Absolute Carnage

Initial fears of getting up the huge hill were quickly pushed to one side as the 

Self Labelled 'best rickshaw driver in Udaipur' took control and kindly showed us some new tricks to fire our babies up in the morning (as with all things rickshaw it involves pulling a wire). Quite a talented guy, our saviour as it turns out. As well as being a pro rickshaw driver, he also claimed to run a guest house, to be studying maths, be going to London next week for his art career and supply a steady stream of LSD and free hugs. Whatever he was, he did get us out of a tricky sitch and for that we will be eternally grateful. 

After this surprisingly seamless start to the day, the team were off onto the road and into a relatively calm period by previous days standards. Whilst the rickshaws purred along nicely for a change, the team were instead treated to a wide array of sausages to keep them entertained. Firstly at lunch, with the language barrier proving an issue, the team just nodded enthusiastically every time they heard something they thought could be a food type. This strategy seemed to work well initially with a nice array of dishes being put in front of us, but before long the never ending supply of chapatis being brought out (Fiona taking her tally to particularly excessive new highs) left us debating whether we needed to rethink our food ordering tactics in future. The next sausage came in the form of a local rider who for a good hour or so played driving's version of footsie with our rickshaws, continuously overtaking before slowing to let us past before restarting the whole process again. Sadly the relationship never blossomed beyond this level with every attempt by us to initiate conversation receiving a big ole pie and the team were left wondering what went wrong when he eventually rode off into the distance. The team also indulged in a few home made sausages as Fi took a wee within touching distance of Granny, Gee was left behind as everyone else drove off and HKC decided to keep Alice entertained by falling asleep in the afternoon sun. 

Nevertheless the most interesting part of the day, in fact arguably the most interesting part of our lives so far was still to come. Having made faultless progress all day, Granny and Mr. Mercury were naively approaching Ahmedabad c.5pm in the afternoon. As we all know, 5pm is textbook rush hour time. What we didn't know at the time was that Ahmedabad is a city of 6 million people known for its high levels of traffic. With PB at the wheel of Granny and Rockstar at the helm of Mr. Mercury, it is difficult to describe the hour of absolute carnage that ensued as we weaved, ducked, crawled, crashed, walloped, got crashed into, stalled, got laughed at, prayed and ultimately navigated our way through throngs of traffic. A particularly tense moment came when surrounded by a group of laughing, camera waving Indians, Granny refused to start leading to a high risk but ultimately high reward push start in the middle of a very busy roundabout. A few minor scrapes and collisions later and both cars were tightly wedged in next to each other with some new exciting war wounds. Overall, part terrifying, mostly exhilarating it was certainly a wild ride and apologies to the drivers of Ahmedabad who now have blue and pink paint on their vehicles. 

After that adrenaline fuelled journey the team settled in for a quiet night of route planning with the aim of getting up early for the eagerly anticipated International Kite Festival for which we had driven to Ahmedabad especially for. Two constraints got in the way, one arguably more important in the grand scheme of things than the other. HKC became the first victim of the infamous "Delhi Belly" during the night which delayed the early morning getaway. However, the longer term hindrance was that on arriving at the riverfront later in the morning the team were welcomed by signs showing that the kite festival had actually finished the day before. Oops. Some nice views of empty stalls and a few lone kites were not what we'd hoped for especially since every mechanic in town (Granny is in dire need of maintenance) was shut for a state holiday which we had been told was for the kite festival. Thankfully, the rickshaws did get some much needed attention from one kind sir, who once again spoke of 'oil' and flow' and helped us buy 3 new spark plugs so fingers crossed we can get both rickshaws safely inland to the Ellora Caves - although perhaps we should simply hope to not crash into anyone else on the way out of Ahmedabad...