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.