Day 14 - Finishing Day. Up late, ate a chilled out breakfast and fired up the rick for one last time to get her to the line.
We were tenth in out of the 82 so no queues yet and Brooke had excelled herself by finding the Ghostbusters theme for us to rock up to the podium.
Picked up our tiny rick memento and pushed our now apparently non functioning beast to join the other finishers.
Spent a good few hours watching the other teams arrive (50 by the time we left the 40° heat), picked up our stuff and joined a couple of other teams escaping early on the 16:45 to Delhi. First class sleeper this time and should be there for lunch on Monday.
No messing this time. We're eating everything!
Day 13 and a day of rest now we'd reached Jaisalmer. No need to take the rick out, everything was in walking distance.
Took the morning to explore the town and see the Jain Temple and the fort before crashing out all afternoon to catch up on some much needed sleep.
Up again for the evening and dinner with new teams arriving in town. So nice to see some faces from the fortnight before and share some stories and maybe the odd rant.
Day 12 and we've made it to Jaisalmer. After the preparation of the last 2500 miles it's the easiest, most peaceful town to drive in!
Took the chance to drive the backroads for a bit of variety and we weren't disappointed. Excellent single track fun with barely a person in sight.
289km covered to the finish and now we've got Saturday to ourselves to explore before the handover and celebrations on Sunday.
Kind of grown to love the rickshaw. The hype said it was not suitable, yet I can't think of a better vehicle to do this in. It's capable of off-roading through mud and sand, over-taking everything but the buses on the motorway and fighting its way through traffic like nothing else. Resisting the temptation to smuggle it home.
Breakfast selfies
Family selfies
Smoking Tim's e-cigarette selfies
Policeman we gave a lift to selfies
Cow after a few drinks (me not the cow) selfies.
Rick trying to get a little shade in the 36 degree desert heat.
Rick at the final hotel.
Jaisalmer Fort from the roof top bar
Day 11 and we were up sort of early, leaving the hotel about 8am. Fought or way out of Ahmedabad which had thoroughly woken up by this stage and were told off by the police for driving down the posh river front road. Apparently ricks need to be on the main road.
Nice bit of driving on a mix of highways, through towns and more back roads as we pushed on to Sanchore.
As with all these driving days, it's all about the km but we still had a nice breakfast and some good fun in the new sandy conditions when roadworks forced a highway down one and a half lanes!
Just had a nice dinner and met up with two other teams from Barcelona and New York. The mix of people here is awesome!
Street fighter rickshaw
Fueling up with an audience. Obv.
Bar-celona in the hotel car park next to our little rick.
Day 10 and actually drove more than we expected. After escaping the now deserted town, we drove 80km in two and a half hours on the longest most broken road yet. It was a highway but it was more cratered than the moon. Bless the little rick.
After that, a nice mountain pass and then highways. After moaning about them for ages it was a massive relief.
Turns out we got to our destination at 2pm so we carried on another 110km to hit our highest mileage yet of 360km. Now just 535km to the finish. Maybe two days? Let's see...
The usual cows grazing on the central reservation.
Day 9 update. Was probably longer but I accidentally refreshed the blog and it killed it.
So... Left Aurangabad and followed the taxi route past Ellora again giving us chance to play on the hairpins and Daulatabad Fort. Actually managed to stop for breakfast for once with a full curry up.
Nice being off the highways and on more interesting smaller roads for a lot of the day. You meet a lot more people that way even though the rick goes just as fast! Spare a thought for the people who drive the wind turbine blades around. They're everywhere.
Met some great debt collectors at a petrol station who then invited us to share their packed lunch and other treats at the next motorway hotel (hotel = restaurant. No chance of confusion there).
Gave us some tips on a better route which we said we would think about. We were then busted when we caught up with them in a traffic queue 10km later.
Then back roads to Nandurbar. Proper back roads. Love Google some times. One minute it's a superhighway you aren't allowed on, the next it's a rutted track.
Stopped for chai and the village showed us around their temple which was really cool.
Finally in Nandurbar we couldn't find a hotel using the internet so we resorted to asking people. Second guy hopped in and got a lift into town in return for helping us find a hotel. Really nice guy didn't leave us until we found what we needed.
Luxury suite tonight. A bed each. No arguments over big spoon.
Think that's all, oddly the most frustrating thing recently has been the blog software. It's worse than MS Word!
900km to go!
Good day today. I need to make the most of these because there's enough tough ones.
Got up early in the warmest room on earth. No bugs because there were no windows. No air either but I'll take that for no bugs.
Out just after 6 to say goodbye to Pat and Laura then off in search of a working cashpoint. Turns out in India the cashpoints get emptied on the weekend and not refilled until Monday when the banks open.
New kind of horror of realising you've only got 1700 (£20) rupees between the two of you and an empty petrol can, no food, no hotel and 210km to drive. It's strange going back to an entirely cash based society. Turns out if you want change the best person is a petrol station assistant!
Anyway, finally solved that in Aurangabad at 2pm so missed lunch and breakfast.
Nice enough drive. Couple of niggles, possibly water in the tank, Tim dismantled the petrol switch to see if it was blocked, made it leak, fixed it. That kind of thing.
We got stopped by the police at a toll booth and after a brief grilling we were forced to drink chai with them.
Slightly intimidating but nice!
Then got into Aurangabad, checked into a hotel and booked a brief tour of the caves at Ellora. Absolutely awesome!
Finally, dinner in the rooftop restaurant listening to drumming across the city preparing for festival, calls to prayer, fireworks and horns.
Now watching Ghostbusters. Bit late for research on our team theme but there you go...
Great day on balance. Woke up with dread feeling in stomach. Nice hotel and shower but knowing the rickshaw was 20km away and broken, if we were lucky, didn't help much.
But, got back out to the rickshaw and met Pat and Laura who diverted over to help us. Great bit of teamwork, repairing the pin in the carburettor, replacing the spark plug and head gasket with copper that promptly broke in 6km.
After a lot of fun with the locals including borrowing a tractor incase we needed a tow, we found the gasket problem, repaired it and charged on getting 120km in before we had to stop through darkness.
Great little room to stay in in a proper travellers lodge but great food, good bar and a great evening with Pat and Laura.
Up early and out by 6am to try and find cash. Anywhere!!!
Pat and Laura (both legends) helping us get going south of Solapur.
Amazingly we solved the problem with an immensely helpful local farmer, a cast of 20 other locals and a two stroke bike racer on speed dial from Australia who diagnosed using videos.
Forgot to add photos. Not many today...
Entering Maharastra
Broken down again.
