Mamallapuram - Chennai - Velore - Ongole - Guntur
A nice early start to the new year - and what better way to spend it than on a motorway! Left at 6am which was fortunate as the concept of a bypass has yet to be considered here. The "motorway" went straight through the centre of Madras (Chennai)! A very dull day spent dodging trucks that had decided to travel up the wrong side of the motorway (actually a very common thing - sometimes they even try to overtake each other!) Our rickshaw broke down shortly after a refuelling stop (too much 2T oil we think)...so myself and Sam (Bombay Bucanneers) took their rickshaw to a local village to collect a mechanic and drive him back to the motorway for a bit of "Road-Side Recovery". During the process we somehow managed to swap our dodgy spark plug with the Bucanneers' one - but I think they now want to swap it back! We also picked up a passenger on his way to work in a dairy. The only other "event" was being stopped by the police in Ongole, who demanded a backhander to let us continue (even though all our documents were correct and we aren't able to break the speed limit - we've been trying to unsuccessfully since the start of the trip and have only come close with a bit of a run up and a steep downhill gradient, helped by the fact that Paul and myself are still a bit on the heavy side despite over a week of local food). Still the police were nice enough to show us the way to a dodgy hotel that we left a few minutes later when they also asked for a large "deposit"! - which is why we carried on to Guntur
A nice early start to the new year - and what better way to spend it than on a motorway! Left at 6am which was fortunate as the concept of a bypass has yet to be considered here. The "motorway" went straight through the centre of Madras (Chennai)! A very dull day spent dodging trucks that had decided to travel up the wrong side of the motorway (actually a very common thing - sometimes they even try to overtake each other!) Our rickshaw broke down shortly after a refuelling stop (too much 2T oil we think)...so myself and Sam (Bombay Bucanneers) took their rickshaw to a local village to collect a mechanic and drive him back to the motorway for a bit of "Road-Side Recovery". During the process we somehow managed to swap our dodgy spark plug with the Bucanneers' one - but I think they now want to swap it back! We also picked up a passenger on his way to work in a dairy. The only other "event" was being stopped by the police in Ongole, who demanded a backhander to let us continue (even though all our documents were correct and we aren't able to break the speed limit - we've been trying to unsuccessfully since the start of the trip and have only come close with a bit of a run up and a steep downhill gradient, helped by the fact that Paul and myself are still a bit on the heavy side despite over a week of local food). Still the police were nice enough to show us the way to a dodgy hotel that we left a few minutes later when they also asked for a large "deposit"! - which is why we carried on to Guntur
0 comments:
Post a Comment