We’re currently sat in a hotel in a town called Tuni near the east coast of India. It’s our 4th full day on the road and we’ve covered over 1,500 km so far. Not bad, we feel, considering the auto-rickshaw has an absolute top speed of 60 km per hour.

Day 1 got off to a flying start for all the 65 teams involved in the event … except for us. All the brand new vehicles were purring like kittens, but somehow we managed to be given the one dud. We had noticed something was wrong pre-race, but whenever the experts were called over they claimed all was fine and that our driving was at fault. Even when we hurtled forwards and crashed into the rickshaw in front of us on the starting line everyone thought it was just a case of itchy accelerator finger rather than a genuine problem. As it turned out our vehicle was accelerating on its own and the brakes weren’t working properly. Not a good combination when two people are setting out to drive 5,000 km in a vehicle they have only ever spent 30 minutes in before. So, as we watched the other 65 teams trundle off into the distance we sat around for a few hours waiting for ‘major’ repairs to be carried out. All was well in the end and we set off cautiously into the hills.

Since then we’ve driven past all kinds of scenery – lush mountains, beautiful rivers, picturesque villages and sprawling plains. We’ve given gobsmacked locals a ride, performed somewhat risky overtaking manoeuvres and took one particular mountain bend on 2 wheels whilst just avoiding to fly off the cliff edge. There has also been the obligatory breakdowns for varying reasons.

Most days we are on the road for at least 12 hours, which doesn’t leave much time for writing blogs etc. So we’ll update again when we can.

Posted by Andromeda on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 5:36 pm.