Update to Jan 4th
Hello all,
An update from India
Team rolled Dal checking in .
December 29th 2015
Two Englishmen and an Australian travelled to India yesterday , meeting in Cochin to begin our journey from the south to north of India in a rickshaw.
Now let's give some background to this adventure: in June this year Charlie reads somewhere that this is an actual real thing that people can do, and he asks his cousin Jack if he is at all keen . Jack says "it's a no-brainer". Charlie then makes contact to his long lost Australian pal and in a moment of weakness I also said yes. I didn't think he was serious, turns out he was.
Now we find ourselves 2 days out from probably the stupidest thing any of us have ever done. -to quote the great movie 'the sandlot kids'.
The Australian (myself -Lachlan) arrived into Cochin at 11pm last night , and I had been enjoying my sleep when the second and third members of our team extreme (England1 and England2) arrived into my cosy airport hotel at 5am.
As it turns out it is more efficient to gain hours flying back in time from Melbourne than losing hours flying forward in time from England, as my two teammates are currently passed out at 6.30pm. I on the other hand probably had more hours sleep yesterday than I have had in a day this year (it was a very long December 28 for me).
After haggling for a taxi to take us into our meeting point at Fort Cochin, we found a lovely gentleman in a tuk-tuk looking vehicle and we decided it was probably a good way to see some tuk-tuk action up close.
An hour later we had narrowly avoided a bus, overtaken about 27 motorbikes , been overtaken by about 127 cars and trucks, and had crossed in a ferry to our hotel for the next three nights.
I was intrigued by the language of the horn and how our driver used it to swerve around traffic . From what I deciphered - 2 beeps means I am behind you don't move anywhere or I'll hit you , 3 beeps was to pedestrians saying don't walk or I'll hit you , big longer sounding beeps was to big things saying please don't go or you'll hit me, and at one point I thought a bus was going to hit us and I can't recall hearing any beeps - I'm sure I'll pick up the beep protocol in that situation.
After Arriving to our hotel (air conditioned -yes) we then went down the 200 meters to the Cochin untied club where the 150 odd tuk-Tuks are waiting for their pilots. Ours was easy to spot with our design that English2's sister submitted weeks ago.
There she was - sun glistening off her new paint job - our 3 seat chariot and home for the next 2 weeks.
After a quick orientation on what's-what, what goes where, what might fall off, what to do with our petrol, what not to do with out petrol, how to change a tire by leaning the rickshaw over at certain angles etc etc - we were give the keys.
English1 and English2 were naturals behind the wheel, given that all residents of England drive manuals. The Australian on the other hand felt like he was back in my driving test as a nervous and skinny 18 year old. But I made 4 laps around the block and didn't hit any living thing nor any object. So some confidence can be taken from day1 of test driving. We have 2 days more to praddle about on it.
Now we are heading to a 'meet the teams' session at a restaurant/bar down the road. A nice opportunity to grab my first curry of the trip ,first of many I am sure.
Australian signing off.
30th December
We are settling Into kochi life, after an omelet at our hotel we picked up our rickshaw and went for a spin -a bit more adventurous one this time - to Jew town ,an old Jewish community down the road. We saw some graveyards, bought some baggy white pants and had a bite to eat. The roads were ultra skinny and good practice. In the arvo we did some vehicle pimping , covering it in reflector tape in case we have gotten stuck and need to do some night driving. We are pretty sure you could see our tuktuk from space . Charlie bought a bucket and strapped it to the rickshaw , he says it will be useful , Jack and 1 tend to disagree.
The debrief was at 7.30pm , and the 270 "rickshawians" gathered in a nice garden of a hotel. The boss -Matt - an English guy who runs it, spoke for about 45 minutes. He gave no helpful information, rather useless cliche-ridden advice. I found it very funny. His main advice was To not plan anything , as it's pointless to make plans in India . He said google maps won't work , and if you try then they might take you off a cliff. He said most mechanics are useless, and the record number of breakdowns was over 100. He wasn't instilling much confidence! The advice I did like was that it something goes wrong -chill out, have a cup of tea, talk to some locals and play a bit of cricket. We have a bat and ball ready to go.
For dinner we had pizza and it was one of the best pizzas I've had - in India ! The restaurant was run by an Italian man. More specifically a very camp Italian man who had a thing for Charlie , made worse when Charlie told him his coffee was sexy - an honest mistake he swears. We met some funny Norwegians at the pub after, and it was good to hear that most teams are as unorganised as us.
31st December
One day out from our 14 day 2750km three wheel adventure, and team extreme feel we are kinda a small bit ready to hit the road.
Last minute pimping including drink bottle holders, hand grips for the clutch and a new side view mirror - this one actually included a mirror we could see out of . Jack and lach tried unsuccessfully to lose Charlie's bucket. It's days are numbered. At 2.30pm the rickshaw hierarchy had organised a cricket match against a local Indian school team . Was a a mis-fit rickshaw run team made of people who knew cricket and people who had absolutely no idea like Canadians and Germans and the Dutch. We got walloped. Notable highlights was Cahir rocking back into the back foot like Ponting and punching one to the fence behind square , a low light was a lollie'd Catch that Jack somehow dropped at cover . The sun was definitely in his eyes.
We just had to go back for another Italian-cochin pizza , as we were wary that we might be having curries for breakie lunch and dinner for 5 days until our next touristy area in Goa in 4 days time.
We went for a pre party drink in an amazing hotel called the old habour hotel, which had a Dutch feel to it and looked like it was a set for a Sean Connery 007 film. From there we boarded a boat over to a New Years party in a palace grounds which was organised by rickshaw HQ , an enjoyable night with warm bottled beers ,a huge banquet meal, a marital arts demo,an intensely bad 13 year old dj , and fireworks. Happy new year from the south of India!
1st January 2016
D-Day
Hi folks Jack here, scribbling notes from the comfort of back left on the ricky (thanks lach) en route to Gokarna.
So back to d-day...1st of Jan and feeling fresh(ish) and totally pumped for our first day on the roads. We rose at 8am (a new record for NY day) and made straight for the starting line, greeted by drums, crazy outfits and 100+ rickshaws, pimped up, fueled up and ready to go. Chaz made final checks. I took charge of the go pro.
15 mins later and hot to trot, engines were revving and Lewis Hamilton was up front and jostling for pole position. The kid's a natural. The flag dropped. And we were off. Straight past a dozen, all caught napping and yapping. First port of call, the ferry. The atmos was fun, frenetic and fast paced. We caught the second ferry placing us about 10th/100 and at last Lewis could relax, despite knocking over 3 motorbikes. Ahem.
Our first stint in earnest called for caution and a mantra of slow and steady wins the race, although I'm not sure the Saffas read that memo.
En route to Kozhikode that evening (also known as Calicut) we saw our first elephant (and only one as at the time of writing - 7th Jan), fell in love with smiley Indian children, had our first tea (chai) break and experienced Charlie's first bout of tourettes in the form of "Jack, JACK!). I was driving safely I swear!
Navigating rush hour in the dark for the first time that eve was an experience we certainly won't forget for a while and having found pukka accommodation, we scoffed a top notch meal at paragons restaurant with 3 English lads in the surrounds of more than a 100 local diners.
2nd January
Lach writing
Today we set out from the hotel at 7.40am, we ended up covering 245kms. The Morning peak hour rush was frantic, with Charlie seeing out The tough session like Alistair cook surviving an overcast day 1 at lords with the pitch doing all sorts -cool and calm. During our Morning tea Break we chatted with some school kids about to head into class. I (Lachlan) really want to walk into a classroom and see what it's like - but we were still 45 mins off period 1 so we hit the road . One of the kids was a funny chubby lad named " shibil" who really made us laugh. Humour doesn't need to be in the same language.
After finding a nice calm road I jumped at the chance to drive. Charlie then told me to take a right and I was back on the motorway. The Bugger had tricked me into it -but I managed ok in the mayhem And subsequently have graduated level 2 of rolled dals driving course. Next is city driving with stop and and start clutch work - level 3.
Lunch was in a small city where we arrived around 12.30 and were Hungry. After asking a random man on the street he wobbled his head and directed is to Bombay hotel. After going passed it 3 times we finally saw it and pulled over. This was as authentic as we have done with food to date - we were eating off banana leaves with our fingers. It's one in all in with food so we went for it . It was a delicious mix of sloppy rice and slops of vege curry. Lots of locals there (all staring at us eating) so that's always a good sign we figure.
The afternoon provided the highlight so far. We see a dirt oval in The middle of nowhere with kids playing cricket. England1 is driving and he steers the wagon straight onto the pitch and parks it at deep cover. We then jump out - the kids are in absolute shock - and grab our bat and join in playing . The kids absolutely loved it and in a couple of minutes word had spread and there were 50 kids in the field. After rolling the arm over and a chat to the kids we headed off. Before this Charlie drove the rickshaw through everyone and I got the kids to chase him - making for some really cool footage. When he stopped there were 30 kids in the tuk tuk.
We then left Kerala and entered our second state of Karnataka , and The roads really deteriorated fast . It was like crossing from Victoria into nsw except if the VIC roads were bad and the nsw roads were dirt tracks with intermittent spots of tar. At one point there were building a dual lane bridge. This will be lovely in about 4 years but for now all the traffic drives down a dirt road to the river level and then up out of the valley. I was behind the wheel and saw what was approaching and pulled over without hesitation. This would be level 4 to 5 of rickshaw ability. Charlie steered her down and up- and he did a good job. We hear a story of one teams engine exploding whilst driving out.
The nights accommodation was the best yet , the first one we found , beautiful room , nice meal , air con , warm shower , live Sky cricket England v South Africa on the box , who said this would be tough ?
JANUARY 3rd
7.10 departure made very easy by our hotels location on the outside of mangalore , meaning we missed the hustle and bustle and risky farts from city excitement. Straight onto the open road - day 3 opened very smoothly.
Overnight Charlie had cable Tied his Bucket into a stupid position , on the right of The driver . It has since proved somewhat useful as we can put 2 litre water bottles in it , and I can store my flute. Oh yes - I bought a bamboo flute in Cochin and I am teaching myself it. The music is great but even better is that it really annoys my teammates. I have a 20 minute Max allowance on it before it will get snapped in half.
First mechanical failure occurred today - the horn has karked it. We think it occurred from is yesterday being overly horny , as in the roads were busy so we used a lot of horn. Lots of horn = horn broken .
Never the less we had 100km done before breakie - this was due to amazing clear roads . There were nice dual highways with the dividers in between , and this meant oncoming trucks and busses could not creep over onto our side and cause those moments where are lives flash before our Eyes . Charlie has been known to scream "JACK" very loudly .
This morning we found Tom . Tom is our mascot who now sits on top of our rickshaw. It's a stuffed tiger we got for 1000rupes and it looks magnificent. The locals love it - especially the kids. For lunch we had a mini inflatable bread thing with dip and the usually cup of
Chai . Chai is tea in india. I have white tea and the English have black. After lunch the road hit the coast and ran along an amazing stretch of beach . This Beach wasn't covered in rubbish and it had golden Gold Coast like sand . So we took the opportunity to go for a swim. We ran into a group of Aussie rickshawians - nice people who I actually sat next to on my flight from KL to Cochin.
Somewhere around this point we paid a kid on the side of the road to fix our horn. It was a really simple fix and we can now do it ourselves . I will stand back and watch the English attempt it.
After the swim this day turned into something rather special. We were aiming for a coastal town Called Gokarna in the state of Goa . It would be a nice 80 kms short of our pit stop party the following couple of days.
Everything going swimmingly we decided to get a bit adventurous and leave to main motorway and try some smaller roads along the coast - on the map it looked like we could get a ferry across and keep going up . So the roads had no one on them and it was clearly not a place foreigners go as the locals were looking at us like we were aliens . We climbed this mountain and had a great view over the ocean and back inland. We cruised down in neutral into a tiny port town and parked at the jetty where this ferry was supposed to be . Turned out it was an imaginary ferry - there was a tinny there with a man who rowed passengers over , but getting our tuk tuk over the river was "not possible" . "Not possible , not possible , not possible" (said with accent and Indian head wobble)
This was our first road block of the Ricky run , and we had to back track an hour and a half. At 5pm this was not ideal as The sun switches off at 6.15 . No sun = no fun . Jack was at the wheel and powered us back around onto the main road very nicely and we were off the motorway before dark. We cruised down into Gokarna , a very different feel now . Hippy central. Less infrastructure and more sheds that have been turned into shops and hotels. Lots of tourists around and we see some rickshaw teams.
The Main Street through Gokarna got Thinner and thinner as we go to the beach . It looked like we were at a hill climb in the Tour de France weaving through people - except on flat ground and shops all around. It was now pitch black , but not dangerous to drive in because all Charlie could do in the cockpit was slowly dodge cars and people in alleyways.
We had read about a more private and Less populated beach just south of Gokarna named om Beach. The maps we have saved to our phone seemed to show a road to our goal of Om beach - however it was a dotted road . We pulled around an alleyway corner and the phone had us at the dotted road . It was an even smaller alleyway that could barely fit a tuk tuk . No other option but to go for it so Charlie legged it up the road . It was like a magic Road of daigon alley .
This lead us on a skinny road that climbed high around the beach , we didn't know how high we were until The next day in the sunshine on our way out. The only was down to om Beach and our beach hut was a gravel road with a high gradient. So in the same day we had done motorways and we're now skidding down a walking track .
The prize was worth it - Om beach was a small bunch of huts and bars on a secluded beach. We slept in a shed that night.
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