"Whatever happened to those guys?" or "The Final Chapters of the Blunderbus Campaign"

[John Bodycombe]

Hello friendly folks.  As you may or may not have noticed, my ex-teammate Brendon has made a liar out of me by not in fact putting up any blog updates so I'm going to go ahead and offer up a short excuse for him.  As the great Sir Ulen's mom mentioned earlier, he had a few issues with his flight home and got stuck overnight in Mumbai.  I can only assume that some friendly locals sedated him and stole some vital organs leaving him busy chasing the buggers down so that he may live to go on other great adventures.  Either that or when he landed in Syracuse he was mauled by a wolverine who chewed off his fingers.  The bottom line being that it is being left up to me to share the final chapter's of the Madcap BlunderBus' Tour de India!

 

When we last left you we were settled into a small hotel in the smallish city of Bongaigaon.  After typing up our last update in a mildly creepy internet cafe peopled by mildly creepy patrons, Brendon and I bid farewell to the Mango Tango Tourbus (a possibly previously mentioned duo of english ladies who happened into the same hotel this evening) and order a pot of tea up to the room because we were tired but did not want to be total old ladies (I'm aware of the irony there).

 

As we are sipping our tea and watching pulp fiction in our indian hotel, a combination all too rarely experienced in the world, we heard a knock at the door.  We answer it in short order and are greeted by the purveyor of our hotel (a friendly older man who is always seen wearing a Mr. Rogers sweater cardigan) along with another Indian gentleman.  The unkown man proceeds to question us in a friendly (if confusing) manner about who we are and the event we are participating in causing us to wonder.... just who the heck is this guy?

 

Finally the veil is lifted from our eyes as he introduces himself as the Deputy Chief of Police of Bongaigaon.  He then proceeds to tell us that since this is a known insurrectionist area, he has decided for our safety to post a few guards downstairs overnight and will provide a police escort to the next region in the morning.  Slightly alarmed we ask if there is any reason for concern and he assures us that there is not but he would just like to do this all as a preventative measure.  With that and a few thank you's/good luck's he departs.  Slightly confused and unsure whether I should feel more safe or less safe I resolve that there isn't much I can do about it and I might as well try to relax and enjoy myself.  Unfortunately, police warnings about insurrectionists does tend to give ones imagination a good firm leaping point and I did get to experience a few "what's that noise?" moments.  Ah well, I can be a nervous nelly from time to time.

 

In the morning we go down to meet the other team for breakfast before rolling out and discover that the few guards who were posted downstairs were in fact 6-8 military types with automatic weapons posted at the bottom of the stairs and at the front door.  This has certainly been a strange morning already.  We then proceed to gobble up some delicious omelettes and get the old girl rumbling in order to follow our escort on out of town.

 

So we roll on the throttle to get our old tuk tuk a'movin and try to keep up with the white jeep that is our escort.  After a little while they pull over and say we are good to go on without them.  So after a thank you and a wave goodbye, we continue on with our little caravan for about 10-15 minutes before we are stopped by more police who say that we have to wait for another escort.  We grab some tea and wait some more and eventually roll out with a whole new escort.

 

Fast forward another hour and we're pulling over while our current escort hands us over to a couple of motorcycle cops.  At some point one has to ask one's self..... is all this necessary?

 

Well we don't really know but we did make it through Assam (said known insurrectionist area) safely and the motorcycle cops were our last escort fortunately so we made our way forward on to Guwuhati.

 

Now you may be wondering why we decided to go to Guwuhati after I specifically mentioned some concern about the bombings and our plan to avoid the city.  Well the bottom line is that we can't read Indian road signs and accidentally bypassed all options before reaching the exciting city.  Also, although it has been targeted in recent attacks, the city is a large one and the attacks have been relatively limited in size.  Still we decided to play it safe and stay in a nicer hotel with underground parking and security so that we wouldn't draw as much attention to ourselves as normal.

 

Our stay was relatively comfortably even though we were falsely promised a rooftop pool for the second time on our adventure and you couldn't get a cold beer if your life depended on it.  Beer in India, along with most other beverages, is served at room temperature (which in most places is extremely warm).  On top of that there are so many preservatives in, say a kingfisher, that you can cover the top, hold it upside down underwater and release the top and while the beer being lighter than the water will stay in the bottle, the preservatives will drain to the bottom like an oily substance.

 

The next morning we were rallied during breakfast by an instrumental version of "The Final Countdown" on the last day of our race.  Surely the gods smile down on The Madcap BlunderBus and our noble steed Maddie, Mattie or however I spelled it before.

 

At this point I must take a break because otherwise my head will explode with Indian goodness.

 

Till the next installment your humble adventurer,

 

Captain John de Bodycombe