DAY 15 Cherai Beach to Cochin

THE FINISH LINE! This morning we took off with about 35 kilometers remaining.  Pulled into The United Club 43rd out of 59.  There was no pomp and circumstance.  Just one person was waiting for us with some paperwork to fill out. This was an amazing journey.  I'm in no hurry to get home, but I can't wait to see you all and share the many stories that did not make it into this blog.  In fact, I'm sure I'll be retelling stories of this trip for years to come. Tonight we have the wrap up party and say goodbye to all the other teams we met along the way.  I must say, this is a wonderful bunch of people.

 Thanks to all the people who joined us and/or helped us out, including Liza Mahar, Malina Stroup, Farid Bhayani, and many many others.  I cannot stress how friendly and helpful the locals are here in India. Also, thanks SO much to everyone who donated to Frank Water Project on our behalf.  Without you, we would not be here.  Between all the teams, there was enough money raised to bring clean water plants to 50,000 people in India.

DAY 14 Vadakara to Charia Beach

We were close enough to Cochin that we could have finished, but why would we do that?  Cheria Beach sounded like a nice relaxing place and would leave us only a couple hours drive if all goes well. The most of the day was spent asking for directions since the main highway is full of unmarked turns.  Breakfast was dosas at a roadside restaurant in yet another town we couldn't pronounce properly.  Lunch was fresh fruit from vendors on the side of the road. We almost made it with no breakdowns today, but Mark suddenly exclaimed, "no full power!"  The carburetor was clogged yet again.  Mark was fully caffeinated and wanted to rebuild it himself this time.  I stood over and directed while he managed to do it perfectly.  He didn't lose a single important part.  Go Mark! Several more turns through several more towns, across a bridge and soon enough (and with the help of directions from plenty more people) we were in Charia Beach.  Mark had called ahead and pre-haggled for a room right across the road from the beach. Mark and Liza swam while took sunset pictures.   

DAY 13 Udupi to Vadakara

Rahith heated some hot water for me to bathe myself from a bucket.  I'm not really accustomed to the technique, but basically, you use a small pitcher to give yourself a mini-shower by hand.  Works for me. We invited Liza to join us the rest of the way to Cochin, and to my surprise she said yes.  This means she'll be bicycling even further back.  In fact, she'll probably just go the rest of the way to the South end of India.  But, as usual, plans may change.  Regardless, her company is welcome. Although we had no major mechanical troubles, the roads were amazingly bad.  Painfully bad.  We thought the roads to Udupi would be hard to beat with the endless construction alternating paved road and road in progress, but we were wrong.  The roads South of Udupi were covered with sharp deep potholes.  The would polka dot the roads in some areas and jump out at you in others.  Mark took the brunt of the driving through the pothole gauntlet.  I took over just before the roads got better. The potholes were soon replaced by some of the more aggressive traffic we'd seen in a while.  Close calls were more frequent, but Laxmi kept us on the road.  As we approach the finish line, we reunite more and more teams.  We're all happy to see each other and pull over to chat about absurd mechanical problems and stories of accidents that happened to other teams.  Nothing too bad, but enough to remind you that all that luck does not make you invulnerable.  OK, I'll be honest... Don't tell Mom, but one of the teams even rolled their rickshaw and another collided with a motorcycle. We decide to look for a place to stay near the beach but finding a place would be difficult.  Both the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides and nothing listed for many miles.  A sign said something about a beach so we started asking the locals for directions.  This of course involved flipping a u-turn and briefly driving into oncoming traffic.  Again, nobody seems to mind this absurd behavior.  After waiting for a train to pass we drive out to the beach at Mazhaplangad.  We haggled over a room at a "resort" but they couldn't come down to a price we liked so we got back on the road. Almost two hours later, we were still on the road but I was determined to avoid hotel hunting in the dark again.  I pull over to the next batch of autorickshaws and asked directions to a "guest house".  I couldn't ask for a hotel because the word "hotel" seems to mean restaurant with no rooms for rent.  They had me turn off the main road where we asked no less than 6 people for directions and found the Al Safa in the town of Vadakara. We checked in, settled in, grabbed dinner accidentally ordering stupid amounts of food again, logged onto the Internet and called it night.

DAY 12 Gokarna to Udupi

Liza had decided to join us as far as our next stop.  She had arraigned a home to stay at in Udupi via a couch surfing website so it was decided that would be our next stop.   We grabbed breakfast out front of our favorite restaurant in Gokarna and hit the road South once again.  We were making pretty good time until a little before Udupi when the engine started to sound louder than usual.  We pulled over and felt around under the engine where we discovered an exhaust leak coming from the bottom of our muffler.  Several local rickshaw drivers offered their opinion.  Their consensus was that the silencer (muffler) needed to be tightened.  We tried to tell them that the gasket had a gap at the bottom where some had blown out, but they were insistent on tightening this for us.  Once it was thoroughly tight and a leak still existed, they all noticed that the "packing" on the "silencer" was broken.  Yep.   We were directed to a mechanic up the road who was able to fix it in about 20 minutes including driving off in another rickshaw to get the packing.  I bet Mark it would be about 100 to 150 rupees.  He said that would be the cost of the part alone.  In the end it was only 50 rupees (just over a dollar). We met up with Rohith (our couch surfing connection) and got settled in to his home.  It was a one bedroom house behind a larger one.  The gated front lot made for some very safe parking for our rickshaw and the mats on the floor were surprisingly comfortable.  He was a very helpful host who spoke English pretty well.   The four of us went to dinner at Woodlands Restaurant where Rohith was polite enough to allow the tourists to accidentally order stupid amounts of food.  Yum.  We were stuffed. I also got a shave from a young but very enthusiastic barber.  He spoke almost no English, but there was no concern of having too much taken off because you can stop them if they put shaving cream in the wrong place.  After a great shave he asked if I wanted the facial hair shorter.  I hesitated but did concede.  I really needed it evened up a bit.  He did great.  He was very cautious and made sure to check with me frequently.  I was much bigger than him after all.  He threw in a back and head massage and asked which oil I wanted, coconut or something ayurvedic I'd never heard of.  I let him choose and ended up with some sort of herbal icy-hot stuff on my head. I met up with the others at the bar around the corner.  They had saved me the last beer which was quickly gone and we were off to bed.

DAY 11 Resting in Gokarna

This was the first day we've spent in a town with no crisis to deal with.  We only started the rickshaw once, and that was to troubleshoot our ongoing headlight failures.  We managed to find where the short was.  It's buried inside a tight bundle of wires, but at least we know what to jiggle when they go out on us. After the jiggle-and-poke session, we did some laundry by hand, had a nice breakfast, checked in online, took a walk and ate lunch.  That was enough of a day for us.  We napped the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, Liza joined us for a walk up to the temple to see the sunset, then off to another temple, beer, dinner, internet and bed time.

Day 10 Panji to Gokarna

My friend Miranda had sent me a message online introducing me to her friend Liza who is also in India right now.  She's bicycling all over and studying Yoga as well.  We decided that our next destination would be to meet up with her in the small beach town of Gokarna. On the way we said goodbye to Malina and Farid at the train station in Maragau.  They were going to head back to Pune from there.  Their company was going to be missed as well as Farid's skills translating both language and culture, but we would also enjoy the extra space in the back seat. Soon after we dropped them off, a rickshaw driver told us to pull over and showed us that our engine mount bushing had broken.  Damn, that explains why the spark plug cable had been pulling itself out all morning.  He patched it up by tying it down with a clutch cable and said we were good to make it to our destination of Cochin over 800 kilometers down the road.  Lucky for us, there was another Bajaj service center on the way.  We stopped in and they fixed that and our failing tail lights for under $5. We overshot Gokarna so, yet again, we arrived in a town after sunset with a frequently failing headlight.  Looking for hotels at night sucks, but Liza came to us and set us up with rooms at the cool rustic place where she's staying.   The shared shower and squat pots are out back but they're very clean.  The rooms are not much.  Just a rock hard bed and windows that have no glass or screen, so the mosquitoes do come in, but the fan keeps them off and this Deet should help too.  

Day 9 Kohlapur to Panji

We hit the temple of Laxmi first thing in the morning.  We were able to get in line and through with our offerings in less than 30 minutes.  Later in the day it would have taken hours.  Laxmi seems to be our Deity for this trip.  Our Big Foot themed rickshaw has Laxmi's feet stickers on it already. Farid got some advice on a shortcut to our next stop in Goa from one of the rickshaw drivers at the temple.  Sounds like a horrible idea.  Let's do it!  Half way through this shortcut, our rickshaw dies in the middle of nowhere.  I hop out and disassemble the carburetor on the side of the road, clean it out and put it back together again and we're running strong again.  Good as new(ish). Note:  Almost all of the blog posts are typed up days after the fact, so I can't possibly remember all of the breakdowns we had and record each one.  just know that we spend a LOT of time fiddling with the engine.  If it's not the carburetor getting clogged again, it's the spark plug cap falling off, or the exhaust or anything else with a screw, bolt or wire. When we arrived in Panji, almost every place in town was booked.  We were not going to experience the famous nightlife of Goa.  Oh well, that's not why we are on this trip.  We ended up staying at the worst place of our trip so far.  Moldy walls, standing water in the smelly bathroom, and I think I could hear the cockroach's foot steps he was so big.

Day 7 Pune

Farid had given us some advice on where to find mechanics so we dragged the rickshaw kicking and screaming to a spot on the side of the road with several mechanics working on rickshaws.  Our mechanic told us 4pm and knowing Indian time, we stuck around to see if we could speed it up.  He told us a new gas tank would fix it and that would be 1000 rupees.  He showed us a metal tank to replace our plastic one and said that old is better.  We still were not convinced that this "upgrade" was necessary.  It seemed flushing the tank would be much better.  He insisted but said that if we wanted a stock tank to go to the Bajaj Showroom, where I had visited on my trip 10 years before.  He grew tired of arguing with us and told us to just go to the Showroom and leave him alone (implied).  When we got to the Bajaj Showroom, they seemed very unimpressed.  They insisted that we not go to any street mechanic but go directly to their service center "only 500 meters down the road".  We waited for Farid to arrive to confirm that we were not getting played and he agreed that the rickshaw was so bad that we should go to the authorized service center. That 500 meters down the road turned into 5 kilometers down the road but we only died 2 or 3 times on the way there.  Once there we were told 2 days.  There was a wait.  We explained our circumstances and the time shrank, but not by much.  Farid asked about paying for overtime and we explained more about the charity.  Finally, things started to go better and better.  The welders were Muslim and it was Friday, so getting anyone to work would be hard, but he decided to call his brother and soon, lots of strings were being pulled all over town.  We were going to have it first thing in the morning and the cost was going to be something reasonable (whatever that means). We spent the rest of the afternoon with Malina and Farid.  They took us around town to get drinks and food and a cheaper hotel.  They took us to a Hookah bar and a great restaurant where we made the mistake of telling Farid that they never make it really spicy in India.  Ouch.  Twice.

DAY 5 Ahmadabad to Navsari

Gujarat is a dry state and we were starting to think that the residents of this state could really use a drink.  As we proceeded South, smiles started to appear again.  Perhaps that was because we were more rested and less stressed than we were with the traffic in the North. After waking up at the ironically named Cadillac Hotel, we asked about 20 people for directions out of town.  Not because any of them were wrong or unclear, but because there were at least 10 turns.  None of them were marked, and we were off the city map we had for a long time before we made it to the main highway. A couple hundred kilometers down the road we were passed due for our 1000k oil change.  Baruch seemed like as good of a town as any.  We found a autorickshaw driver and ask directions to a mechanic for an oil change.  He sent us down the road toward town.  After asking a few more, we zeroed in on a friendly man who had it done in 10 minutes for about three bucks. No real cities were conveniently located so were were looking for a hotel anywhere along the road but not finding anything.  I pulled out my best smile and wave routine with the cars passing us on the main highway.  Soon enough we had a curious family asking about our trip from vehicle to vehicle at 60kph.  We explained that we were looking for lodging and the lead us to the Supreme Hotel.  I couldn't imagine having found this place on our own.   But team It Takes Tuk to Tango showed up an hour later.  Go figure.

DAY 6 Navsari to Pune

The alarm woke us up at 5am.  We wanted to hit the road at first light.  At 6am we were rolling, but we underestimated when twilight would start.  That wasn't until 6:45 but there was enough traffic that Mark was able to drive for a while in the dark by following the vehicles that actually had working tail lights. Half way through the day, the rickshaw started to get worse and worse.  The top speed was fading, new noises started and it would sputter out now and then.  We pulled over and found that the end of our muffler was hanging on by one bolt.  We tried using wire to hold it together, but that barely lasted a mile.  We decided to pilfer a bolt from the other end of the muffler.  It had six after all. On the Map, Mumbai (Bombay) is several kilometers South of our route to Pune.  This may be true, but the greater metro area extends a very long way.  With the rickshaw running even worse now, getting through the chaos of Mumbai was hell.  We had to ask a lot of directs and make a lot of turns and eventually we limped onto the expressway.  This is not OK.  We got stopped by a trucker that was not amused by a rickshaw on the expressway.  The only option was to flip a u-turn and drive into oncoming expressway traffic.  This may sound insane (and it probably is) but it happens all the time here.  Nobody was mad. When we finally got out of Mumbai, we limped over a steep mountain pass at 5 to 10 kph.  At one point, Mark even had to get out and push.  We continued on toward Pune and the autorickshaw repeatedly died.  A nice man on a motorcycle stayed with us and made sure we were OK all the way to the edge of Pune.  Indian people are VERY helpful.  At one point, our friend took Mark to find a mechanic while I waited on the side of the road.  The showed up with a mechanic who did a roadside carburetor rebuild.  We asked how much to pay him.  We were told that he usually gets 60 rupees (about $1.25) but we should give him whatever we wanted.  He came to us and did so after hours so we gave him 150 rupees.  Soon, another man who had been watching left and came back with 50 rupees from the mechanic.  We had been too generous.  Our destination in Pune was the train station because we knew that there were hotels there.  We got there but only barely. Once we'd checked in, my friend Melina showed up with her Indian friends Farid (fah-REED) and Ali, and some beer to share.  She just happened to be traveling through India at the same time as us.  Over the next couple days, she and Farid would be essential in getting our rickshaw back on the road.