Day 2 – Brian breaks again!

05/01/2016 by johnnyozz 8 Comments

Keen to be out of the weird hotel as soon as possible, and make up time and more importantly distance lost yesterday, we agreed to be on our way by 6am, so at 5:45 I walked into reception, waking the night porter in bed on the lobby sofa, and walked outside into pitch darkness! We would have to wait until 6:30 for it to be light enough to be safe to drive

On the road we made good progress in the light traffic , and stopped around 8am for a driver change and hopefully a coffee. Finding no coffee (like most of India) we settled on a chai house, which although very basic made amazing, if very sweet chai, and the owner and his friend were lovely. Like most people in India, they are very engaging and want nothing more than to ask you your name where you’re from, discuss cricket, and having mentioned our adventure, ask “you’re doing what?” When we left the chai house it felt like most of the village came out to see us off and have pictures taken with us, and the crowd surrounding Brian was so big we couldn’t see the road to pull away

As the morning progressed, the roads got busier and more treacherous, with the national highway resembling a UK ‘B’ road in many places, and the scale of the task / horror we would face for the next 14 days dawned on us all. When I have time I will try to write a separate blog about the experience of driving in India, as it would take up too much time now

Regularly swapping drivers to prevent nervous exhaustion, it was my time in the driver’s seat when we hit out first city, Calicut, and the permanent feeling that you’re about to be crushed by a lorry / bus on the open road, was replaced by the mayhem of negotiating major junctions with thousands of pedestrians, motorbikes, rickshaws, cars and busses coming at you from all directions, puts different kind of strain on you, and on Brian too. Within 40 minutes or so of stop / start city driving, I was finding it almost impossible to select 2nd gear and neutral, resulting in a lot of stalls, usually when you wanted them least, half way across a major junction!! This would appear to be a permanent (and unfixable) problem with our and other rickshaws, and doesn’t bode well for Mumbai!

Finally leaving the city, the road became hilly and twisty, and not far into her stint, Clair announced “we have no brakes”, a little experimentation confirmed that pumping the brakes furiously gave a small and brief amount of stopping power, and Clair did an amazing job limping Brian the final 40km to our rest stop for the night. With 260km covered it was a fruitful but very very tough day. As we sat on the verandah of beach house beside the Indian Ocean, we toasted Clair’s birthday, and planned what to do about Brian