SECOND DAY : 2006.08.22
The briefing was a bit late ont he second day. At that time we didn’t know that we should blame it ont he pool. The British team members stayed half night naked in the pool drinking quite a lot. Probably the briefing and the start was delayed half an hour by severe headaches from a massive hangover. J
We hit the road to Pondicherry. At this point quite surpriringly we even found traffic lanes painted ont he road, allthough some crossings had signs with only Tamil languge signs on it :
Not far away we met an other Hungarian team „RIKSA MISKA” waving for help. We stoped to help them. After a few minutes and a spark plug cleaning, they were on the the road again. but accidentally crashed into our rickshaw. Our right side fender was ruined :
Later we met a pair of men sawing a large tree. We could see how different the meaning of time is in India. They were occupied with this sawing for at least the whole day if not the rest of the week.
The bus witch accidentally fell off the road was left there for weeks, if not for months. First we had to find a Dutch fort :
I wondered what would I have done here if were stationed here a couple of hundreds of years ago. We had to find a specific tomb here, which was a dogs tomb.
The next village was really in the heart of India :
Then we found the hidden temple, (only by GPS coordinates) and counted the statues on the outside :
There were five of them :
Next a ruined fort, on the seashore. All along our way we
frequently met police checkpoints every 10-
The buses are definitely the kings of the road in India. The never give way to anyone, the just rush on. They have no window panes, just bars, but most of them have a DVD player with 5.1 sound on board. We could hear it if they were watching a movie. Next task was finding a riuned fort. It was built by the Moghuls (who built the Taj Mahal) and ruined by the Brits.
We were walking around in the ruined fortress trying to find out what did the „toes of the fortress” mean. We met team PUKKA TUK TUKA” again. I asked them how they got to know about the race, and they told me a very interesting story. Nigel is 42 years old, and worked for a telecom company as an engineer. A couple of months ago on a fine day he woke up, and didn’t want to work as it has allready happened to many of us. But Nigel meant it really, so he went to work, just to tell them that he will not come any more. As a his wife was a techer, she had to work one month more. That was just enough time for them to sell all their posessions, pack up fly to Goa (India of course). They live as happy as an early retired couple can live ever since then. So they just hopped over from Goa for the rickshaw challenge. Ont he way from the fortress an other story interested me. We saw nearby dozens of half built houses. These were built by charity organisations for the tsunami survivors. The only problem was that the houses were never finished. Even those which were are standing uninhabited. These are nice little brick houses which seem so strange to the locals just as we would look at Iglos at home.
Even the finished houses were empty, no one knew why. Maybe, because nobody wanted to live in such buildings. The locals have been living in palm leave huts ever since like these :
Holy cows, salt plants, and local women waiting for the bus.
We even saw the KING of RICKSHAWS and lots of pilgrims marching ont he road :
After a compulsory stop at a filling station we reached Pondicherry. The filling station showed us once again, that time, labour, and people are measured differently in India. A filling up need 2-3 or even 4 employees :
We went for an evening walk in the city …
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