Welcome to Kathmandu

We've made it to Kathmandu unscathed, but appropriately knackered. The landing at the airport was really something else as the airplane had to drop pretty quickly once it was over the surrounding mountains. (Or maybe our pilot just wasn't paying attention!)

Our time so far has been spent hunting down illusive Jerry cans to store the even more unavailble fuel. In between we've met our beast of burden that is the mighty Rickshaw. As we hoped it has been suitably pimped, courtesy of the local Nepalese mechanics.


We had Saturday morning to do some last minute fine-tuning which the other teams seemed to be taking full advantage of. Now that's just not cricket!

Tom and I on the other hand gave ours a cursory glance.

"Good job on the paint work."
"Yup."

"Got three wheels?"
"Yup."

One by one the Rickshaw's engines were fired up and pronounced fit to go, until they got to ours...


Three hours and five mechanics later we think it got the seal of approval.......or was that just resignation? I guess we'll find out tomorrow.


For those who are interested you can cut and paste the co-ordinates below into Google Earth and see where we currently are.

Current location: Hotel Garuda, Kathmandu, 27N 42'67.5" 85E 18'36.9"

Bye-bye Blighty

What a week it's been but finally it's here, the Rickshaw Run 2008 starts on Sunday. Mind you for a while it looked like it might be over before it began, fuel shortages & bombs in Kathmandu seem to be the norm these days!

More to follow when Tom finds a computer and Mark reclaims this infernal mobile device!

Current location: O'Neils, Heathrow

Tell the fat lady to start warming up!

'cause we're heading off to India in just over a week! Aaaargh!

Get e-mail updates

I've added new feature for those of you with busy lives. You can now subscribe to our blog. All you need to do is follow this link and input your e-mail address. Then by the wizardry of the internet, you'll be sent our increasingly surreal mutterings as we try to describe just exactly what it is like to take on the Indian drivers on their home turf.

We've doubled our target to £2,000

Some of you may have noticed that our website now has over £1,000 on it. Surely with less that two weeks to go the obvious choice would be to congratulate ourselves with a jar or two and a hearty slap on the back. Especially as there's still the pressing matter of working out where we're going to sleep each night.

But no, when I ask you, have you ever known us to do the sensible thing? Exactly, so we've decided to work out all the boring bits on the plane ride over freeing up extra time to squeeze you guys for a few more readies.

Thanks to all of you who have kindly supported us so far, your generosity really will make a difference where it is most needed. To those of you who have not yet dipped your hands it is not too late to redeem yourselves.

The Calamity sweepstakes is still open for you to profit from out misfortune. Alternatively why not come up with a challenge for us? We're fairly adventurous guys and will give most things a go for a suitable donation. Want to see us eat a stupidly hot curry? How about I ride to work in the chicken costume one day? Over to you...

Think you can predict our fate?

As we make our merry way from Kathmandu to Pondicherry there are a number of obstacles to navigate along the way. We've already mentioned the man-sized potholes, wild animals, suicidal pedestrians and entirely unpredictable local drivers.

If you put these together with a sense of direction that rivals a lemming and a vehicle that is less well put together than your average Ikea wardrobe it's a pretty safe bet that we'll come a cropper at some point.

So I thought what better way is there to entertain you and have a laugh at our misfortune than a Calamity Sweepstakes.

All you have to do is decide where the fickle hand of fate will catch up with us and give us a good smack.


Of course if you guess correctly not only will you be able to say "I told you so" for the rest of our lives, we'll also bring you something nice back from India.

Update:

For those of you with poor memories you can check which square(s) you have picked here.

Pimp my rickshaw

Regular readers of our blog will already be aware of the, ahem, limitations of an auto rickshaw when it comes to racing across an entire country or two.

To give us a sporting chance we have one opportunity before the race begins to 'pimp' our machines into something resembling a long distance grand tourer which will carry us without incident to Pondicherry where we will arrive with much pomp & ceremony for a nice cuppa and slice of cake.

At the risk of worrying you that we might be taking this all too seriously, after much deliberation our 'pimping' consists of the addition of a secondhand tape player, an air horn and a shiny new paint job:


Note our not so secret weapon - Indian go faster stripes.

As you read this our design is winging it's way to Kathmandu where a Nepalese mechanic is waiting to turn our vision into something guaranteed to look in some way vaguely not too dissimilar.