Day Four

 

Though all tuk tuks were taken and raring to go by the crack of dawn, proceedings were soon brought to a screeching halt by Team Four’s chassis issues, in need of emergency welding, unfortunately unavailable before 10 a.m. in Pune – far too long to wait around for the fired-up throng of adventure-takers that we are. Cue a round of jiggery-pokery by our star mechanic Tiger (Thyagu),  while we stood around in trepidation. And voila: his magic took hold, and the intrepid Team Four hauled the puny tuk tuk through the urban brew of Pune and bounded for a welding shop somewhere in the outskirts of town, while still holding the day’s challenge, a visit to Aga khan firmly in their sights.
 
Meanwhile, Team 3 (Just Married), apparently swallowed by the maze of the city’s streets, headed off in the wrong direction. Fortunately though, when I checked the maps, I spied that there is a way for them rejoin us on the road to Mahabaleshwar. Phew!
 
Slowly moving through the heaving traffic of Pune, we caught up with the Team Four. As if granted by a magic djinn, the wish of a welding shop on the edge of town did indeed materialize and their vehicle was duly repaired.

 
Team Eight was next on the Pune Problems list, with a rather nebulous fuel transmission issue, which first slowed their journey out of the city to a crawl, then forced it to a juddering halt in the mouth of a tunnel on the way out of town. The Chennai garage team had to rush to their rescue – a task made all the harder by the absence of U-turns anywhere near the tunnel. Once the glitch was fixed, the team moved on with the plan. While they were awaiting their rescuers, by the way, they too witnessed Team Three taking their unscheduled exit out of town. But hey, any successful  exit out of Pune is better than none, if you ask me!
 
Reassured that all was back on track, I breathed a sigh of relief, and, as I later learnt, so did all the teams. The rest of the day unfolded smoothly  and all teams started arriving at the base hotel after 4 pm. As it is a hill station, teams enjoyed the hotel views for a bit, then, to the surprise of  the hotel staff, spilled out on the dancefloor of the small disco joint and  showed their killer dance moves til lates became earlies – pics on Facebook! .
 

Day Five

The most eventful day in the journey thus far  started off as usual, with a briefing and breakfast at 8 a.m, and were on the road by  9.30 a.m. Heading towards Mahableshware, we hit a 5 km jam on the road.  I walked out my car to find out what had happened. On the way I saw that all the teams except Team Three and Team Five were stuck in the traffic. It transpired that a truck had skidded through and blocked the road all the way across. It was another half an hour before a recovery vehicle cleared the block and traffic started moving.
 
The next challenge was visibility in the mountain road. Due to the heavy monsoon, the roads were washed away in many places. This made the drive to Rathnagiri the most challenging day. Team Eight had developed the same sort of problem again with their engine: they had to clean the carburetor and the tank to make them work again. Team Four lost about half an hour due to running out of fuel. But  all the teams gradually started to pick up speed, and  the first team reached Rathnagiri at about 6.30 p.m. All the teams had to drive in the dark. Team One, who had sailed through unscathed thus far, took a bad hit – though they remained unharmed, their vehicle was not in a good shape after. They ended up getting half-towed to the hotel by around 10 p.m.
 

Day Six

Morning was spent on a general tech check and fixing of Team One’s vehicle. After briefing, all the teams set off for the day. Team Four immediately broke down, but pulled themselves up by the wheel spokes (as it were) and bounced back just as quickly, the troopers that they are. The rest of the day went smoothly: the teams enjoyed driving through the lovely mountain views and green fields. They only needed a little tech help from the support crew in the evening, as it grew too dark for them to drive.
 
With tomorrow being a rest day, the teams partied in different places. The fun night will bring lot of good memories for them all. They can be proud of themselves to have the first – eventful and dramatic – half of Mumbai Xpress 2016 already under their belts! Hopefully, their excitement will fuel their enthusiasm and keep them in high spirits all through the second one.
 

Day 1

Mumbai Xpress is always an exciting, more adventurous and scenic rally in Rickshaw Challenge calendar. However, Mumbai bureaucracy and guardians of law are tough nuts to crack. From the preparation to assembling of the vehicles for the line up to practice, there were many difficulties, but all of them vanished from the organizers’ minds when they saw the enthusiastic participants. Registration started well on time and there were two teams, Team 4 and Team 6 that came on time. Rest of the teams came in slowly one by one. We had fixed the briefing at 11.30 am. Team 5, Team Jelly joined us after briefing due to their flight schedule.
The teams had 45 minutes of Briefing, which was done by Aravind, lead scientist of the Travel Scientists. The short  briefing came to an end and the teams had a Q&A session. The two rules which need to be followed in India are a) No logic and b) Smile on face. The teams were asked to join for the practice at 2 pm in the designated college ground.
Team 7, Beach Please is made up of three ladies from Estonia – they took a tuk tuk and went to a far off place which supposedly shares the same name as this college. Finally when they found the right place, the practice session has been going on for at least an hour. Few arguments with the tuk tuk taxi driver and finally some practice. Every team had completed about 3 hours of practice and then they were confident on the road.  After that, we met them in the hotel parking lot where they dropped their vehicles off one by one. All teams their first fuelling experience and all of them felt like celebrities as people were waving and cheering them all the way from the Practice Grounds to the Hotel.
The night ended up in a big initiation bash in Gringos bar, which is close to the base hotel Sun N sand.  It was a long night of fun and story exchange.

Day 3

“Road road road” sounds like a classic Rock song to all the Mumbai xpress Participants in the 9 th morning.  The plan is to travel through the hectic traffic of Mumbai and reach a small costal town called Alibag. Aravind made briefing for the day and bid them all good bye.  The support crew started at 12 am and thus far there was no call. In the morning most the teams had costumes did according to their themes.