Unexpected places and friends

[Brendon Ulen]

So we headed north to this city to go on a safari to see tigers. Unfortunately, we when we called them we found out that the park was closed till Jan 10 because the tigers were "going crazy". Fortunately, we then heard that this other team already had a tour booked so we headed up there anyway. Unfortunately, the park really was closed and for a reason far less hilarious. The park was closed for a tiger census and not for any brand of tomfoolery on the part of various striped felines.

 

Feeling good after a nice night in the bar with Holland has a rickshaw team and Raj against the machine we set out in the morning to go north. We decided to take the route up the west side of West Bengal and aviod Kolkata altogether. However, we only got about 10 km up the road before it was shut do to some sort of police or military activity. Not wanting to wait and figure out how long this would take we turned around and set off for Kolkata. We had heard through the grapevine that Kolkata recently passed a law in January banning rickshaws from the city. We therefore decided to go around the city on the northwest side. However, we suck at navigating and ended up going smack into the heart of the northern victorian part of the city. Since there is no rickshaw lane anymore on the bridge since they are indeed banned we went down the motorbike lane. We didn't fit. So we pushed ourselves out backwards and went down the car lane. We threw 20 rupees at a very confused toll taker and he promptly continued to look confused and then beckoned over a police officer.

 

A cop started walking over with his hands out. And guess what. Police love us. They love us! As soon as he saw we were white he laughed. Asked us where we were from, shook our hands, even got us 10 rupees change from the confused clerk, and waved us in there! We even stopped in the city and got directions from other cops. They all love us! We later found out from other teams that they've been paying tolls and one team was nearly fined 6000 rupees for having a rick in Kolkata. Not us! We haven't paid a damn thing. We've sexy charming gods of the shaw! And cops love us.

 

We got very lost in Kolkata looking for a hotel. However, while I was asking for directions I was approached by a lovely white girl from seattle! Her and her friend jumped in our shaw and took us after a bit of searching to their hotel where we got a room. Enter Heather and Toriann! New members of the Madcap Blunderbus. You heard right. These ladies are on their way to Darjeeling and so are we so they're hoofing it with us. Unfortunately for them, we almost killed them on the first night. We didn't properly anticipate the decline of the road system or the shortening of the day or the lack of hotels in shanty towns in West Bengal. In an effort to get to a hotel John ended up driving for an hour at night while Toriann filmed, and Heather and I each hung out a different side of the rickshaw with flash lights yelling about oncoming traffic, potholes, bicyclists and pedestrians while ducking back inside every time we a passing insane truck got too close. It was quite insane. Heather described it as the scariest experience of her life (She said her potential final goodbye to her parents on video) but was much cheerier about it once we were all safe and sound in our hotel.

 

Today we didn't make it as far as we wanted again and we're stuck in a very small working town. We also had a load bearing steel beam on our roof rack snap and had to get locals to weld it back together for us this morning. We also attracted a nice mob of about 20-30 when we stopped for tea in the mid afternoon. They were all very nice. Its all part of the experience though. These ladies are getting all the highs and lows of the Rickshaw Run. Tomorrow we'll have a short drive to Siliguri and we'll probably all party there for the day. Then we're giving these poor girls the raw deal one last time because we don't think we actually have time to go to Darjeeling after all. Apparently its only 90 km from siliguri but a 6-7 hour drive because it has an altitude gain of 2 km as well! Lame! So we'll have to part ways with our new teammates far too soon. But it was great to have them.

 

Well, that's a lot of info for now so we're off for now. Hopefully at next post we'll give excited information about what its like to scout rhinos from elephantback and let you know how the Indian oil strike is affecting us personally as the petrol supply slowly dwindles out of existence.

 

Stay cool,

 

The Madcap Blunderbus Members (all 4 of us)