Days 13 & 14 - Jaisalmer, the finish line

**Jaisalmer** - Finish, party and sacrificial burning of General Rickshaw

The finish line, yeah! Our adoring crowd awaits us.


Team Rickshaw Rickshaw Ghali.


Team General Rickshaw (they couldn't sit on their roof rack as it was held together by gaffer tape).


The Palace Hotel with the algae green pool and warm gin and tonics, nothing but the best for us.  Looks pretty from the outside though.


A lap of honour round Jaisalmer for all the rickshaws who managed to make it to the finish line in the 14 day deadline (30 teams were still M.I.A. when we arrived).


One of the teams running out of petrol on a busy roundabout during the lap of honour!


The final party, (picture taken from the palace roof just before they threatened to stop the party unless we all got down).


The party was fancy dress, but we decided to opt out and go in our normal clothes instead.


We finally made it.  Two weeks of stress, break downs, laughter, more break downs, tears, boutros dancing, breath taking sights, incredible people, not so incredible people and did we mention break downs? 

Was it fun? Sometimes.  Was it stressful? Most of the time.  Did we have an adventure? Definitely.  Would we do it again? Probably not.  But we're really glad we did it and that Aliisha and Anthony of General Rickshaw were there with us through the whole ordeal.

Most importantly, thanks to all you lovely, kind people we managed to reach and exceed our sponsorship target.  Now Mr Frank Water can go and build some new clean water filtration systems in lots of remote Indian villages.   

 

Day 12 - Jodhpur

**Jodhpur - **The Blue City

With General Rickshaw now actually running quite smoothly, Chai instead of break-downs became our reason to stop. We'd find tea stands in even the most isolated of places.


Friendly faces on the road. We'd seen a lot of families on bikes the whole week and had been trying to get a good shot. We drove along with this family for a while and at one point they passed us and gave us this great photo. Not having a cruise control switch on the bike, extra credit to dad for teaching his youngest to do the job.


Jess' caption: Cows were everywhere, on the streets, in the middle of the roads, in people's houses.  As was the evidence of cows...their poo.

Andy's caption: 'Hello, my name is Daisy. Have you considered letting the light of Jesus Christ into your lives? No? Ok well thank you for your time.'


Andy and Anthony take a well earned dip in the nicest hotel we'd stayed in so far.


At last some clues that we were going int he right direction.  One more day of driving (hopefully).


Days 10 & 11 - Jaipur and Pushkar

**Jaipur & Pushkar** - The pink city and the hunt for special lassis

The madness of the pink city.


The fantastic sweets in the famous Lakshmi Misthan Bandar (LMB).


Yet more break downs with Generak Rickshaw, this time the gears; stuck in 3rd.  At this point we were all having the same dream - setting General Rickshaw on fire and dancing around it once we reach Jaisalmer.


We saw some interesting vehicles on the road, and proof that you don't need more than an engine, some wheels and a chair to get around.


Stopping off for a really tasty street food breakfast.


We arrive in Pushkar and some of the local boys decide to hop on for the ride (including the roof of General Rickshaw).


Days 8 & 9 - Agra and even more repairs

**Agra**

We crawled into Agra at 30km/h which was by now General Rickshaws top speed.  All of us pretty fed up by this point and we knew we couldn't go any further with General Rickshaw in his current state.  Thankfully we met a rickshaw driver called Ajay who happened to know a good mechanic.  Fed up with the constant rebuilding we bought a brand new carburettor.


 The rickshaws outside our hotel.


After one entire week, our first real tourism trip. 

Being silly inside Agra Fort.


Being serious outside the Taj Mahal. 


Aliisha's face pretty much sums up all of our moods when General Rickshaw's exhaust decided to fall off on our exit from Agra.  Luckily for us Andy bought a 10inch cresent wrench with him (he doesn't leave home without it).


Day 7 - Kanpur & more repairs

**Kanpur**

After a vein throbbing 15 minutes we finally managed to get the rickshaws off the train at Kanpur.  With General Rickshaw stealing the limelight for the past week Rickshaw Rickshaw Ghali decided to get involved in the action with a broken throttle cable.  Luckily we had a highly trained 10 year old mechanic on hand to help fix the problem.  Note the ingenious use of a large paving slab as the rickshaw jack.


Back on the road and back to the familiar Indian driving experience; if there's a space there's always room for one more vehicle.


Luckily the routes we chose to take were always well sign posted!


A quick re-fuel stop, within minutes we're surrounded by local villagers, we called this a 'town hall meeting'...


...5 minutes later and you can see why, we're in there somewhere right at the back.


Off to Agra.

Day 5 & 6 - Darjeeling

So after a frantic first few days, we left General Rickshaw and Rickshaw Rickshaw Ghali at the station in Silliguri and headed to Darjeeling, tea Mecca, to recharge briefly. Having experienced the mountain roads by jeep we were glad we left General Rickshaw at the bottom as there's no way he would have made it!


The long ascent was well worth it though and we were treated to some simply spectacular views like this one, from our hotel room:

 

We took a trip to the [Happy Valley Tea Estate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Valley_Tea_Estate) to see the tea being picked and processed and sampled a cup of Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (SFTGFOP, a particularly fine grade of tea). Yum.**


Sadly we didn't have longer to explore as we needed to head back down to continue our journey. We got up at 4am to try and catch the sunrise over the Himalayas. As you can see, it was well worth it:


On our return to Silliguri, we were greeted with a most unwelcome sight; our rickshaws were still sat on the platform, the cargo staff having spectacularly failed to do their job. Our own train was due in an hour and the rickshaws should have gone the day before!

What followed was not pretty, but somehow we managed to get the rickshaws on the train in the nick of time. Assisted by about 20 Indian porters.


20 hours on the train gave us plenty of time to sample some of India's intriguing railway food:


Next stop: Kanpur, and the adventure of getting two rickshaws *off *a train bound for Delhi...

Jaisalmer, India

Finally made it to Jaisalmer and crossed the finish line to be greeted by a cold beer and a warm gin and tonic. We've made it through everything India could throw at us. Only a parade, cricket match and finish party left to survive!

Phalodi, India

General Rickshaw's exhaust now held on by blue electrical wire. Only 150km to go. Hope it holds!

Rajasthan, India

Well for a while there General Rickshaw wouldn't go higher than 3rd gear, which was tedious. Then we tried forcing him into 4th and not changing down which was interesting on a pot-holed back road in the dark. Then we tried fixing him. Yes! Option 3 is the correct course of action! Much better!

Jaipur

Our spare petrol tanks, full of petrol, which were stolen from our rickshaws outside the hotel yesterday have mysteriously reappeared this morning! Heading now to Pushkar, a holy town of Hindu pilgrimage and apparently some curious 'special lassi'. The voyage of discovery continues... @