Despite the luxury of last night, we were on the road early as we had decided to drive east instead of south, and hopefully end up pretty near the coast by bedtime.

Something of a wild road, with absolutely CRAZY bus drivers (much more manic than any seen/experienced so far). On several occasions, the only safe option was to remove ourselves from the road and onto the dirt verge. On we drove with Vijayawada our intended destination.


We had a brilliant chai stop mid morning, nothing out of the ordinary, just the group of kids who were they, all with HUGE smiles and a few words of English. They would greet us and then giggle, nudging each other till one of the braver ones would say something else, which resulted in them all laughing again, They brought over the adults and soon we were introduced to virtually the whole village, and were all chatting away, though probably the two halves of the conversation didnt really go together to make a whole... They all seem to love having their photo taken; I have lost count of the number of times I have heard "Photo please". And they had so much fun looking at all the pictures that one of the girls was taken when she borrowed the camera. Some of the kids took turns sitting in the driver seat. And some of the women were suggesting that they offload their husbands on us, as we take them with us to Chennai! It was such an enjoyable break that we were sorry to leave.



I genuinely think Dolly was sorry to leave too, because shortly afterwards, she was up to her old tricks again. The engine just cut out completely as we were driving. No warning, just stopped. And, as usual, after a few minutes, she started up fine. So we kept going, but as soon as we reached the next town, erred on the side of caution, and got her checked out by a mechanic, who very kindly ushered us into his house with his wife and mother while we waited for him to sort out the problem, which turned out to be the petrol filter needing cleaned.

While we were there, a man who had been following us while we were driving, and trying to speak to us while overtaking, caught up with us and introduced himself. He told us he worked at a project a few kilometres further on, which grows herbs and plants with medicinal propoerties, then teams go to local villages and find out about the healthcare problems that they have, and also to catalogue the traditional remedies used, where previously they would only have been passed on orally. The women are then given training in what plants can be used to treat various ailments, so that they do not have to buy expensive western medicines, which can take up as much as a fifth of their annual budget. The project has received funding from the UN Development Programme. We were shown the plants, which are due to be distributed to the villages shortly - after and once the work in completed in the area, each village should be able to sustain the plants independently. We spent several very enjoyable hours there, all the people working in the nurseries were lovely, and it really was a great shame to leave, but we were still some distance from Vijayawada so had to get going.


A short distance on, we passed a few other teams, before getting stuck in pretty bad traffic in the not so nice looking Kodar, caused by a very nasty looking accident (another...).

We carried on out of town but had probably only gone about 10km when Dolly ground to a halt. We decided that with only two hours of so of daylight left, and around 80km still to go, we couldn't risk carrying on. So we headed back to Kodar (according to the map or Kodad on the sign post) and found another mechanic. There was absolutely no reason for it, but neither of us felt as confident about these guys, even when they took a look and pronounced "no problem". I'm sorry, but to my utterly unmechanical mind, if there is 'no problem' then she should not be stopping for no apparent reason.

Anyway, we drove off - they kindly didn't charge us and neither did this morning's mechanic. As we headed back into the traffic, we spotted a Bajaj (ie the make of rickshaw) garage so did the obvious and pulled in to get them to take a look. There was a bit of shaking heads and uncertain glances when we told then she was petrol, not diesel, but soon they got to work on her, and Sharon and I were chatting happily with the branch manager. He didn't take our hints that we needed somewhere to stay, but he cleared up the misinformation that we had been given earlier that hte town lodge was for men only, and soon we had averted our eyes from the cockroaches and checked in for the night. In terms of any place I have ever stayed anywhere in the world, this one was rather a low point but as we had vaguely considered the possibility of the workshop floor, perhaps this wasn't such a bad option.

We headed back to the workshop and the manager wanted to have his photo taken with us, we were happy to oblige after he told us he wouldn't charge us for any work done - that was each of the day's three mechanics very kindly helping us on our way without any costs incurred.... One of the mechanics drove us back to the lodge in Dolly before he took her back to spend the night at the workshop (I think she would have been safer there). Neither of us even had the energy to look for food after such a long day - really wasn't expecting three pitstops so it was a little demoralising.

That said, Dolly may appear to have a mind of her own, but had she not stopped that first time today, we would have missed out on visiting the UNDP programme, which would have been a real shame. Maybe she knows what she is doing after all?!