http://www.curryonrickshaw.com/?p=39

Good video of another team’s experiences here including video of our rickshaw at the parade.  Ours is the the penultimate rickshaw shown near the end of the rickshaw parade.  It has the light on top!

The Calamity Crew also put together a video of their rickshaw’s sound system.  Boombastic!

• The Hindu (India’s National Newspaper)
• Traveldailynews.com
• FinancialExpress.com
• Internet Travel News
• DailyIndia.com
• Pistonheads.com (1)
• Pistonheads.com (2)
• DarjeelingTimes.com (1)
• DarjeelingTimes.com (2)
• The Statesman

We had a wonderful trip and we have been updating the blog with photos and videos and fixes. Hope to post more videos as we go through them. So please go back and look at some of the old posts for the extra videos and photos and bits. The videos are compressed by YouTube but we have the higher quality footage still. For those teams we spoke to on our travels and in Darjeeling, we can send the original footage to you one way or another….assuming we can dig out your contact details. Put contact details up on your site if they are not there already, just in case we didn’t get your cards before we left.

We also have to say a big thank you to all those who sponsored us. Your generosity has blown us away. We set out to raise £650 and you helped raise over £2,000. The rickshaw will be donated to a rickshaw wallah in the region and the remaining cash will go to help an organic tea cooperative. Their average wages have been as low as $87 and with training, management and by combining forces as a cooperative the aim is to raise their wages to a liveable wage which is still as low as $340. Thank you.

• Average speed = 33 kmh
• Top speed = 73 kmh (on speedo prob about 68kmh real)
• Number of petrol stops = 24
• Fuel efficiency = 67mpg
• Total spent on fuel = 7680R ($183)

Roadkill:

• 1 lizard
• 1 snake
• 1 motorbike and rider….although he hit us and he didn’t die
• 10’s of flip flops…..locals not in-situ though
• 100’s of dead dog corpses

Daily mileage:

The route (in red) and stops in blue.  Click to enlarge:

 

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute was open which was cool and the zoo next door was pretty grim as all zoos usually are…..and most of the animals were depressed and/or asleep accordingly.

Tiger Hill was worth a visit to see the sunrise over the Himalayas but was a bit of a tourist trap. Getting up at 3.30 am after drinking in Joey’s ’til gone 1am was not a good idea. I was so happy freezing my balls off waiting for the sun to come up. A sunrise is a sunrise and although it is a great sight, I think that staying in bed would have been much more enjoyable. We did get to see Everest….just….having previously assumed that it was actually the huge mountain in front of us. No, it was the little white spec you could just about make out on the horizon.

We got fed up sightseeing after all of that so decided to go for a hack in the rickshaw. Well actually, we decided we might have a gander at the Buddhist monastry that we couldn’t be arsed to see on the way back from Tiger Hill (as we were knackered). Not much activity at the monastry. Oh well, we decided to pick up some ‘fares’. Tim was driving as i couldn’t drive the rickshaw anymore after busting up my hand. Managed to get a couple of fares but i got the impression that they didn’t want to end up where we dropped them off. I think they were expecting us to take them for a spin and then drop them back to where we picked them up. And they didn’t pay us. Tight feckers! Maybe the 1000 Rupe fare put them off.

Joey’s was quiet the night before we left. Unfortunately we would miss the parade the next day. We did give the key to our steed to the Beagle Babies but not sure if they took it for a hack or just wanted it for spares (considering they had clocked up nearly 5000km in their rickshaw). They did give us a lift up the hill from Joey’s back to the Windamere after we had run through the light and horn system on our steed and given them the key. Cheers guys, that hill was getting tedious.

After Darjeeling we headed off to Delhi from Baldoghra airport. The crew from Bombay Doors were also on the flight so we arranged to hook up for beers later in Delhi. Stayed in pukka hotel in Delhi…Claridges. Cool restaurant and having munched curry for the past however many days, I succumbed to a fillet of beef. Sweet. Made it into Connaught Place and had a few drinks with the Bombay Door crew, including a Mohito which was too sweet and overpriced. Managed to get a massage at 7am the next morning to ease away those still lingering footie pains. Unfortunately it wasn’t the Swedish nypho I was expecting but some geezer.

That was supposedly our sightseeing visit to Delhi…..6pm until about 9am the next morning. But having got to Delhi airport the next morning we found our London flight delayed for 14 hours. Luckily the airline shipped us off to a nearby, apparantly 5* hotel, yeh right about 30 years ago maybe. But we got a room and food and then headed to Delhi for a day of cultural stuff….Red Fort and a walk around Old Delhi Bazar sniffing up the fumes and chaos.

That was way too much culture so we headed off to the Imperial Hotel for a few scoops. Of course the rickshaw wallah got lost on the way there and took us to some other Imperial place which looked like a boarded up cinema. The beers were going down great and the bill wasn’t too bad. Back to the airport hotel a few hours later for the coach back to the airport. Bit of a wait still and couldn’t spend Rupes in airport for Duty Free, only USD. And after omlette and chips in airport cafe, I finally managed to get Delhi belly. Great on a 10 hour flight back to London….and then another flight to Dublin later in the day!

All in all the trip was mad and highly recommended. Well worth doing if you can hack it!