Whilst we like to think we have improved at many things vis-a-vis rickshaws throughout the past few weeks, we are still yet to master the art of hitting the scheduled departure time, breezing past the 11am checkout and managing to extend our stay in the luxury Serai Resort until well after the clocks had chimed midday. But do not think the morning was wasted by any means. The rarest combination of decent wifi and access to a printer enabled admin to be accomplished, but the most significant feature of the morning revolved around what our promised 'round boat' trip would entail. The sensible money initially seemed to be on a trip where the boat went across the lake and back with Gee being vilified for suggesting we would literally be in a 'round boat'. Indeed, as we approached the water and saw the nice, motorised long boats, jibes and taunts were prepared in her direction and a fast-flowing trip across the lake envisaged by all. However, Gee was swiftly vindicated for sticking to her guns as our guide led us away from the long boats to what, at first, looked like a portable bath tub. Needless to say we didn't make it quite as far across the lake as we had hoped for, but with 6 of us squashed in at least we got to know each other that little bit better. After cooling off in / by the pool post tub trip and having cabled tied Granny's exhaust to whatever we could find (we'd given up on nuts and bolts by this point) we hit the road again and enjoyed a steady afternoon of progress towards Kochin. A minor hiccup when Freddy's coolant tower fell apart (swiftly put back together) barely dented our progress and as dusk filled the sky, we searched for hopefully our last random hotel in our last random small town. For those interested, we ended up staying in a hotel called AR residency in a town called Kunnamangalam, whose main cultural offering seemed to be a disproportionally high amount of bakeries relative to its population. Otherwise a fairly unremarkable evening all round, notable only for Fi going to the toilet repeatedly and once again letting the world fall out her rear end whilst HKC kindly donated blood to many of the hungry local Mosquitos.
And there we were. Day 22. The last day of the trip. The last 6am wake up. So many lasts they are too many to number. But even in a day of lasts, we still were breaking new barriers and achieving some firsts...The first time HKC drove Granny. The first time Fi drove Mr. Mercury. The first time Alice drove Granny. And last, but most definitely not least, the first time Alice flipped a rickshaw* (poor old Granny, as if she hadn't suffered enough...). Picture the scene as we cruised triumphantly towards Kochi: the roads are good and breakdowns are nowhere to be seen, the sun is shining and we have finally learnt to fill up with petrol before we run out if it. Seemingly nothing can disrupt the ricketeers glorious arrival into Kochi, a mere 100km away. Spirits are so high that PB decides to play one final sausage on Gee driving Mr. Mercury behind, leading the young pup Rockstar astray as he signalled left whilst cunningly directing her to go right. At best it was going to be a marginally funny gag. At worst, as we were soon to find out, it ends up with Granny flipped on her side in the middle of the crossroads with perhaps the most quickly assembled crowd of people seen since DFS announced its latest closing down sale. Whilst in retrospect, we can laugh at the incident as neither Alice nor PB were seriously hurt (the poor speakers turned out to be the most serious casualty), at the time it was a genuinely scary moment as Granny slowly tipped over and highlights succinctly the genuinely perilous nature of the trip as a whole. Alice also had her right foot somewhat squashed in the incident but thankfully a quick hospital x-ray revealed no break and she took advantage of their buy one x-Ray, get one tetanus shot in the bum offer to leave the hospital with a bill costing less than a KFC bargain bucket. Fi was left less than impressed with the whole incident, admonishing Rockstar for interrupting her air guitar performance during bohemian rhapsody, but at least the GoPro footage should be interesting as she realises Granny is about to tip over. PB was also worried about a tiny cut on his nose affecting his future modelling career but at least everybody was provided with never ending ammunition for teasing Alice, whose record for driving Granny will now forever read "driven once, flipped once", a highly successful conversion rate if ever there was one. Rickshaws righted and cuts cared for, this time nothing really could stop us making it to Kochi. After a quick stop for some last minute filming and a slow final drive through traditionally heavy Indian inner city traffic we finally arrived at our chosen destination, tired, slightly bruised but overall just disbelieving that we had actually made it mostly in one piece. We'll save the sentimental round up for one final blog post but needless to say the rest of the evening was spent reminiscing and recounting the best and worst moments from the trip. We also held a belated secret santa which resulted in presents ranging as far wide as diapers to daggers and finally we said goodbye to Fiona marking the end to this epic adventure.
*alice still maintains Granny "fell over"...
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