DO |
rickshaw run blogs jan 2014 North to south pan-india on a glorified lawnmower
for our second run April 2015 (west - east across the top 3000+ Km @ 40km/hr) go to DO blogspot
To demonstrate learning you have to show you know. That AHHHAAA moment when we get it varies for each of us with every lesson. It generally comes after incubation. The determining factor as to whether we are quick learners or slow. My dad once remarked to me - Lisa sometimes it's like you need to get a whack on the back of the head with a piece of 4 by 2 to get the lesson. I thought we'd leave Goa for our 6th state Karnataka and be straight into verification. This should be the easy bit the push for the finish and celebration of the last dash. In flow flow, rush rush, all systems go. We could proceed to the stop. It was all over bar the shouting. Lurking in the back of ones mind is always the what if ...What If... 3006kms is really to far for an auto to stay together and transport us safely. What if we don't make it in time for the finish line. Our frame is now severed in two at both weld points on the roof. We have used everything in our kits except the freeze dried kiwi meals and the tow rope. We are over the fun stuff and it seems that the last three days blurs into the dust of India. We roar out of Goa heading South with the first sign of discontent in everyone's navigation and mood set. None of us can quite get our insides to agree to a gut feel on if we should take the main highway or the coast. Our data is not cooperating, we've lost trust in which roads will be the best, coastal , smaller or highways and we are starting to blow up our gear. We are still all being nice to each other across teams with no one quite wanting to take the dominant role and visibly bossy role to tell everyone's rumbly tums to shut up and go in any one direction. Inside the tuks marital pressure is building as road weary and dreading the end of the journey everyone gets a bit over the road and our significant others. We all think we know what we are doing and all our versions of how to do this are our own and no one elses. We don't get far before Sweetie pie starts to choke. It's a Sunday and we are meant to be pushing 300kms today. We sulk into the only Christian village we have settled in for weeks. Every body is at church. Approaching our taxi rank knights in shining armor the crowd is not that welcoming they pretend interest and the self appointed mayor duly arrives to see what it is that we need before we can push off out of town. It's hot, it stinks and this place is so basic there is no one selling bottled water, the hotel for a coffee stop sparks terror at the thought of being stuck here, there sure as Bethlehem does not appear to be any rooms at this Inn. There are two men asleep or expired on bench seats in the dark interior and the proprietor is high and toothless, empty bottles line the counter tops waiting to be refilled with grog, the only food is a mound of fried piled high in a beyond filthy cabinet, we are not sure if they take our order as they don't reply, they apparently do but they serve us outside . Is that because they know how we feel or they don't want us to come back in? They are so wary of us I can't give away any pens. I manage to give one young boy some all black stickers and a ruler and pencil set but an elder rips it out of his hands and reads every possible label to work out what the tide has bought in. Edwards indulgences in the Arabian Sea are creating waves in his gut and he sleeps while we wait for god to materialise a mechanic. Our Sunday is vanishing and morphing into a true day of rest. We can't move or do anything. An hour slips by- the tuk tuk is cool enough to move forward. And they run us out of town. 5 -10 kms away there is a promise of someone ungodly enough to help us out and the mayor has sent a runner who relays us in that direction. Every km or so he vanishes from our lead. The engineer is earning his full degree by coasting sweetie down hills so that fuel can flow into the engine enough to provide faltering putt power up the next hill before she chokes again. The relay runner reappears with another family member on the back of his motor bike. To be introduced and to get a pen. His daughter, son and wife in 10 kms we verify them all. The first mechanic up a side street ignores us literally and our scout decides to abandon us as well. He cautions us to stay put. By now Sweetie is too hot to trot and Ed's gut is about to show us all it knows it's in India after all. Worlds fastest kiwis are demonstrating incredible patience and resilience as they are still breakdown free I'm sure they'd love to gloat. We wait on the road side for help to arrive. Every one loses the plot as Edward has to fulfil a road side emergency evacuation. Making each of us retch we can verify that swimming in the Arabian sea is the biggest risk to health. None of us has been ill from food. But Edwards arse ejects half an ocean, and Warrick and I have ear infections setting in, Heather is congratulating herself for choosing a pedicure over a swim. Though the joke is almost back on her when she side steps Edwards drain painting - just. Our guide reappears and whisks Edward away to the promise of mechanical genius. The universe picks up flow again and Sweeties carb is cleaned of crap. All of us feeling a lot freer head South, keeping Edward hydrated and moving admiring his resilience as he sleeps at every Chai stop and makes good use of the vegemite and electrolyte emergency supplies. By night time he has come right again. A university city a lovely hotel, great food and books of intellectual genius on nano tech and heart surgery remind us that India rivals the world in many fields. We are reassured enough to eat chicken and tuna club sammies for breakfast. The kms swallow each other interminably - stop and proceed - every 100 kms we stick rigidly to our strategy to get through the distance. 3 days to do the last several hundred the journey now feels long, dirty and over dhaled. The last night on the road we optimistically head for the coast again. A resort found on line and booked with the typical fury at data that teases by dropping out of credit card authorisation more times that we can curse. Panic sets in and the first hint of competition as we roll up to the door of our last resort to the sight of more teams. Have they booked? Have they taken our rooms? A frenzy of walking faster than one would like to appear as the Italian, Swiss, Swedish, Kiwi 100m dash ...we calm ourselves enough to secure our beds. Singles and we can't get the hot water to work. Marital harmony is terse in both camps. We are up before sunrise for our last pack up and each person is in their own bubble. Hovering on the edge of the last state. None of us feel in a celebratory mood. We fit out the tuks in near silence worlds fastest kiwis have a detour to navigate as luxuriating for so long on the journey is a time restraint to catching up with their friend in Kerala en route today. He is temptingly close to the hghway and a long way from the finish should they decided to visit him on the way. The thought of us having to cross the finish line separately after so long together is weighing heavily with each of us for our own reasons. The thought of perhaps not making it to the finish line at all is for the first time a reality and it's not helping any of our states of calm. We are all good on the outside yet you can feel it underneath, as each person deals with what the last day on the road together will bring or not bring. Are we over it? We are so far from the end that we can't be. It's all the clichés in the world, so close and yet so far. The show we know; the Ahha factor this morning on the 14th of January is that we may have left our last dash to the 7th state of celebration a little late. Kerala - are we there yet. Can the celebrations begin? Cut off is at 4pm this afternoon. And if I ever had to learn the lesson of being very careful what you ask for because you will get exactly what you expect then today is the day. "We are going to need every single minute of today" will forever haunt me - my mantra of the morning repeated so often the gods delivered it with glee. I used it to encourage Warrick to meet up with his friend once we cross the finish line. I should have used it more when we stopped for our last chai break and 100 km cool down. Why not just push on through and keep an hour up our sleeves. As we pull out of Kappad in to the dark of the last dawn I'm crying. Crying at my last set up of sweetie, my last day of the journey my last sunrise on the road and just crying because I can in the back. Theme songs are on repeat. Everything seems in technicolour. The streets are full of early morning rituals and my ahha radar is triggered everywhere - India is in her glory. It's time to celebrate our learning. How we have come to love her and how we all realise our lives have been altered for ever by time in her presence. Time is not on our side. The first village is full of people in the streets loud speakers, hundreds of men and boys in white. Bands, acrobats, crowds of women smiling and watching. Cool very cool. By the second village, third and fourth we begin to get suspicious. Has Matt Dickens Rickshaw Run master gone overboard on the celebratory budget and arranged crowds to wave us slowly through each town on our last 200 kms to the finish? If so they are starting to get in the way. 5kms per hour is not going to get us to Kochi by 4pm. There are flags, and people thrusting cups of juice at us, bags of sweets at us and packets of biscuits. It's a party. Just not ours. Mohammed's birthday and it's a big one indeed. By lunchtime temple duty is done and the roads clear for just a moment. Then it's into industrial action and agitation. The highway is blocked by chunks of concrete, barbed wire and trash every few hundred metres another barrier. No point lifting the tuks over though we try. As a little up the road another and another and another. The roads are manic, there are buses abandoned and trucks parked the wrong way in one way alleys. It dawns on us this is deliberate. Matt Dickens upping the anti again? Or protesting truckies and auto drivers who find the toll roads are crippling their lively hoods. I kick myself for not being RAS activated to a place name while reading a newspaper announcement of todays agitation three days ago. And the sign in the post office advising that the 14th of march they would close. The agitators and birthday celebrants are planned and organised in their chaos. Police and military vehicles appear to have also missed the memo they are as jammed in the chaos as we are unable to stop or proceed anywhere. Auto drivers as friends in disguise are directing traffic back on itself and it takes us an hour to realise that the brown uniforms will not show us the way this time when feeding us around and around in circles, data not supporting our journey, no live maps at the right time to get us on track we are back at the start with adrenalin mounting. Lost. Every cell in our bodies is screaming at us. We did not come here not to finish this journey. Various internal dialogue becomes external, The realist Edward saying we are never going to make this by 4pm. Me the optimist coaching him - Do not put that thought out there we have the perfect amount of time to do what we need to do, we can do this! I'm not sure how WFK were feeling each team is communicating the bare basics, worried we will lose battery or each other before we get the last direction across. The rickshaw run is not a race it's a fund raiser. We know this and have lived and breathed this. Insurance won't cover you in something as hair brained as racing a tuk tuk from one end of India to another. We have gone back forwards to prove it and managed to be well behind the pack all the way. Today though we become manic. We must finish this on time. Before the finish line closes at 4pm. A did not finish just is not an option. the race for the finish is on. Willing time to slow down as tuk tuks speed up. We get lost trying to avoid the protesters and then take a long way round to get back on track. In our panic Edward and I have blown up the inverter by attaching the cables to the wrong battery terminals and all our devices are now flat. We have no maps, no theme music, no phones and no clock. We are relying on radio to WFK's and their battery life is limited too. At a set of traffic lights with a spectacular digital countdown we run out of fuel. Like a le mans pit crew we leap out and throw our last of the two-stroke cocktail mix at the rear of each tuk tuk, spilling it on our feet slightly thankful you can not smoke in Kerala while Heather counts us down. We have 11 mins until the finish line and 13 kms still to cover. We are screaming at each other and willing our machines to keep going. Manic laughing and celebrating the chaos the locals act like the village idiots are in town. They politely look away at the road in front, check their voice mail and pretend we don't exist at the lights. Kochi must be immune to the madness , it reminds me of Aussie ski week at home. At 4pm, 1600 hours Kochi Kerela gods own, with all our facebook followers in the dark at our last lost post we scream around a random corner to see the finish banner in our peripheral on our right. Shoulder banging back seat drivers screaming, both tuks slide in to base camp in a cloud of dust with us hysterical and crying - "Are we in time?? - You did say 4pm on the 14th of January didn't you Matt?" We can't stand, we can't walk - team 68 and 69 across the line, we scribble our names on the finish sheet before they can pull it down. The deed is done and we are fully undone. The finish line is quiet except for us. Other teams sip coconut juice and look rested, lines of neat and orderly tuks stripped of their gear fill the yard. Ten teams are unaccounted for but there are no bugles to celebrate us being the last. One would think that was it the adventure over - until Matt tell us he needs the machines back NOW - it throws our celebration we forget to do finish line photos or to smile for the media. We head to our hotel where the staff line to welcome us and we ignore them throwing belongings off the roof reattaching rear doors and finding insurance papers. Our manner does not stand us in good stead for the rest of our stay as they show us as much consideration as we did to them for the next couple of days. It is only on the ferry to the finish party that we realise we are truly done, spent and wrung out. The four of us separate for a few moments. Edward runs off to join the start line crowd, there are fireworks and near arrests and crowds pushing us onto the ferry - we are each one a part of the mass and as we pull up to the party with the fairy lights and ungst ungst music we reconfirm that the 7th state has been reached by all on board and the celebration really can start. It becomes apparent that this journey will never end. Our teams are split for the first time in 14 days. Warrick has caught up with his friend, we nearly lose Heather as she slips between the boat and the wharf. We begin to understand that we are going to be apart again and that we won't be able to be there to support each other through every challenge and adversity. The celebration is cathartic - wild dancing, loud sing songs, nations of the world united in a journey of a country that we all have achieved apart. We are aware that our lives are forever changed that our facebook friendships with each other will remain and that one day on another adventure we all promise to meet again. The dawning of learning is that you can not separate out the seven states of learning each intertwined as it is in the other, you celebrate the preparation, the globalisation, initiation, elaboration and incubation. The verification will be there for the rest of our lives. With every decision and moment that follows India we show we know. The understanding that life; any life is great and should be honoured. That risks must be taken and that what appears dangerous to some is common place to others. That what appears safe is where the real risks lie after all. And that beauty exists everywhere at every moment you just have to drive slowly enough through life to enjoy it. Each day you pick a route and create your own realities. What you say , who you meet and where you stop or proceed mark the journey. Friendships are made and cemented on the Rickshaw Run and runners whether we spend moments or lifetimes together will always be family. Thank you Edward, Heather, Warrick, Mr Matt Dickens, 200 participants, 78 teams, all the charities our generous sponsors supporters and friends on the journey. And thank you mother India for India is great. Learn to pause or nothing worthwhile will catch you up - Doug King When doing the winter Rickshaw Run through India - the icing on the cake is the thought of Goa. Like badges of honour: Getting there first, Staying there the longest and Partying the hardest are three definitive trophies of run success. This is the primary target for R&R; pushing pause and having fun. To rest up, swim and relax. To hop out of the Auto maybe leave it alone for a day. Be tourists, like any other in India, once again be part of a visitor throng. In accelerated learning Incubation is the 5th state. The mind must have a down time for new knowledge to infiltrate the subconicious, for the lights to come on and the Ahhha to take place. Goa our fifth state in India is the perfect place to Do so. It's one of those iconic beach retreats that you wish you had done in your wild and reckless youth and you believe you may still be able to claim that just by being there. You imagine all the bad things you'll do, smoke again, drink too much, sleep too little. The trouble you'll almost get into, the tiny bikini's you'll have to fit into, the beachfront huts that you'll luxuriate in. So much of incubation is anticipation it's challenging to slow yourself down enough to make the rest occur. We rolled into Baga on the recommendation of a group of stags from the Ivy restaurant of Indiage country - the best party beach by far, not long before sunset with no accommodation and the unsettled feeling that a lack of security on Maslows hierarchy of needs creates. We hit the shore one of our team already missing. Heather has jumped ship at the first guest house that looks the part and secures us a place for the night. I was ecstatic. Team argy bargy erupted as the boys wanted to go straight to the bar and the ocean and sort out de-rigging later. It was hard enough to pry passports out of their grip and park in front of the hostel but female sensibility prevailed and we stripped the tuks as far as the foyer and headed for the sand and base beats. The shot of us walking to the ocean is one of our favorites of the trip - it looks as though we are returning home from the front line, battle weary and filthy, it's how we felt. The lure of that sea front the smell of the salt was as close to heaven as we could imagine knowing we still had a long way to go before home. When we hit the first bar we could hardly contain ourselves. Cocktails or swims both - right on sunset. The road grime incredible Baldy's feet lily white were not the result of sunburn but the shit that India throws at you from a full day on the road. It was seafood for dinner, laser lights on the sand, Russians everywhere. The days effects were felt and we quietly almost guility least someone should see us pike early crawled off to our beds. Realising that as much as we thought we would party we were already spent. Turns out I was incubating something real. That child's sneeze in the land of Sai dealt it's blow - flu, the one vaccine I had not had and perhaps the greatest risk factor in an Indian winter with no local immunity. A fever , the chills and a restless night swearing at large rodents on the grass roof of our hut. Baga be buggered we were going to need somewhere a little more peaceful if we were going to rest up. Day 2 our only rest day we head North to Ashvem beach - in the absolute opposite direction to the finish, nothing like putting even more kms between you and the end of your adventure to really make your brain realise you are taking this break seriously. Our friend from NZ Stu has suggested Yab Yum resort - and yum it is indeed. Hobbit huts on a white stretch of sand. Flu or no flu I swim, we rest read, sleep and shop. Still not able to stay out of the Rickshaws for a day - Heather and I nab homeware for home at the local market. Copper dishes,and cookware, curry powders, bindi's, yoga mats, all things Indian to ensure we have something of this journey to connect us to this space for the rest of our lives. There are massages to be had, but we still can't bring ourselves to party large. The worst behaviour becomes camera hams and our daily ritual of hysteria googling inappropriate things said by Prince Philip while travelling. A decade too late for Goa in our veins, only one team member ventures to the night club on the hill and we are sure he must have dreamt it as he was sleeping when the rest of us went to bed. Day 3 in Goa and we are starting to feel just a little restless at being further from our goal than a few days ago but not yet ready to leave Goa. We head just a tiny way South to Palolem beach. A stop en route to send our purchases courtesy of India Post is a fascinating glimpse of the system again. The man pictured here is sewing a bag for our shopping to go in. One counter at the post office is operating for everything though there are half a dozen others staffed for no observable purpose. The process is rigid even a man trying to send home a bag of cashew nuts across state needs a little cloth bag stitched up. Surprisingly it all gives us perfect faith that our good will arrive in NZ possibly even before us. And we happily stand reading notices in the post office and enjoying glimpses into how people apply for licences, pay registrations and send money while we all cluster around the same teller. It feels great to send home the winter wardrobe from Rajasthan the weather is finally hot enough to overcome the chill of tuk travel in the early morning, so puffers, ski gloves and warm hats have been stripped from our belongings. Palolem is paradise and our hut is truly beach front. A moment of concern its the first night we have not been near the tuks and it means a shlep with all our gear past pigs eating polystyrene and stray dogs weaving down back alleys to the foreshore 200 metres of so with all our luggage for less than 12 hours here... it seems a hardship without porters. How quickly we've become used to having everything yet nothing done for us. A last night of feasting on seafood, long island ice teas and excitement building for the finish just two states to go literally and figuratively. Karnataka our 6th state - Verification - time to show we know. And then onto Kerala and the finish , the ultimate learning state of celebration. Rested and feeling completely at home sights that would have bamboozled us look fully normal from the way they burn there lawns off when things get too long. To the long drawn out registration process with our temporary visas. My cold is breaking, it's hard to get started again. We are dreading the finish because it means it will be over and the last stretch ahead seems hard work after our fun in the sun. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. |
Team: Goodbye Curry Pie
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