So. This has been a wild ride. We have been up at the crack of dawn almost every day, and spent way more time in the rickshaw than we planned. The rickshaw has broken down in a major way four times, but every time some friendly person has offered to help. The Indian people are extremely kind and helpful, sometimes to the point that it becomes slightly irritating. Every time we stop in a small town or a city we are surrounded by about 30 people wondering who we are and what we are doing in their neck of the woods. We realize that most of the villages have very few visitors, so we try to make the best of it.

As far as sightseeing goes, there has been very little time for that. We just managed to squeeze in a quick visit to Hampi, as well as a half day in Varanasi. We will try to get a half day in Darjeeling on our last day, but that will be about it.

We have met more nice people than you can imagine on this trip. If the nice people at a family dhaba 30 km south of Adilabad hadn't been there we would still be. The fact that people will go out of their way to help us at any opportunity is simply marvellous. We would never have gotten our rickshaw fixed in Chitradurga had it not been for the sweet nine year old girl who spoke English. The list goes on and on, from the tire guys who welded whatever it is you weld to get our wheel up and running to anyone who had gotten us on the right track when we were hopefully lost. Last, but not least, we should thank the police in Hyderabad who made us feel safe although they let us know that "people will attack foreigners".

Currently we are driving with a very nice American team, and we hope to make it to Darjeeling before dark tomorrow. If we do that it will only be a small 90 km trip left. Uphill and trough some obscure border crossing, but still, just 90 km.

So, we got up early as never before to try to make it to our goal for the day, Chitradurga. After some initial trouble with directions, something that would be the theme for the day, we made our way across the Western Ghats. Beautiful scenery and animals were plentiful, and we felt that we started our day on an incredible high note. Just as we stopped for a brief rest a gang of boys saw us, one of which climbed about 40 meters just to meet us. This of course deserved a June hat, which our sponsor had been kind enough to provide. We took a few more rest stops along the mountain range and tried to enjoy the nature as much as we could.

A few miles after the mountain range we joined up with team Teachers World Expedition, who had fallen a bit behind do to some engine trouble. We promptly drove on to the town of Chikmalagur, where Sebastian, Sofia and Andreas were invited in to a lovely Muslim family who made lunch for all of us. We ate the lunch along the way, and thus far everything was going according to plan, although we were slipping about an hour behind schedule.

The trouble started when we tried to make our way from our lunch stop to our proposed rest stop for the night, Chitradurga. No matter how much we tried to read maps, use iPhones or GPS, we could not seem to find our way there. It became pitch black, in a way you can only see in places without any electrical lights whatsoever. Having very little choice, we drove on to try to make it when mini-disaster struck. Our dearly beloved rickshaw blew a tire and proceeded to take a nose-dive into some well placed asphalt. This was all kinds of bad for the front suspension as it took the blunt of the force. After grabbing our spare and performing some low-level engineering we managed to get the rickshaw up and running. However, we had to drive the last 50 km at the manageable speed of 25 km/h since our breaks took a big hit as well. We made it to Chitradurga at 22.30, checked in to a hotel and the latest news is that Mr. Mechanic opens at 9.00 tomorrow. I guess we will know more then.

Also: You can follow our route at: http://bit.ly/9qrCES. We will try to update the map whenever we can, but our mobile Internet support does not extend that far quite yet.

After an entire day of flying various airplanes we finally arrived in Cochin early yesterday morning. India treated us very well from the very first minute, apart from the guy who tried to pull a fast one when we needed a taxi to our domestic flight.

The hotel we're staying at is every bit as nice as we hoped it would be. We feel a little bit strange though, with everyone wanting to help us out in every way imaginable. Nonetheless, we enjoy our morning swims in the incredible pool area overlooking the Indian Ocean. We are not used to all the hospitality, and it seriously is starting to feel a bit awkward. However we realize that we will cherish this memory fondly during the actual race.

As far as our vehicle goes, we feel it is now our friend. Albeit a somewhat unreliable friend as far as actually starting goes. We have met most of the other teams, and it seems to be a nice mix of adventurers. We will maybe try to join forces with some of them in order to meet a few new crazy individuals. Also, we might have decided to take a more western route than we originally planned. This will be decided over breakfast tomorrow.

In closing, we are spoiled, hot and happy.

And, oh yeah, Sebastian has driven a rickshaw. Don't tell the Indian police.

Our first corporate sponsor has joined us in our quest to bring as much clean water to the people of India as humanly possible. Seeing that actually attempting to bring the water there ourselves seemed like quite the undertaking, we have, as you might know, chosen to support the efforts of Frank Water Projects. The people at June also felt that this would be a somewhat more effective approach to bringing clean water to India, and chose to donate £1000 to this wonderful organization.

We would like to extend our warmest thanks to our friends at June for their participation in the event, and for their charitable donation to a very worthy cause. You can follow our adventure at June’s website by visiting http://www.june.se/run. If you would like to know a bit more about June, visit our sponsors section or just pop by the aforementioned website.

If you, or your organization, would like to help the people in India by teaming up with us in any way imaginable, just contact us via the contact form found here. If you prefer some other form of media, you can easily reach us on our Facebook Fan Page, so whatever suits you is fine with us.

Yesterday was our second planning meeting. Sofia is leaving for London today, will fly to Malaysia in a week, and will hopefully hook up with us in India. Therefore, this was our last chance to book the flights and accommodation we will need to kick the race off. The result of this afternoon was that we will fly some sort of domestic flight from Mumbai to Kochi, and if all goes according to plan we will arrive there at 10.40 on the 25th to officially start our adventure. The first three nights we will stay at a hotel called Taj Malabar, which should be a nice lead-up the actual race. We have no illusions of being able to stay at places with standards anywhere remotely close to this during the actual race. Instead we figure that we will most likely stay at very remote places.

We also took our final round of shots yesterday, so we are preparing for a nice weekend of fevers and general pain in our body. Interestingly enough, this should well prepare us for the actual race in more than one way.

During the first two days in Kochi, all of us with driver's licenses will be able to test drive our vehicles. In order to prepare for this, we sought out the only rickshaw we could find in Stockholm and tried to take it for a spin. We ended up in a less than advantageous situation, and were it not for the nearby subway station we would most likely have been stuck big-time, with no mode of transportation to take us were we needed to go. Once again, this should well prepare us for the actual race. We just hope that it is just a tiny bit warmer in India than it was in Sweden yesterday.