Pimp slapped by mother nature & shaken down by police

Race Day 7: from parts unknown to Hyderbad

Money raise for charity: $1,254

Distance Traveled: 1750 km
Fender Benders: 5, wham, bam, thank you hit & run drivers, pleasure trading paint with you.
Near Death Experiences : 7
Delhi Bellies: 7

We though driving on India's road was the dumbest thing we'd ever do.  We were wrong, we soon found driving on India's roads at night was significantly dumber.  Last night we ascended to an even higher level of dumbness by  driving at night in the middle of a lighting storm. 

Here's what we learned: Drivers in India are aggressive during the day, insane at night and all have death-wishes when it's raining.  

After 3 hours of driving in the rain with our little rickshaw being pimp slapped by mother nature, pot holes and oncoming traffic we smashed into a HUGE pothole.  Our shaw had had enough and refused to start.  We pushed it along in the lightening illuminated rain for 10 minutes before it sputtered back to life and chugged along to a service station.  The station's service attendant knew someone who knew someone who's brothers-friends-cousin was a mechanic.  After a serious of late night phone calls the mechanic arrived, took a look at our shaw, saw part of the drive train sheered off and declared, "not  important, you keep driving."  So we kept driving. 

Today we discovered our first nice road, National Highway #7 (aka NH7).  It's the first road we've discovered that isn't littered with potholes, random cows and oncoming traffic.  After an hour on the NH7 we're making great time but start getting bored as we're lacking the nearth death experiences we've come to expect on India's roads. 

We arrive in Hyderbad as night falls and a local traffic cop descends upon us. "You not allowed on road" he politely says in broken english.  "2,500 rupee fine" he sputters, sticking out his hand and pointing to it, hoping we'll dole over the equivalent of $56.  Determined not to be shaken down we try talking our way out of the ticket. "What a nice helmet" we say, pointing at the flimsy construction helmet he's wearing, "where can we find a helmet like that?".  He pushes his hand out farther and taps it impatiently, "2,500 rupees."  We keep asking about his helmet, we ask for directions, we talk about everything around us, ask the best places to eat in Hyderbad, talk about his wife and kids, we do everything we can think of to waste his time.  Dan, our videographer signals to us that he's just going to drive off.  Just as we're about to jump in our shaw and try to escape he says, "ok, you can go."  And with that we're off. 

Pip pip,
Cedric
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