As usual as long as we were heading Northish we were going in the right direction! Journeying across India, within 20 miles or so, scenery can shift dramatically from desert scrubland to quite dense forest etc - you'll understand more when we show some photos.
Just over a day later after staying at India's version of Faulty Towers with their very own Manuel, we reached the reserve on a single track road with buses still driving as they would on a dual carriage way (and so still routinely being run off the road) we started encountering monkeys and deer.
We thought that it would be fenced off but actually it's more of a protected area with animals free to roam. On arrival (before dusk for once) we went in search for a hotel with safari blah blah. We saw signs for 'Tiger Woods Resort' and thought we should go and have a gander. With no prices mentioned we were shown round the whole resort, first room having a bed with which I can only describe as a round leopard skin number soon to be occumpied by a rather large black girl named Sheniqua! As the tour continued we asked some questions;
'It says on the sign, you have a jacuzzi?'
'No'
(Ok just a straight lie then)
'It also says you have a steam room'
'Yes we do;
(Takes us to room with a bench)
'This is the steam room, this is where we will install the machine, at the moment not there'
(At this point we were giggling like little girls)
Other hotel antics include generally being ripped off, toilets and showers as you would expect but an absolute belter was after a long 14 hours on the road, all knackered, the lights turned off, all of us looking towards the ceiling in some dump of a hotel just off the road and.. stars started appearing, then a rocket and the moon, in the middle, we couldn't work out what the black hole was, eventually.. the fan! They had spent about 20p on building the hotel itself and about double that on these UV decorations you may have had when you were a wee born baby..again a bit more laughter before sleep!
Anyway we got settled after stumbling upon a group of Yanks who thought it was brilliant we had bought a Rickshaw and were cruising around India! (you can imagine in pure yank style - 'No way man' / 'That's Awesome'. Up early again (much to the delight of Shippers and Fyvie) into the reserve in search of a tiger in the wild, which we were told before hand was quite likely.. 5 hours later no luck, with the guides trying to knock off early saying there was no chance, we spotted one chilling in a pool of water, we asked to get out and go closer, this was declined. Soon after he got up and walzed off into the undergrowth, - quite the experience, especially when we found out how they kill their prey and how far they leap! 10 bloody metres!
We left the morning after towards Varanasi (Ganges area). At one point, quite a surreal point in all our lives, we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, in a dust storm, dressed as terrorists with rags round our heads, shades donned, in the Crow of course singing Susan Boyle, Wildhorses!
Now we haven't really mentioned our day-day on the open road.. General problems as you would expect; water / fuel stops, check oil, directions from the locals, which are varied as you can imagine, our personal favourite, quite a homosexual Indian, with a voice only rivalled by that of the Chipmunks in fluent Hindi (so useless) with us not really listening as we were all so amused by the frequency he was trying to communicate with.
DEATH - this has been more and more frequent, I think now we have seen most animals Inida has to offer creamed across the highway including more and more vehicle accidents, through houses, trees and bridges, some of which out of respect we didn't photograph due to the amount of people killed, one being an ambulance decimated by one of the trucks. Much of this is due to the drunken lorry drivers, did a bit or research - 130,000 killed each year on the roads of India! - Over 350 per day! Almost T-boned a cow a few days back who decided to stroll out of a central reservation at night camoflagued by shrubbery! Since then, our scan now includes even the most unlikely of possibilities..
The Boudoir - has become a multi-fuctional space for all sorts of fixing, repairs, food / water storage, In-Crow Entertainment System, footspa and more recently we have developed a technique for giving us all a shower at once, if you hit a speed bump at 50km/h and one of us has just opened a litre bottle of water! - Tres refereshing!
So we've hit 3300km! (And still not there yet!) Wiper doesn't work, one of the lights doesn't work, both of these didn't when we bought it, apart from that nothing to report, which does seem to suggest that the Crow, Piaggio Ape is somewhat of an engineering marvel!
A few one liners..
'I don't understand why I am only getting 45km/h out of her at full throttle'
'Try changing gear'
'Fruit juice please'
'Cheese omlette, yes master no problem'
'Erm, no, please could we have some fruit juice (with associated pictionary)'
'Yes master, cheese omelette'
(Pointing at a can of coke, saying orange fruit juice, pointing at colour orange aswell)
'2 minutes master, cheese omelette, no problem'
'Ok, f*ck it, I'll have a cheese omelette'
- Similar to the above all over India as you can imagine!
WE ARE STILL IN THE PROCESS OF SEVERAL FACIAL HAIR EXPERIMENTS - 2 BEARDS AND A HANDLEBAR NUMBER, PICS TO FOLLOW
Brilliant! Keep going! Prev is still laughing at your language challenges!! and the reaction of the locals to your hi-tech travels. Keep safe x
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