 6.30am in order to get the most of the daylight. Lost the other rickshaw within 30 seconds of leaving teh hotel (not even sure how that happened!) but then we proceeded to make excellent time. Ended up driving along a massive highway, with buses and trucks and way too much roadworks. Managed a total of 360km, probably the most we will travel in one day. Ended up in Hyderabad, and (after paying a local to drive our rickshaw to a specified destination) we met up with some friends of one of the other teams, who set us up with a place to stay and an amazing dinner. Primo!

Day 5:

That is now. Today. We are still in Hyderabad (at 11am) and are planning on driving around 170km to the next town up north. Probably take 5 or 6 hours, of highway, which is rather draining and not nearly as interesting as the smaller roads, but we need to get there to make up the miles. Argh! Time is very limited! We are in a convoy of 3 rickshaws as of now  (7 of us total).

Anyway, will write more cool stuff when we have more time! 

Happy New Year!

Well, there's less than an hour till we jump in our rickshaw and drive to Shillong!

Needless to say it's been a crazy past couple of days. We had to get up at 5am in London, to catch a flight to Chennai (via Doha in Qatar) arriving at 4am. At this point, and with a few too many free airplane drinks, and not nearly enough sleep, we jumped in a taxi for 3 hours while they (yes, there was two of them!) took turns driving us to our destination. Arriving after the sun had rose, and after a bunch of extra charges and tolls had been demanded from us, we got to our hotel. Which was actually pretty awesome! (Ginger Hotel, very fitting name for our sexy ginger welshman).

From there we slept for a while, then missioned out to find a bite to eat. And then pretty much wandered around Pondicherry (now known as Puducherry) and had a few beers. Not only that, we bought some crazy blue flashing flying toys from some dude on the beach, they're amazing! We had a mini competition with the local kids to see who was the top crazy blue flashing toy launcher. We lost.

Next day (yesterday) we got a tip off from some other adventurists, and ventured down to the port authority (covered with signs saying "NO VISITORS" and "DO NOT ENTER" amongst other things). Ignoring the signs, we saw a rickshaw driving in circles with a bunch of non-indians looking rather bewildered about the whole situation. This was where we found our pimped rickshaw! It was amazing. We'll upload photos when we have a bit more time, but since we now have 45 minutes to get down to the start line and start the race it'll have to wait.

Then there was the great New Years Eve party, which involved cake fights, excessive amounts of kingfisher beer, and then high fiving half the population of Puducherry. Oh, and Gareth patted about 3 random street dogs. Nice.

And that brings us to now. We're off to start the race! Wish us luck!! We're gonna need it.