Read James Bowen's diary highlights from the
"The Three Muscatuks" epic charity race across 4388km of the Indian subcontinent. With James were Sol Hessel and Aaron Zieltjes.
Thursday April 14:
Depart NZ, to Kochi, India, total travel time: 40 hours.
Saturday April 16
Pimped the Rickshaw. Bought some mags for the wheels to give it a bit of a Westie look. Had my first taste of a really hot Indian curry.
Race Day 1 Sunday, April 17:
Start Fort Cochin start. Opening k's on the clock 21,182
Had a sleep in and went down to the start line around 10am.
Opening ceremony went on for ages. Finally at around 12.30pm the horn went and we were off. I managed to stall the Rickshaw before we even passed the start line. I blamed it on our dodgy idle. Drove to the ferry and ran out of gas. Had to push in and park the Rickshaw at the front of the queue.
Finish: Quilandi, 206km for the day
Day 2 Monday April 18:
Start Quilandi.
Called into mechanics as things didn't seem right. Cost 100 rupee's to fix, too cheap so gave a 50 rupee's tip.
Drove through a village with heaps of white powder on the side of the road. Think it must have been some kind of disinfectant to kill a disease outbreak. We didn't stop.
Finish: Kasaragod, 150 km for the day.
Day 3 Tuesday April 19:
Up at day break to put some k's on the clock. After two hours, back at the mechanics. The Rickshaw was leaking gearbox oil. Was going to take too long to fix so decided to keep filling up with oil each day. At Shimoga, found a mechanic to fix dodgy breaks. Tested them by driving as fast as we could 10m down the road and slamming the breaks on. Locals found this hilarious
Finish Shimoga, 263km for the day.
Day 4 Wednesday April 20:
Bed bugs hit us last night. Aaron was worst hit. Bitten all over. Today we finally came up with a nickname for the Rickshaw, Princess. Had to be a female name and she was our Princess so that was her name from then on.
The Indians like to hide their speed bumps. It caught me out big time and I hit a set of 4 at 40 k's. Princess was ok though. Just knocked the rust out of her.
Finish Hampi, 343km for the day.
Day 5 Thursday April 21:
Managed to leave the map behind at one view spot so had to drive 5km back to get it. Luckily it was still there.
Realised the place we watched the sunrise from was the local toilet.
Drove though some really rural areas. The real India. In the morning the kids would walk 5 mins out of the village and go to the toilet on the side of the road. It was like going back 200 years in some places.
Finish Hyderabad, 383km for the day.
Day 6 Friday April 22:
Did our first runner from the police. We were asked to stop at a check point. The policeman was telling us to turn off the engine and get our papers out. Sol was having none of this and told me to drive off as all he would want was a bribe. I was a little worried about taking off but soon realised the police don't have cars or radios so no worries.
Realised that we had driven round the city instead of straight though. Wasted a few hours, annoying.
Very sad moment in the afternoon when we saw a car hit a girl who ran out from behind a bus. The car drove off. A few shoes were thrown at the car as it took off. Life is very cheap in India.
Finish Adilabad, 413km for the day.
Day 7 Saturday April 23:
Up at 4.55am to get a good days driving in. Woke up feeling really bad. Delhi belly had finally struck me. The other boys weren't flash either.
Finish Balaghat, 392km for the day
Day 8 Sunday April 24:
Had 11 hours sleep. Feel like a new man.
The drive to the Kanha national park was amazing. Drove though the hills and up past a lake.
Safari started at 3.45pm and there was a line of jeeps already at the gate when we arrived. Didn't see a tiger but did see wild dogs, deer, buffalo, cattle, birds and a jackal.
Finish Mukki, 89km for the day
Day 9 Monday April 25:
On the road at 5am. All the staff at the lodge got up to see us off. Thought we were mad driving the length of India on a Rickshaw.
Sol got a whack by a stick from a policeman for not stopping in Jabalpur. Drove past the policeman to ask for directions and then he wanted us to stop and show him our papers. Took off again to avoid a bribe.
Finish Maihar, 366km
Day 10 Tuesday April 26:
Long day driving. Roads went from good to bad and back again.
Ended up driving in the dark. Stupid idea. Even had to guide Sol round corners with my iphone torch. The 30k's extra we needed to do to get to Bikramgari ended up taking over 3 hours.
Finish Bikramgari, 451km for the day
Day 11 Wednesday April 27:
The day couldn't have started any worse when throttle cable broke as we pushed started Princess. It was 5am so no mechanic was open. We told the crowd that had gathered that we didn't mind how much it costs to fix. The village call went out to wake up the mechanic who turned up at 6am. Awesome. It cost 150 rupees ($4.25) to fix and we gave him a 150 rupee ($4.25) tip. We were back on the road by 7am. India always provides an answer when you think
you have no options.
Finish Begusarai, 258km for the day.
Day 12 Thursday April 28:
Nothing special happened today. It was great to finally reach the top of India. Now we were to head east until the finish line in Shillong. Our cell phones were cut off from the outside world as we were entering bandit country. The government blocks all signals to try and stop the rebels contacting each other. Only local sim cards purchased in the area worked.
Finish Toonabarrie, 427km
Day 13 Friday April 29:
Got on the road about 5.45am. Great drive though the hills. Roads were ok for the first few hours.
We had made the target of getting to Nalbari which would leave under 200 k's to Shillong on the last day. Everything was going well but then Princess started to play up. Decided to clean out the carbi. I took everything apart and then one of the floats inside broke in my hand. I was gutted. We were miles from the nearest town. We decided to put it back together and see if Princess would start. Amazingly she fired up and we carried on. I was very happy
as I could have cost us finishing on April 30.
Late in the day Princess played up so we decided to clean the carbi again. Took everything apart and cleaned out the carbi but she wouldn't fire up. We were about 3km from the nearest town. After failed attmepts to tow, the only option was to push Princess in the dark.
Three young lads stopped on a motorbike and offered to help. As promised, they brought back a mechanic within 20 mins. The mechanic said that he couldn't fix it that night but will sort it out in the morning. The three lads walked us into town to a hotel. After reading the Lonely Planet we discovered that the area we were in was not safe and we shouldn't travel at night.
Finish Pathasala, 346km for the day
Day 14 Saturday April 30:
The mechanic took 20 mins to get Princess going and we were back on the road by 11 am. Gave the mechanic 200 rupee's ($5.50) and the three lads 500 rupee's ($14) as a thank you.
The race was on to get to Shillong by dark. We didn't stop all day. When we changed drivers we just pulled over and swapped and kept going.
We drove up into the mountains and finally got to the outskirts of Shillong by 5pm. We thought we had made it. Little did we know that Shillong had the worst traffic jams in India.
We got to the hotel where the raced finished and there was a banner with finish line on it and no-one around. Stopped for a photo and then drove up the drive way. All the teams were waiting to catch the bus to the party. We couldn't have timed it better.
We couldn't believe that we had actually made it. The km on the clock at the finishing line was 25,570. We did 217km for the day and 4388km in total. A very long way.