Day one Fort Kochi - Puthanathani

Launch at 11am Edwards high school fort kochi, it was bonkers at the school yard! Loads of people dressed up and finishing the pimping of their shaws! By far we were the best dressed (of course) we stood out like sore thumbs with our hippy clothes on, ross couldn’t walk tidy, he wasn’t grasping that mum didn’t make the trousers with a seam down the middle haha! The weather was boiling, the sun was piercing and the humidity to add didn’t help, everything was sticking to us, sweat coming from my knees if that was even possible?

Engines checked and all ready to go! A ready send off from mum and aunty lynne, nervous and worried I think. But they’re going off on their jolly around Kerela and Goa!

The start to the run was awesome, they had the local band there banging their bongo drums in their traditional skirts, flower petals being thrown and the organiser waving the humongous purple and yellow rickshaw run flag. All the locals crowded the gates of the entrance, we had to be different though and not follow the crowd of rickshaws that started out, we went left instead of right, almost ploughing down 4 locals on the way. A great start from the tikkas!

We had to get out of the ‘rat race’ 80 Tuk Tuks plus the rest of Kochi’s traffic on very narrow roads isn’t a great start, we didn’t want to be ages getting out of the town and over the small bridges, our first option was out of the question - a ferry. They shut the ferry port.

It only took us 25 minutes to get out, as we got to the bridge we started to meet some of the other shaws, all giggling and excited we were dodging dodging each other and locals to get onto the bridge and out of fort kochi.

The roads were fairly busy but nicely laid out. The locals piled up in their cars wanting selfies and almost knocking into us or other vehicles to get it. We were all on a bit of a high though, you can imagine the eyesore we all were!

We stopped about 2 hours in. The men had to get their trousers off by this point they were buckets of sweat in their flowery suede! Haha. We stopped in the middle of nowhere for a drink, the locals definetly didn’t understand us for two fantas and two lemonades, it took me 5 minutes to get it right and I was doing charades for her!

Loads passed us along the way, still in high spirits shouting to locals as they scream though! Some of them are blasting these little engines! They obviously missed the Moto “Slow and Steady wins the race”

Our goal was Ponnani, we got here within plenty of time, we had lots of day light left, We cracked on as we seen a load of other shaws going our way so our next pit stop, all still waving like celebrities and loving the attention we knew we would be fine as we could make it to a town and everywhere we went had signs saying ‘hotel’ we stopped in a little town (dive) called Puthanathani, it was about 15km outside our goal stop of Kozhikode City.

It was closing in on 4.45pm now, with not much day light left we pulled up and me and uncle terry went to check out the hotel. We asked to see it thinking it was the big building behind this little shack restaurant.... he tried to collar us in “sit my friend sit” we kept shaking or heads and pointing at the hotel sign but he kept saying “yes, sir please”. It soon clicked in my head that the Hotel sign didn’t mean hotel, it meant restaurant. And so it turns out, this has caught on throughout town and now they all have huge red and white hotel signs outside their restaurants.

My next plan was to play charades with them, “hotel, sleep! (Worldwide symbol for sleep crept in or course!)” this didn’t sink for a little while, you can see the cloggs turning... and then all of a sudden their eyes light up and they start shouting and pointing up the road. It took theee different stops and lots of people alongside the road until we got the right name of the place ‘souparnika Inn’ i think we were all relieved to see the hotel, knowing we didn’t have to travel after dark or sleep in our tuk tuks! We pulled up, and of course two men look absolutely gobsmacked. Not sure this was because they didn’t expect customers or if they thought we were absolute loonatics in hippy clothes with two rickshaws jazzed up with two big flags on the top of them.

Either way, we found a hotel with rooms available and it was only £10 a night. The rooms weren’t bad at all. You know how good is it going to get for £5pp per night?!

We were all just glad to stretch our legs and have a shower! I had a trickle out of my shower and it was cold, the cold bit I didn’t mind so much because I was so sticky and hot it was refreshing.

Ross managed to have a nice full water flowing shower, I obviously had the dummy run. Shows how many people were visiting here. Even though they said we couldn’t have a room together because the others were occupied. Ross said it was that spookily quite in there that it was like a hotel off the shining movie. (I wouldn’t know because I’m PETRIFIED of scary movies - thanks for putting that thought in my head Ross.)

We got showered and headed downstairs to find some food, the manager of the hotel turns up. We think... funny looking little chap, started talking to dad about what we were doing and dropped the major bombshell...

Tomorrow 2nd April 2018, Kerela state is striking over municipality tax rises. All petrol stations, shops, hotels and restaurants will be closed. Reminder that we are 270km from the border of Kerela/Karnataka ....really!

Second piece of bad news (glad we met this guy...) the entire of Kerela is dry on the 1st of every month. This evening keeps getting better.

So off we head our 10litre petrol jerry can to dinner with us to get some petrol for tomorrow! Trying to flag a rickshaw down outside the hotel, one pulls up with a young pretty girl in it, she is already paying to be taken somewhere and the driver was going to chuck her out for us to get in it. Absolutely gobsmacked we all shouted No! And we flagged another down, just in time for it t start raining all four of us squeezed (somehow, I don’t know how) into the back of this tuk tuk to the petrol station whilst the storm closed in and the rain started bouncing off the roads and there was thunder and lightning to add to it. Once we had the petrol we headed back towards the hotel, to the Park Inn “Hotel” for food. Main attraction again, of course! We stood out like sore thumbs dressed in normal clothes.

It wasn’t really a restaurant, more so a tent with some plastic garden furniture and a cooker set up in it somehow.

We ordered dinner, and had to move the petrol can from underneath the table next to uncle terry, he wasn’t happy having it under the table whilst sat next to an open kitchen with flames flying about the place haha!

His chicken curry didn’t cut the mustard either, the chicken was on the bone. I don’t blame him.. I couldn’t eat that either! I’m sticking to veg thank you very much!

All good food though, couldn’t risk the walk back in the dark with no pavement and loonatic drivers, but do you think we could have down a tuk tuk when we actually wanted one?! Millions of them flying around here but never when you actually want one!

We retreated back to the room, they managed to find English football on the telly and Ross pulled it outta the bag... literally! He bright a bottle of whiskey with him - prepared! Shame I don’t like it. But the men had some and then Ross fell asleep on the rock hard bed. He looked like grandad when he used to fall asleep on his whiskey glass haha.

Time for an early night on our rock hard beds with rock hard pillows it is, we have a tough day ahead tomorrow by the looks!

Kilometres covered today - 140km

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