Curry on Rickshaw

We had a fairly late start (8.30 on road) as enjoyed breakfast at hotel. Better than Safari bars and dry biscuits.  We had a nice send off from a small army of hotel staff.

It took us 2 hours to find our way out of Chennai. Chaos. Followed coast road…..and took us another 2 hours to get to NH5. What a waste of 4 hours!

A dog chased after rickshaw. Had to welly it a bit as was getting a bit too close to Tim in the back of rickshaw.

Finally fitted website stickers to rickshaw front when we were doing a petrol pit stop. It was the most action the petrol pump man had seem in a while.

We have started to slipstream buses on highway.  The person in the back looks out to see if the bus is going to do a sudden stop.  We are gaining a few km/h and saving fuel!

Indian contraflows are mad.  They give you little notice on your side and do not inform the other side at all.  No cones no nothing.  On your guard:

It is really quite remote out this way.  We arrived Ongole in dark. Chaotic as per usual. Not sure if we would get hotel as it New Year’s Eve. Finally got place……mmmm grim!

We found a bar for New Year celebrations. Did food but mass confusion to order any. Lots of staff trying to work out what was going on. Each one had their own specific job…..such a division of labour over here. One guy took beer order, another brought beer to us and another had to open bottles…..and broke his opener in the process

We met 4 very friendly locals who we chatted with for a while, although they left before midnight….even though this was the place to be!

Midnight in bar. Pretty wasted on Kingfisher Super Strong at this stage. A few other locals in there started getting lary with us asking for dollars. They turned all the lights off. Sharp exit required!

Nice man from Nepal guarding rickshaw for us when we got back to hole of hotel.

Pretty ropey rooms last night and we got little sleep as both rooms were facing main road.  Safari choc bar breakfast and on road by 7.30am.

We decided not to take the ’National Highway’ (which were a disaster in places anyway) and take the ‘main road’ from Salem. Pot hole heaven!  Whilst on a quick pit stop we were overtaken by 2 other teams (Saag Aloo and Bombay Doors). We exchanged stories and took a couple of photos then hit the road with them.  The rickshaw died after about 5 mins … problem with reserve not working we think. Lucky had jerry can with spare fuel. Rickshaw only holds about 6 litres plus 1.6 litre reserve…..about 150km range.  We were fine and they went on ahead.  We soon caught them up as they had a more severe dirty fuel problem:

The jerry can was leaking fuel from cap….brought back memories of dive trip to Killary and fumes in the beemer.

We saw wild monkies along roadsides and Jim insisted we stoped to take a video.

Jim didn’t see sleeping policeman at railway crossing and rickshaw nearly headed skywards.

Jim got the rickshaw up to 68kph downhill.

We stopped at roadside for biscuits….got them with free ants running around on them. Jim left hand brake on while trying to pull away at turbo speed from that place.

We now have a strange wobble sound develop at about 55kph. Hope it will not develop into a problem.

There are two songs going through Jim’s head all day….Welcome to the Jungle (Guns and Roses?) and Show me the way to Pondicherry (or Amarillo as the song actually goes)….not that i even have a particular fondness for those songs.

We were going to go to Pondicherry but decided to go onto a temple area a bit further North.  Tim was navigating and missed the turning so we kept going onto Chennai (Madras).  By this time we needed a hotel. First one grim then saw Radisson. Sweet! Beers! Strayed from veg diet and chanced meat and fish for dinner in Kebab Factory at Radisson. Even a magician came up to the dinner table and Tim tried to scupper some of his tricks….all in good spirit of course. Great kip and breakfast!

We were up at dawn to wire up lights and horn.  Took us about two hours and still one bulb was blown :-( The Dukes of Hazzard horn sounds excellent although rear passenger could do with ear plugs.

There are Mosquitos everywhere as very jungly.

We have a quick Indian breakfast including radioactive strawberry jam before hitting road.

Jim managed to drive into roadwork area and lose the highway….well there were no signs anywhere….but managed to get back on to pukka road eventually.

Driving is generally uneventful.  We are already getting used to the mad driving.  Basically avoid the buses as they drive like maniacs.  Why they have to honk their horns and cut you up only to stop 20 metres ahead at a bus stop is a mystery.

We made it to place called Salem in dark. Found a grim hotel. Porter appeared by magic outside room door and came in at random intervals always keen for another tip. He must have slept outside the door.

No ’special tea’ (aka beer) in restaurant and no food in bar. Settled for beer then food after. Looking for fuel funnel and pipe in town. Had to find pipe shop. First pipe shop only did straight pipes….told us we needed to go to the flexible pipe shop. Eventually we got our pipe….what a palaver. Got a free funnel from auto shop as he knew about charity.  Another team must have been in before us…..hmmm.

A reasonably early start after a good curry and a few beers with the rest of the rickshawers. (The pimping last night was curtailed due to late arrival of the rickshaws, no light and lack of willing locals to do any work for us.) The local painters got to the holding area at 6.30 am. We arrived at 8.30 am as we had little painting to do but plenty of holes to drill etc.

Alas, we could not get a hole driller to come to us so we were delayed…. apparently they don’t have cordless drills over here. We also had to wait until 10am for the shops to open to get a better battery for our steed to run the extreme lights and horns. We did manage to fit a few decals and try and hussle some locals for help. By the time we knew it, it was time for us to head to the cricket ground for the official ceremony by local officials and the chief rozzer.  This video shows the first rickshaw leaving the ceremony.  Well sort of.  It was a press shoot and the rickshaw turned around and came back sortly after he restarted it after stalling!

Then followed the cricket match with the local team which we had to skirt away from as: a) we have both played cricket (badly) many moons ago; and b) we had a rickshaw to pimp.

Into action we both went. I cornered a local rickshaw wallah (Shaji) to take us around to various places to get batteries, find a workshop, find a hole driller, find some more cable, etc etc. We found a battery supplier after a bit of searching, then i realised i didn’t have enough cash for it but knocked them down a few quid anyway. Then for more supplies via the local currency converter….some geezer in the back of a shop. Found a hole driller…well a workshop with a power supply. By this time, Tim decided to head back to base to pick up the registration documents and stuff. I stayed and acted foreman over the hole driller. They also made up a nice bracket for the new battery:

Then it was back to the Bijou’s workshop (Shaji’s mate i assume), where the battery was wired to the engine, a buzzer put in for the indicators, driveshafts greased, smokes were smoked and many a local tried to converse with me. By this time Tim was getting browned off at being able to do very little at the rickshaw base and also everyone else was getting on the road. He did manage to amuse himself by watching everyone crash into things (and that was just in the car park):

After bunging Bijou and his crew some wad we headed back to base….via the hole driller to redo a hole….free of charge i might add…..and also seeing an elephant on the way made it a worthwhile detour. Shaji also persuaded me to donate our half empty bottle of Morgan Spiced to him…..of course we also bunged him a large wad for all his help and running us around over many hours. Although all the lights were fitted in place, i still had to find time to wire them up along with the horns and control box….without having a Jarvis like cabling nightmare. We decided to defer this activity and get on the road.

We finally got on the road around 3.30pm. We thought we were last but passed some others at a local petrol station. I took charge of driving first and the traffic was absolutely mental. I had ‘rickshaw wrist’ after about an hour. Tim did a bit of driving around a petrol station but decided to save all of his extreme driving skills until the next day.

By 7pm it was almost pitch black and having a headlight as useful as a match in a wind tunnel, we though we better stop. Miraculously, a hotel appeared as if by magic and we got a couple of rooms for the night. An excellent curry and a few beers were definitely in order, with the promise that we’d be up early to wire the rickshaw and get on the road………

After many hours of sitting on jammed planes, we made it to India. We thought our bags (and more importantly the box of bits to pimp the rickshaw) wouldn’t make it but hey presto they did. The duty free which was kind of confiscated at Mumbai on our transfer flight also turned up at Kochi. Ah Morgan Spiced and Gordons, of which we managed to imbibe a half litre of the Morgan Spiced last night.

After about an hour in a local cab from Kochi airport to the hotel, we finally realised how crazy the drivers are over here. Lucky we made it to the hotel where we were greeted with flower garlands and other flowers and a strange drink in some kind of hard fruit….which was mouldy and had various insects on it. Nice! I’m sure they thought that we were a couple, so we quickly separated the two beds further apart. There seemed to be an army of eager Indians looking after us. They were keen to escort us to an exhibition by some traditional dancers where we finally managed to get a beer.

Been eating a lot of grub, Huge amounts even on all of the flights. I’m sticking to veggie grub but Tim managed a Chicken Biyriani at lunchtime today. No trots or vom yet.

Met up with some of the other Rickshawers today for some lunch in apparently one of the best Biyriani places in Fort Kochi. Hmmm. Place looked clean but wreeked of either diesel or probably parrafin.

Our rickshaw driver back from the pukka parrafun palace had a cool sound system in his steed….which of course he was trying to sell to us. There is a huge vibe in the area about this event. They all think we are crazy too.

Hoping to collect the rickshaw tonight and to start the pimping. Tea and cakes tomorrow morning followed by a game of cricket with the locals. Then we head off. Watch this space for more info.

Ok folks. Many of the people that we have persuaded to part with their hard earned cash have already donated. But there are still a few of you out there who have promised us some wad. It’s not too late. We will be collecting for as long as we can, including after the event itself. So we have raised the donation target yet again…..to £2,000. This may not be its final resting place mind you. Thanks to those that have donated so far. All you others on a promise, we’ll be in touch! Oh yes, thanks to PowerfulUK.com (Range Rover & 4×4 Accessories) and Innovex (Flexible Electronic Circuits) for their help. Also thanks to Jarvo o’ the Yardies for providing and modifying electronic gizmoes for us and avoiding the usual cabling nightmare.