End of Day 12 by Tricia

End of Day 12

TLDR version. Tuk-Tuks parked, keys returned. Can't believe all that is left is to travel home.

Got up with the intent to meet in the lobby at 6:30 and be on the road by 7:00. We had between 80k and 100k to go. Straight up a mountain and had been told we should give ourselves a day to do it. We decided to pack nothing but a change of clothes to keep the weight in the tuk-tuks down. So loading was super quick. Things were going well and we were on time but Pacman wouldn't start. Tried to bump start and had no luck. After some fiddling with the idle, we got it going.

The drive up was absolutely stunning. Such beautiful scenery. We once again reached a very different part of the country. A lot more Western-style clothing, things that looked like butcher shops, and we even saw a cattle abattoir. Not what we expected.

I had not intended to drive today. There are few things I hate more than curvy hills on a motorcycle. However, the roads were in great condition, so at the halfway mark I took the handlebars. Quick hint for visiting India, if you want to guarantee that a beautiful paved road will turn into a pothole obstacle course of death, just let me drive. Seriously this entire trip as soon as I took the wheel the roads went to shit. So after about 20k of driving on really crappy potholed roads I told Andy I was finished and gave the handlebars back to him. Within two kilometers we were once again on a paved divided highway. At that point I just gave up.

Pacman had a serious acceleration problem, and went up a lot of hills in second gear. But as we got closer and closer to Shillong, we started to believe we were actually going to make it.

When we saw a "Welcome to Shillong" sign, we all pulled over, had a cup of chai, and took team photos beside the sign.

After that we headed for the finish line. It was probably another 10k to 15k from the Welcome to Shillong sign. We arrived way quicker than expected. It took us about five hours. When we arrived, we were shocked to find out that we'd finished fifth, sixth, and seventh out of something like 80 teams. We actually thought we were in the middle of the pack. That being said, the finish party is tomorrow night and we will all be on planes back to the US and England by then. So I suspect a lot of teams consider themselves having an extra day.

We kind of played around in the parking lot, took pictures at the finish line, and talked to some teams that finished at the same time we did. We made some great new friends from the UK and Montana. Hopefully we will see them on another adventure.

Honestly, at the end emotions were high. I tend to be quite emotional at the end of the vacation, and an adventure such as this was difficult to leave. Andy felt a bit it loose ends. We hit a hotel bar with a couple of the other teams. Had a few beers, had a late lunch, and then headed for our hotel. After we got checked in we took a little wander around the neighborhood and ate some local food, which was very different than anything we'd had before. One of the surprises on this trip, was the lack of variety in the food. Pretty much every menu was the same.

I'm definitely going to miss our tuk-tuk. What a fantastically hearty machine that successfully carried us on a journey that it was never designed to take.

I thought this would be my first and last trip to India. But now I'm not so sure. If there's any disappointment I had in the trip, it's that nothing in India moves fast including our tuk-tuks. For example, it takes at least 30 minutes to check into a hotel. And it takes at least 30 minutes to check out of a hotel. But since we had over 3000km to go in only 12 days, it meant that we had to be constantly on the road. There's so much more I would like to see and do in India. Darjeeling, some of the animal sanctuaries, a teahouse, Varanasi at night. At some point I really want to come back.

Around Day 3, I was halfway convinced that this trip was a mistake. I thought that we were not getting to do enough sightseeing. But now that we've reached the end, and even 3 or 4 days ago, I became very fond of the adventure and all of the work that went into it. I could definitely be talked into doing something like this again.

I'm so thrilled we made it to the end. And I'm even more thrilled we did it was such a great team. Tomorrow morning starts a grueling two day trip home which will be nowhere near as much fun as the tuk-tuks were. After we're home, we will go through a ridiculously huge number of photos (Most of which were shot from a moving tuk-tuk so probably out of focus) and add to the album and share it with you all. Thanks for following along, I really appreciate it. And, if you'd like, there's still time to donate to Cool Earth. We've met our goal but every little bit helps save rain forests. Go to www.shillongwayround.com and click the Cool Earth button on the bottom left. US and UK donations are tax-deductible.

Fin


Done!

And scene... the trek is complete ladies and gentlemen, Jaisalmer to Shillong is done! I want to thank everyone who has followed the posts and a huge thank you to every single one of you that donated, your donation will make a difference (, and if you have put your hand in your pocket there is still time to visit http://shillongwayround.com). Just got back from the hill, need to clean up, get some food and will give an update later on :-)![Uploading file...]()

Those mirror look shillong-way-round!

A little last day practical joke with one of the other teams staying in our hotel... check out their wing mirrors ;-)![Uploading file...]()![Uploading file...]()

End of Day 11 by Tricia

End of Day 11

TLDR version. Another very pretty day on the road. And ate a lot of street food.

Had a bit of a lie in. Then got up and loaded the tuk-tuks at 6am. A cow wandered through the hotel parking lot as we were loading but she had no patience for taking photos.

I took the handlebars again this morning. Partially because I wanted Andy to be able to really enjoy the scenery, and partially because tomorrow is going to be a lot of mountainous driving and I don't think I'm going to want to do that.

So we took off down National Highway 31 (I think) intending to hit Guwahati. Things went well. Chugging along between 45km to 50km an hour. As per usual, lots of cows, goats, and dogs to avoid. I drove about halfway before handing the tuk-tuk back to Andy. As we have been driving during this trip, people have regularly tried to flag us down, as rickshaws are typically used as taxis. This morning, a man kept trying to flag me down and seemed to get more and more irate the closer we got without slowing down. Andy says the look on his face when he saw me driving was quite the picture.

Although I was mostly driving on the divided highway, there was a lot of roadwork. Basically, that means I found myself driving the wrong way on the freeway every 15 to 20 minutes or so. I also didn't see a speed bump in time and we flew over a set of three doing about 50km an hour. That was pretty painful. We got hungry, and pulled off the freeway to a strip of little stalls looking for a restaurant. We didn't really find one but we were able to buy some naan and sweets and then get back on the road.

Lots of signs of festivities and people gathering during this drive. We found out later, that it is the Bihu festival in Assam. It is like new year. I had looked up festivals in India before we came on this trip and didn't find this one. Perhaps because it is not a national festival but specific to Assam and some of the surrounding areas? Other than seeing people gathering, we didn't see anything else of the festival. I'm not sure that even if we had known it was going on we would have. Doing some research in my hotel room, the Internet gives details about the festival but nothing about locations. I think we would've had to have had a lot of help from someone local to see any of the dancing or anything. I also suspect we were on the road during that time.

We hit Guwahati around 12:30 or 1:00. Still no cell signal, so we went straight to the airport to log into Wi-Fi. Unable to figure out where the hotel was or download the map, we hired a taxi driver to follow to the hotel. This seems to have been a winning combination for us during this trip. On our drive to the hotel we saw our first elephant of the trip.

After we got to the hotel, and showered off, Andy, Simon, and I headed for a shopping area called Big Bazaar. Since our hotel is a little bit out of town, they suggested that we call an Uber. I had no idea that there was Uber in India. I will have to say, anecdotally, Uber in India seems to suffer from the same problem as it does in the US. Our driver had absolutely no idea where he was going and didn't seem able to follow the GPS instructions. Turns out, Big Bazaar is just a giant department and grocery store. Halfway between a department store and Walmart. After that we just wandered for a few blocks. Eating street food along the way. We had some Nepalese momos, a puff filled with potato and some kind of sauce (maybe poori bhaji?), and a masala slushy. Although I've enjoyed the food very much, I've not particularly cared for masala on things that should be sweet in my mind.

We then decided to go back to the hotel. We flagged down a rickshaw taxi who didn't know our hotel was. So we hopped out and flagged down another. This guy definitely knew where the hotel was. I was amazed how much safer I felt in this rickshaw then I did in the Uber. But our driver made a number of detours. One to pick up his broken cell phone from a repair shop. And one to pick up milk. Buying milk was very interesting. He stopped at a street stand, jumped out, and the guy working there ladled milk out of a jug and into a plastic bag. Back at the hotel, we showed our rickshaw driver the rickshaws are driving. He was really surprised and took pictures of himself and Andy with them.

Tomorrow is our last day in the tuk-tuks. We have about 100km to go, all up a mountain. Pacman has been really sluggish going up the hills. Andy made some repairs to the needle tonight. We hope that it will improve our chances of pacman getting there under his own power.

End of Day 11 by Tricia

End of Day 11

TLDR version. Another very pretty day on the road. And ate a lot of street food.

Had a bit of a lie in. Then got up and loaded the tuk-tuks at 6am. A cow wandered through the hotel parking lot as we were loading but she had no patience for taking photos.

I took the handlebars again this morning. Partially because I wanted Andy to be able to really enjoy the scenery, and partially because tomorrow is going to be a lot of mountainous driving and I don't think I'm going to want to do that.

So we took off down National Highway 31 (I think) intending to hit Guwahati. Things went well. Chugging along between 45km to 50km an hour. As per usual, lots of cows, goats, and dogs to avoid. I drove about halfway before handing the tuk-tuk back to Andy. As we have been driving during this trip, people have regularly tried to flag us down, as rickshaws are typically used as taxis. This morning, a man kept trying to flag me down and seemed to get more and more irate the closer we got without slowing down. Andy says the look on his face when he saw me driving was quite the picture.

Although I was mostly driving on the divided highway, there was a lot of roadwork. Basically, that means I found myself driving the wrong way on the freeway every 15 to 20 minutes or so. I also didn't see a speed bump in time and we flew over a set of three doing about 50km an hour. That was pretty painful. We got hungry, and pulled off the freeway to a strip of little stalls looking for a restaurant. We didn't really find one but we were able to buy some naan and sweets and then get back on the road.

Lots of signs of festivities and people gathering during this drive. We found out later, that it is the Bihu festival in Assam. It is like new year. I had looked up festivals in India before we came on this trip and didn't find this one. Perhaps because it is not a national festival but specific to Assam and some of the surrounding areas? Other than seeing people gathering, we didn't see anything else of the festival. I'm not sure that even if we had known it was going on we would have. Doing some research in my hotel room, the Internet gives details about the festival but nothing about locations. I think we would've had to have had a lot of help from someone local to see any of the dancing or anything. I also suspect we were on the road during that time.

We hit Guwahati around 12:30 or 1:00. Still no cell signal, so we went straight to the airport to log into Wi-Fi. Unable to figure out where the hotel was or download the map, we hired a taxi driver to follow to the hotel. This seems to have been a winning combination for us during this trip. On our drive to the hotel we saw our first elephant of the trip.

After we got to the hotel, and showered off, Andy, Simon, and I headed for a shopping area called Big Bazaar. Since our hotel is a little bit out of town, they suggested that we call an Uber. I had no idea that there was Uber in India. I will have to say, anecdotally, Uber in India seems to suffer from the same problem as it does in the US. Our driver had absolutely no idea where he was going and didn't seem able to follow the GPS instructions. Turns out, Big Bazaar is just a giant department and grocery store. Halfway between a department store and Walmart. After that we just wandered for a few blocks. Eating street food along the way. We had some Nepalese momos, a puff filled with potato and some kind of sauce (maybe poori bhaji?), and a masala slushy. Although I've enjoyed the food very much, I've not particularly cared for masala on things that should be sweet in my mind.

We then decided to go back to the hotel. We flagged down a rickshaw taxi who didn't know our hotel was. So we hopped out and flagged down another. This guy definitely knew where the hotel was. I was amazed how much safer I felt in this rickshaw then I did in the Uber. But our driver made a number of detours. One to pick up his broken cell phone from a repair shop. And one to pick up milk. Buying milk was very interesting. He stopped at a street stand, jumped out, and the guy working there ladled milk out of a jug and into a plastic bag. Back at the hotel, we showed our rickshaw driver the rickshaws are driving. He was really surprised and took pictures of himself and Andy with them.

Tomorrow is our last day in the tuk-tuks. We have about 100km to go, all up a mountain. Pacman has been really sluggish going up the hills. Andy made some repairs to the needle tonight. We hope that it will improve our chances of pacman getting there under his own power.

End of Day 10 by Tricia

End of Day 10

TLDR version. If you go to India, visit West Bengal. It's beautiful.

If you read my post about the end of Day 9, I take it all back. Day 10 was definitely my favorite day so far (and not just because I saw - and used - my first western style toilet outside of my own hotel room at a gas station. I deserve a medal for the number of squat toilets I have used on this trip.)

We traveled from Purnea to Bongaigaon. Another over 300k day. We left Bihar and traveled through part of West Bengal into Assam.

Without a doubt this was the most interesting and prettiest day so far. It is election time in West Bengal so there were lots of campaign type posters and rallying, some in English. It was very festive.

We also drove through a short bit of the area where tea is grown. This area of the country is green and lush and tea estates are quite beautiful. If I ever come back to India I would like to spend more time in West Bengal and visit Darjeeling. The way the towns are set up is also different in this part of India. Every time you enter there is a large sign welcoming you from the local police station. And we saw a lot more police presence than we have seen anywhere else. Rather than the roads we were driving on going through the center of town they seem to be more freeway like in nature and the towns radiate off to the sides. When we started this trip, The Adventurists told us we would be like celebrities in India. That people would wave at us and want to take our photos. And that was true until we reached Bihar where the reception was more subdued. Once we hit West Bengal the effusive friendliness began again. It is actually really fun. kind of like riding in costume in the Pride Parade every day.

Some of the more interesting things I saw include a Catholic Ashram (which seems a bit of an oxymoron) and a sign on steel shed reading "bone fracture treatment done here carefully". Also, huge religious statues just pop up alongside the road out of nowhere. And you can't really take pictures of them because they pop up out of nowhere and your tooling along at 50km an hour in a tuk-tuk.

We stopped for gas in a town called Falakata. As we were pulling into the station, I noticed a street food vendor across the road selling samosas. None of us had eaten breakfast, so while they were gassing up I ran across the street and bought six samosas and six gulab jamun. The total was $1.08. We ended up buying 6 more samosas bringing the total cost of breakfast for 6 people to $1.53.

We also stopped in a small town to buy bottled water and homemade cookies. Rather than give us two rupees in change the shop owner gave us jelly/gummy candies. I think we got a pretty good deal.

But the most interesting part of our day actually took place at night. Although we haven't driven at night since day one, we decided to push on and drive a little while in the dark. We were getting absolutely no cell service in this part of India, and so our trusty Google map was not helping us find hotels. We ended up driving through what we thought was the main part of town. We stopped and asked some policemen where we might find a hotel. They took Andy away. And into the police station. And then had a very long discussion about where he might find a hotel. So the other five of us are standing around our tuk-tuks outside, only knowing that we've said the word hotel and men with guns have taken my husband away. Now to be fair, they were very friendly and all of them shook our hands. When Andy came back, he had rough directions to a hotel. We followed those directions with no success. Alex had noticed a sign for a hotel by the side of the road about 3 or 4 km back. So we pulled u-turns and headed for that hotel. This was the first Indian hotel experience that we thought we expected throughout this entire trip. No air-conditioning. Open windows so we needed to use our mosquito nets. Family run and lived in. No Wi-Fi. Incredibly nice friendly people. And they had a pet dog and a pet cat. So I got some animal loving in, which was great because I'm missing mine. The owners of the hotel, let us know that unfortunately it was a local festival so that we would have to order dinner quickly. And, by the way, their chef was off duty so it was a limited menu. Still we got a lot of beer in and some really good Chinese food and had a really great night. Lots of talking and laughter. About 30 minutes into our dinner, we discovered that the owners of the hotel were originally Mongolian. And they were having a big party downstairs for the local festival with their Mongolian family. As Andy and I had traveled to Mongolia last year, we went down and joined for a little while and it was a ton of fun.

Two more days of tuk-tuks left. Can't believe how quickly it has gone by.

End of Day 9 by Tricia

Been without wifi for a couple days. Will get caught up on posts soon.

End of Day 9

It can't really be the end of day nine can it? We were up super early this morning and met in the lobby at 4 AM with a goal to be on the road by 4;30. I think we probably have to accept it generally takes an hour for us to load and get out. So we were on the road by five - just as the sun was coming up. Today we were traveling through Bihar from Patna to Purnea. This was a really long day, I think it was over 350K. The formal parts of our site seeing are over now. It's all about getting to the finish line by the 15th and taking in India as we travel through it.

Bihar is in the northeast part of India. It is known for being the poorest and most lawless state in India. Fortunately, our experiences have all been good. We took one of the main roads today and it was amazing how the scenery changed as we left the desert. This area seems to be very agricultural. We saw lots of fields of sunflowers and corn. The corn is dried along the side of the freeway on the tarmac. It's such an interesting place, we drove past what can only be described as a thatched hut with a satellite dish. For a day of highway driving, this was probably my favorite in terms of scenery.

And the further east we got we noticed that for many people the skin tone and features have changed from the west of India. The further east we got, the friendlier and more effusive people were to us as well.

We stopped for gas midmorning, and I decided to relieve Andy and take the wheel of our rickshaw. A man came up to me and asked me if I was driving. I said I was. And he said "Wow in Bihar ladies and girls only drive scooters sometimes never rickshaws". I have gotten a similar response most places that I have been seen driving.

Today was purple ghost's turn to seize. But just like blue ghost as soon as we got her cooled down everything was fine. When we got to Purnea, we had been unable to book a hotel online. We were using Google maps to get to one when we were surrounded by what seemed like half the village's children. Soon some of the parents came out and told us that there were no hotels in that neighborhood. Turns out there was a hotel there in the past but it is closed. Just like yesterday, someone from the crowd of people offered to guide us to a hotel and we took him up on it. I don't even know the name of the hotel we're in tonight. But I do know that it has air-conditioning and room service and an actual bellhop button. That was how we ordered our dinner. Very weird.

Anyway we have to be up by 3:30 so that we can be on the road by 4:30 or five tomorrow. So I'm off to bed tomorrow's another long day.

End of Day 8 by Tricia

I'm glad our morning was fantastic, because the rest of the day left a little bit to be desired.

The entire team, all six of us, got up before 5 AM to head to Bodh Gaya's main temple complex. It opened at five, and we were fortunate to be some of the first people there and had the opportunity to sit beneath the Bodhi Tree. It was a good reminder how much I actually do enjoy meditating and that I should focus on it again when I'm home. Then we headed back to our hotel, loaded up and we were on the road around 7:45. The roads were not in particularly good condition. And we're trying to baby the rickshaws because of blue ghosts soft seize. It was a very hot 10 hours without a lot of distance being covered.

Blue ghost, the same rickshaw that had soft seized before, lost power a couple of times. So we stopped to let it cool down. This is where things went a little bit south. It was getting later in the afternoon and we decided to send two rickshaws on ahead to check into the hotel well blue ghost took a little rest. So Ben and I in pacman, and Alex and Les in purple ghost headed off to Patna. Unfortunately we got separated in the horrific congestion around a roundabout. some of the locals were awesome though. Trying to open up pockets of traffic so that we could stay together and jumping out and rocking us onto two wheels so that we could get through a super narrow gap. Our walkie-talkies haven't worked as well as hoped, so weren't at all helpful in us getting back together. Les texted us the hotel name and I eventually found someone who knew where the hotel was. And we paid him to jump into the rickshaw with us and guide us to the hotel. It was absolute highway robbery, but it was worth it because we are here and safe and I reminded myself that I can be resourceful.

But this still leaves Andy and Simon stranded at the side of the road with what we originally thought was an overheating blue ghost. Turns out that wasn't the problem. At some point we lost blue ghost's gas cap. This time, our MacGyver solution did not work so well. We used one of my hairbands and a latex glove to create a temporary gas cap. However what really ended up happening was we created a vacuum and the rickshaw lost all fuel. Once Andy and Simon figured that out they were on the road to Patna as well. When they got close to all the hotels, they hired a taxi driver to guide them to ours. We all arrived within two minutes of each other. But we learned a lesson which is no splitting up the team.

I think all of the menfolk on our team are planning tomorrow's route. I'm lying down giving my poor back a break. And soon will go find some dinner.

Crunch time

Today was the definition of adversity and yet we triumphed it may well not be enough to get us to Shillong before we run out of time. We spent ten valuable hours in the furnace of hell to eek out 113KM... not a highlight of the trek by any means.

We started off with a sunrise walkabout the Bodi Tree and temple at Bodhgaya then spent the rest of the day trying not to get ran off the road in Bihar. On top of the traffic layer on a few breakdowns, roads that just disappear into a hole in the ground, add a sprinkling of completely chaotic gridlocked mayhem in Patna and a hotel that apparently doesn't like being found, a dash of broken blinker, a hint of lost gas cap, a light dusting of petrol as one of the gas cans ruptured going over the terrain and bake it all in 109F heat and you end up with a lil something I'd call a Bihar clusterf$&k.

We have to be at Guwahati by Thursday night to stand a chance at getting to Shillong on Friday (so we can head back to Guwahati on Saturday to fly back to New Delhi and ultimately home). That means putting in some long days and not riding the tuktuks too hard. The target right now is Purnia tomorrow (367km), Azipulduar Wednesday (297km), Guwahati Thursday (306km), Shillong Friday.

Going to bed now, at 8:30PM to get going at 4AM tomorrow, try to beat traffic and take advantage of the early morning relatively cool (will still be in the 80Fs) temperature.

We're soooooo close to hitting our fundraising target. Please donate and be the one that gets us there so that all of this struggle we faced today is for something good. Head over to http://shillongwayround.com to help out and donate :-) Night all! ![Uploading file...]()![Uploading file...]()