We've made it!

Race Day 15 & 16:Patna to the finish line

Money raise for charity:$1,554

Distance Traveled: 5000 km

Fender Benders: 12

Near Death Experiences : 13

Teammates who completed the Rally: 2/3

Tears of joy streamed down our faces as we crossed the finish!  We jumped out of our rickshaw and were so intensely kissing the ground we didn't realize the rickshaw was still chugging along unmanned until we heard it crash into the side of a nearby hotel, whoops!

The noise of the crash and sight of two homeless looking people kissing the ground drew a crowd,  Chris and I heard our names being yelled by our fellow rickshaw racers.  Our friends swooped in, stood us up, and whisked us off to get properly smashed.  We drank like it was the end of the world and traded stories so funny we fell over laughing, Chris nearly broke a rib. 

We woke at noon and stumbled to the leader board to see how we'd done compared to the other teams. It turned out we were the last team to finish the race.  We arrived 2 days after the race officially ended, out of 73 teams who started the race, 65 finished before us and 7 quit.  We may have finished dead last, but at least we finished.   

We later learned one team flipped their their rickshaw and the driver broke his leg so badly he had to be flown to San Francisco for emergency surgery.  Another team from Japan with 3 rickshaws, a support vehicle and 3 spare drivers threw in the towel after the first week.  The worst of the stories [WARNING: this is graphic, so if you have a weak stomach you may want to skip this bit] A team was chugging along half way through the race when a family of 4 on a motorbike drove by them to say hello, a semi truck passing another semi hit the families' motorbike head on, killing them all instantly, the team quit right then and flew back home the next day.  

After hearing those sobering stories we realized the gravity of what we'd just accomplished.  We drove 5,000 km (3,300 miles) across the most deadly roads in the world, nearly died 13 times, lost a team member, got into an auto reck, nearly quit… but we made it across the finish line… alive!

The last leg of the journey had been a mad dash, we'd driven all day, all night, slept in the rickshaw (which feels like someone's bent you into a human pretzel, strung you up like a piñata and beaten you senseless) and somehow made it to the finish line alive. 

Big thanks go to friends, family and especially our sponsor, Razoo.  The amazing people at Razoo kept us in good spirits when we were down, sent us inspirational words daily and helped us at every turn when our luck conspired against us.  

We're soooooo very happy to be alive. 

Cheers, 

Cedric

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Time to quit?

Race Day 15:Varanasi to Patna…

Money raise for charity:$1,354

Distance Traveled: 3600 km

Fender Benders: 12, our side view mirrors take a pounding and we're clipped 3 times by passing traffic. 

Near Death Experiences : 13, see below for details

At 4pm we arrive in Patna exhausted, frustrated and ready to quit.  We've crashed, lost a team-mate and nearly died a dozen times.  We're done, we've had enough, we decide we've put in a good effort and now it's time to quit.  

Here's the story…

 "To survive India's roads you need good horn, good brakes and good luck", parting words from our hotel clerk in Varanasi.  We hop in our freshly fixed up rickshaw and discover our horn has developed a strange new quirk.   The horn button no-longer sounds the horn, instead it sounds when we turn on our lights and sputters a weak, "honnn….nnn…nnk".  

Driving in India is horrifying with a working car and nearly suicidal without a horn; we're run off the road and nearly die 3 times because we're hornless. 

To make things more interesting the roads between Varanasi and Patna are littered with unmarked speed bumps.  One minute you're driving along, thinking everything is fine when suddenly BAM!!! You smash into a speed bump at full speed, your rickshaw pops up half a meter and everyone is nearly ejected through the roof.   

India has 3 types of speed bumps

The single - a single speed bump, usually 1/3 meter high with no visible markings, if you hit one at full speed everyone in the shaw is guaranteed to hit the ceiling

The triple - 3 speed bumps positioned very close together, driving over these at full speed results in massive fishtailing and potentially flipping your rickshaw. 

The fiver - 5 speed bumps in a row, driving over them at full speed results in a smashed groin, motion sickness and may cause to projectile vomiting.

We arrive in Patna exhausted, frustrated and ready to quit.  We've crashed, lost a team-mate and nearly died a dozen times.  We're done, we've had enough, we decide we've put in a good effort and now it's time to quit.  We head to an internet cafe to plan our escape.  Just before booking our tickets we check our email and discover letter upon letter of support and encouragement from friends, family and strangers who have written to us.  Chris and I look at each other and without exchanging a word we know we've got to keep going. 

We hit the road hard, drive through the night and around 2am pull into a gas station and sleep in the rickshaw. 

Cheers, 

Cedric
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3 days in Varanasi

Blog 13

Race day 12-14

We spend 3 days in Varanasi recovering from our crash and getting our rickshaw fixed.  Here's what we encounter: 

• Attempted robbery: A local tries to rob us.
• Missing person: Our camera man/equipment have disappeared without a trace. 
• Stoning: Chris (the charity organizer) nearly get's stoned to death because he accidentally walks into a cremation ceremony. 

A word of advice, if you're making a list of places to avoid in India put Varanasi at the top of your list... unless you're into geting robbed, having your friends disappear and nearly getting stoned to death, if that's your thing then you'll enjoy Varanasi. 

Cheers, 

Cedric
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Man Down

Race Day 11:Parts Unknown to Varanasi

Money raise for charity:$1,354

Distance Traveled: 3050 km

Fender Benders: 9, distracted by thoughts of yesterdays crash we bump into 2 cars while stuck in gridlock and clip 2 parked semi trucks by trying to squeeze between them. 

Near Death Experiences : 10

We wake at 5am hoping to get an early start and immediately our plans unravel.  We've managed to loose our keys. The entire hotels staff searches for them while locals teach us how to hot-wire the shaw incase we can't find them.  After 2 hours of key-hunting and hot-wiring lessons we head toward town to find a key-maker who can make a replacement.  He tries and tries for the better part of an hour and eventually quits, "your key too hard" he mumbles and walks away for his morning chai.  While traveling to a second key maker, our driver points at a man a few blocks away who's running madly towards us.  As the madman gets closer we recognize him as the hotels concierge and at the end of his flailing hand we see our rickshaw key.  Finally at 9am we hit the road.  

15 minutes into the trip our windshield falls off, delayed damage from yesterdays crash.  Without our windshield the rickshaw's interior acts like a parachute and we're driving at half speed. Our solution: taping together bits of glass from the windshield to make a small "wind screen", about 1/3 the size of our original windshield and about 1/3 as effective.  The team we've traveled wi decides to carry on at full speed while we sputter to the next city hoping to find someone to fix up our shaw. 

As soon as we land in Varanasi our camera man (Daniel Gonzales) and all the camera equipment disappears without a trace .  There's no note, no good bye, he's just left, looks like we'll be filming the rest of the adventure with camera phones.  

Chris (the charity organizer) takes the rickshaw to the local Bajaj Dealer where they try to shake him down, a local takes pity on us and negotiates a decent price with the mechanics to fix our shaw.  It takes 3 days for them to get it in proper working order but they manage to pull it off. 

Cedric
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The CRASH!

Race Day 10

Money raise for charity:$1,254

Distance Traveled: 2550 km

Fender Benders: 6

Near Death Experiences : 10, details below 

We've managed to survive after horribly crashing our rickshaw. 

Our first mistake,  driving in India.  When driving in India it's only a matter of time before you're in a serious auto reck. For some people it takes years, for us, it took 10 days. 

Our second mistake, driving in India at night.  Driving during the day is pure insanity, driving at night is insanity's older, meaner, scarier brother. 

Here's the story...

As the sun dips past the horizon Daniel (the videographer) takes the wheel, pounds a "5 hour energy" and says, "driving in India is like a video game, it's a good thing I'm awesome at video games."  His words made my skin crawled, something deep down inside me knew no good would come of this evening. 

The driving started out nutty as usual and as the last bits of light left the sky driving became even completely bonkers, as usual.  Normally we'd drink heavily to deal with the massive stress of these roads, tonight however we were fresh out of booze, so I decided to meditate.  I closed my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts.  Less than a minute passes when suddenly Dan screams, "SHIT!" we hear a cow, "MOOOOOOO", feel the rickshaw swerve right and I open my eyes to see our rickshaw falling onto it's right side as two semi trucks barrel towards us.  


Sparks fly as the rickshaw's side smashes onto pavement and slides towards the semis.  The first semi misses us… the second clips our shaw and we spin like a top, flipping end over end on our side.  As this is happening my body is pressed against the ground with Chris (the charity organizer) pressed against me and our combined weight is pressing down against my elbow which is pinned against the ground and being torn to tatters as if the street was a power-sander and my arm was a soft boiled egg, peaces of arm fly off never to be seen again.  I watch sparks fly from the metal bits of our shaw and land on the spare gas tank by my feet, if one of those sparks ignites the gas... we're all dead.  


After what feels like an eternity the rickshaw comes to stop, we hear the Indian voices shouting in the distance and the pitter patter of running feet.  Brown hands reach into the rickshaw and pull us out one by one.  Daniel seems to have emerged unscathed, Chris has a nasty scrape on his back and the locals are looking in horror at my right side.  I look down to discover a red mess where my elbow should have been and road rash from my hip to ankle.  I ask, "hospital?" in broken Hindi and two young men break from the groaning crowd to act as escorts.

The local doctor pumps me full of morphine, wraps a big bandage around my elbow, gives me a handful of antibiotics/bandages and wishes us luck.  The bill, about 1% what you'd pay in America.  The quality of medical treatment, about 1% what you'd received in America.  

Chris & Daniel convince a local mechanic to fix up our shaw good enough to drive to the next hotel while I grab a ride from another team of Rickshaw Rallyers, a lovely bunch from the UK.    They have whiskey, glorious delicious whiskey, I drink most of it and smile as it dances tango with the morphine already in my system.

After 2 hours of driving we arrive at a "nice" hotel by Indian standards (about a 1 star hotel by "wester" standards) and Chris helps changes our bandages.  We see the bone, fat and muscles of my elbow leaking out as he dresses the wound.  Unable to find any sort of stitches we superglue the wound together and hope for the best. 

We pass out, the three of us sharing a full sized bed and planning on waking at 5am to continue our adventure.  Even after the accident we wouldn't have believed that in the next few days we'd be a man down and ready to quit. 

Cheers, 

Cedric
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Dumbest game of chicken... ever

Race Day 9: Nagpur to parts unknown

Money raise for charity:$1,254

Distance Traveled: 1750 km

Fender Benders: 5

Near Death Experiences : 9, see below for details. 

Delhi Bellies: 7

Our rickshaw breaks down twice, mechanic's randomly arrive and fix us up in no time flat.  Total bill for both mechanics, $2. 

Ode to the squat toilet: most toilets in India are "squat" toilets.  Essentially it's a hole in ground.  Encountering one for the first time is a bit like your first hangover; it's terrible and you'd rather die than experience a bad one.  The locals seem to prefer them to "western" toilets and opt to use their hands instead of toilet paper,  tourists either bring their own TP or are forced to get creative in a pinch.  After forgetting to buy TP we've started getting creative. 

Today while driving, Chris (the charitable one) decides he's had enough of getting pushed off the road by oncoming semi-trucks and decides he's going to play chicken the next one.  Keep in mind the semi-trucks in India are MASSIVE, they're easily twice as long as an American/British semi and packed well over capacity.  Chris grumbles something to himself as an oncoming semi drives into our lane of traffic and heads towards us on collision course.  At this point most Indian drivers would pull off to the side of the road, let the oncoming semi pass them and avoid certain death; Chris however opted for a different tactic.  He kept our little rickshaw (about 10% the size of the oncoming semi) fixed in the middle of the road as the MASSIVE semi sped towards us.  


The semi honked, Chris wasn't fazed.   The semi tried to blind us by vigorously blinking it's (VERY BRIGHT) high beams while honking more aggressively, Chris didn't change course.  As our two autos flew towards each other Daneil (the film maker) and I (the logistics guy) started fearing for our lives a bit more than normal and tried to reason with Chris, he wouldn't hear it.  We watched as the semi grew larger and larger on the horizon and with it the dread of our impending  doom grew larger and larger.  


At 30 yards away Daniel and I hung onto the autos with white knuckles, our eyes wide open with fear.  At 20 yards our bodies dumped adrenaline into our blood stream as our brains prepared our bodies for the pain we were about to experience.  At 10 yards time slowed to crawl, beads of sweat dropped from our lifted brows in slow motion and we locked eyes with the semi driver, we were scared, he was horrified.  At 5 yards the semi driver yanked his steering wheel hard and to the left.  We watched as our two vehicles came within nanometers of hitting each other.  We continue watching as the semi zooms past his side of the road and skids to a stop on the shoulder.  We were David, the semi was Goliath and somehow we had just won the deadliest (and stupidest) game of chicken ever played. 

Very happy to be alive, 

Cedric
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"India is a crazy place..."

Race Day 8: Hyderbad to Nagpur

Money raise for charity:$1,254

Distance Traveled: 1250 km

Fender Benders: 5

Near Death Experiences : 8, a scooter shoots out in front of us, the driver freezes and just stares at us as we fly towards him.  Daniel (our videographer) slams on the brakes while Chris (the charity organizer) and I (the logistics guy) nearly fly through the windshield.  Our rickshaw screeches to a stop just inches away from the scooter driver.  He doesn't move so we just drive around him, honk for good measure (they honk at everything here) and drive off. 

Delhi Bellies: 7

We stop at random village in on our way to Nagpur and instantly we're surrounded by 60 smiling & curious Indians.  "Where you from" they echo.  "We're from America & Germany" we answer and ask, "Where are you from?"  In unison they all smile and say, "INDIA!" We laugh and tell them our story through gestures, they look impressed as we tell them we're going from 1 corner of India to another in an auto-rickshaw.  A young indian boy (must have been 12 or 13) tells us that we're crazy to take on such a journey and that India is a crazy place, so it was a smart move doing the rickshaw rally here. People in the villages are all have HUGE hearts and offer us everything they have, "take my food, take my water, let me help you" they say.  They have nothing & ask for nothing.  India has a special spirit.  These people deserve better.  I hope our efforts here can have an impact. 

Cheers, 

Cedric
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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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Driving in India is a bad idea

Race Day 6: Humpie to parts unknown
Money raise for charity: $1,254
Distance Traveled: 1700 km
Fender Benders: 4, whoops!
Near Death Experiences: 7… uh oh, we've stopped getting adrenaline rushes right before oncoming traffic nearly kills us
Delhi Bellies: 5

Having daily emotional breakdowns is easy near death experiences happen every few hours. Saying, "driving in India is a bad idea" is flagrant & dramatic understatement. The experience is akin to going the wrong way during the running of the bulls… while on a tricycle… and unable to understand the locals who are yelling survival tips… or cursing at you. Tension in the group is high.

To make things interesting our battery decides it no longer likes our company makes a run for it. After wiggling itself loose and dropping out the bottom of our Rickshaw it somersaults off the side of the roadto freedom.

After replacing the renegade battery we cheerily (bit o' sarcasm there) keep on trekking.

Quotes of the day,
David, "I'll try to get that on film next time we're about to die"
Chris's follow up, "That could be really soon"

Cheers,
Cedric
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