Day 10

Wake up call at 6am, there was a smell of sewerage in or room. Not very pleasant. I’m sure it’s from outside, in the hallway they left the window open and the smell was coming through last night.

We were loaded by 6.40am and went up early first breakfast so that we could get on our way before the city woke up. We were determined to not feed ourselves at lunch time today and make ourselves feel sick of food by 1pm so a breakfast to keep us going would do the trick. Cornflakes with hot milk here, it’s not a great taste I must say. We mainly had just toast, Ross and dad had the curry and potatoes aswell.

We were on the road by 7.10am, the city was smelly and quiet. For five minutes... there weren’t many vehicles but the few that were there made sure they made just as much noise.

First b**** of the day... got on the HW48 road that we were on all day yesterday without any trouble and got stopped at the toll booth 9km’s in, told that rickshaws weren’t allowed on the highway and only trucks and four wheelers were. So we had to push our rickshaws backwards down the road about 40 metres and take u turn in the middle of the road to get to the other side. Another 9km back down the road to get off the highway and onto a road we were allowed on. That wasted us a whole lot of beeping horn patience and 18km of time and petrol.

Onto the highways that were still marked as big yellow routes but had awful roads and went through the villages we went.

About an hour in and the second b**** of our day arrived... HW188. What a piece of s***ty road. It wasn’t even made. No, not dirt big stones and gravel and sand everywhere that shook our rickshaws guts out. This went on for 7km which felt like 20km. I was dieing for a wee. We stopped and checked the engines were all still together after we thought was the end of the bad road. Dad go blessed by a sheikh with no shoes on that jumped out of his rickshaw and uncle terry ran for the shade.

By this point (approx. 20 minutes, 7km) I had heard dad start his sentences fu**ing about 60 Times.

Third b**** of the day... the second part of HW188. I swear to god if this is just as bad and goes on until we get to our check point Modass (65km away) I’m gunna murder someone. 8km of gravel and big stones rattling our engines, only this time one side of the road sometimes had tarmac, a positive but it was definitely “thrown up in the air, and left how it landed and dried” how uncle Terry would describe it. Bloody awful. And to top t off lots of lorries that couldn’t get passed each other to slow us down on time even more and dad starting his sentences with fu**ing all the time again.

I’ve tried to zone out now, I’m concentrating on holding in this pee.

We finally found some decent road and flat tarmac to drive on and make up some lost time, only thing slowing us down now is the humungous bumps in the road.

It was a pleasant drive to Udaipur at this point, but my god it was getting super hot as we went from the sea and more inland. The sun was burning or feet in the shaw, couldn’t move from it.

We got into Udaipur around 4pm, we went to the hotel Ross booked. It had a pool so we jumped straight in! Bloody freezing, not sure there was any chlorine in it either.

Couldn’t wait to see Udaipur. It was so different to the rest of the places we had been, the side streets were so small full with different textile and clothes shops but also full of motorbikes and tuc tucs coming back and forth. Uncle terry was getting annoyed haha! They were everywhere, how do they not have accidents or bump into cows or ditches. We found a little restaurant on a rooftop, the steps were vertical. Absolute killers! Lovely little rooftop though, two little white rabbits running around the place. Very random, they were their pets.

But of course the ‘bar’/restaurant we chose didn’t have a license so when your in the natural cafe your drink ‘chai tea’ (beer in mugs with the bottles on the floor by our feet) ....ah, India!

The food was amazing as usual! Couldn’t wait to get my head down though, what a bloody tough day on the road! Can’t wait to have a well deserved day off tomorrow, our little babies deserve it too!

The roads teated us like s*** today. I was not India’s friend, even after a few beers and being in what we would hope to be beautiful Udaipur! (I’m sure she won’t disappoint!)

341km covered today approx.