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.
