Day 14

I thought we were going to have a lie in but that wasn’t happening. Dad woke us up at 7.30, we went upstairs to have breakfast - that’s what I thought. But they didn’t want to eat at ours so we walked about 4km around the town with nowhere doing breakfast and us ending up walking back to the hotel and going to next door’s hotel restaurant.

It was lovey to be fair, I just wish we had sat down and ate there in the first place. We went for another walk around the fort and did a little shopping, the men got us ripped off because they felt sorry for the man with how much we were buying and the little price we were paying so I pushed him down from almost 5000 rupees to 3500 which is still a decent amount... and then they wanted me to pay him 4000 rupees. Absolutely mugged off.

We had to get back the rickshaws by 11.30am as we were crossing the finish line around 12.30pm. It’s weird that this will be the last time we drive the little things! A little sad to see them go :(

We got changed into our hippy clothes ready for our victory parade. We got them geared up for the last time outside the hotel, they ran like clockwork and we had just enough petrol in them to not have any left in our Jerry cans. Perfecto!

Our horn had never beeped so much in the space of 1km, we had a traditional band banging their drums for us as we came through the palace entrance and under the finish line flags! We came in 14th place out of 78 teams. We did good!

The next task was to get the two rickshaws on the podium without one falling off backwards and to keep the camels looking at the camera and not have their bum staring at the camera.

I had a lump in my throat it was a little emotional to say the least! We had accomplished it! This dangerous silly challenge that tour companies wouldn’t take a travel insurance policy out on you because of the danger. We faced oncoming lorries on the wrong side of the road, buses not knowing where break is, trucks heavily overweighed with completely bald tyres and no tread. Animals, street stalls begging in the rickshaws when stopped at traffic, mopeds everywhere, getting forced off the road by selfie mad mopeds and car drivers. Horrendous rubble ‘highway roads’ driving in the small windy National Park roads and driving in the middle of a thunderstorm with torrential rain and wind trying to blow us off the road. The Kerela strike and most importantly the dry state for two days! There’s so much more, I can’t even put it into words! Such an amazing adventure and the people of all the rickshaw teams have been brilliant aswell song the way bumping into each other at ransom stops and on rods you think your the only team on for miles and miles.

We had a beer and handed back all the documents, clapped all the teams that had made it back to the podium. Shared a few stories and at 2pm we got ready for the victory parade around Jaisalmer. By this point I think around 50 rickshaws had made it back to the finish line and were all going to be parading down the little winding streets of Jaisalmer trying to dodge al those rickshaws, bikes and people! Oh Jesus Christ!

The parade began with the organiser sat backwards on a moped waving the huge rickshaw rub flag. The parade soon turned into a race when the kiwis got involved. Uncle Terry being as competitive as he is over took them all in the smallest of alleys to get to the front. I was just trying to keep the plastic taffs from getting in front of us. Haha I’m a good driver at times! Although I really don’t think I should have been driving as I was feeling a wee bit tipsy I must say!

The race/parade lasted about 15 minutes, I’m not sure how we managed it without knocking someone over, hitting a cow or knocking down a motorbike I do not know!

Afterwards it was like a huge rally driving the rickshaws around in circles on the dirt track. Haha, how anyone of us didn’t tip our rickshaws over I do not know! It was nuts. I had a huge film of sand over my face.

Once it managed to settle down and everybody got thirsty the bar opened and the cricket match began, I almost caught a ball as you know they’re attracted to my head sports balls! We all got a little tipsy or drunk even come 3pm, didn’t help that it was 45 degrees and we were in the middle of the desert.

We got tired and needed a shower so went back napped and showered ready for the closing party tonight, I think the nap stewed is a little though. It took a while for us to come around. By that time loads of people had stayed out and were stewed so we had to play catch up (sort of)
Ross won 3 photos of the day over the 14 day rickshaw run and won 3 beers for it, he got to take the blown up photos Home too. They weren’t up to his photo quality standard but they were good enough for us!

Got dragged up to the dance floor by Fill one of the plastic taffs and the rest was history as it came to dancing, I was off and we retreated to bed at 2.30am. No ideal when your pick up for the airport is at 5am! Whoopsie haha.

It’s the end of the rickshaw run!!
We raised over our target amount and we had a super awesome time with no injuries so winning all around!

What an experience!