Day 10: Chiplun to Goa
A long hot day on the road to Goa, covering around 310 km in the trusty rickshaw! We have finally made it to the sea though and have covered nearly 2/3 of our total distance. As usual the traffic has kept us on our toes- thankfully, the south of India seems to have a lot less suprise, unmarked speed bumps than in the north, which means we have definitely reduced our daily 'air time'. We are becoming more Indian in our driving everyday (including a rather indian moment of overtaking from me...) and we have even spotted that we are all developing horn thumb from all the honking! We are spending the night in Goa and reassessing our travel plans in the morning as one of our co-team 'Cochin Express' is having a brief respite in the local hospital, we still have around 900 km to cover in the next 4 days if we are to make it to Cochin by January 14th.
Day 4: Udaipur to Modasa
Another early start and only 6hrs of sleep and we are back on the road again! Today we have headed from Udaipur to Modasa- leaving Rajasthan and entering Gujarat. The desert has provided us with some very cold mornings and some scorching afternoons, but we have also had some really beautiful scenery and wildlife! The roads today have been quite a mix, though mostly bumpy, we have certainly put our tuk tuk to the test over the last 4 days with mountains, unfinished roads and plenty of potholes and unmarked speed bumps. We have been averaging somewhere between 30-50 km per hour, depending on the conditions and have encountered some impressive Indian driving along the way, the best being the classic overtaking and stopping right in front of us in the middle of the road to get a better viewpoint of us! Today we also had our photographs taken with the Gujarat state border police (at their insistence and not ours) and they also insisted that we taste some slightly poisonous looking fruit/berries off a local tree. We are spending the night in Modasa (sampling the local Gujarat Thali) before heading further into Gujarat tomorrow morning.
