Where is Rob?

Posted: Jan 11, 2010

We are 82km out of Bangalore but Rob is not. We don't where Rob is, truthfully. Rob, our team mechanic, stayed with Team Batman whilst they struggled along. Stopped in a town, Team Kiwi drove in with their kiwi flag flying. We chatted and we all drove off. Team Batman fell behind so we Greg and Nic stopped at the next town to patriotically fix our Australian flag, if we were to be associating with New Zealanders. Team Batman drove passed into the town. We drove through, didn't see them, so we carried on and caught up with Team Kiwi. We get an SMS from Team Batman that they are at a mechanic, so we push on towards Bangalore in hope of finding a Bajaj mechanic (very rare) or our hotel for the night. At 11:40 we get a message 'We're fixed! On route!' At 12:30, 82km from Bangalore we get a distress message 'Chaps, movement is pretty much not happening for us right now.' We've still not seen another mechanic or solution. We assume they'll need to get a truck to Bangalore. Lots of empty ones driving along the freeway. Not sure what else they can do.@
(Received at 07:05)

Less than 1000km to go. We are on the 1250km route from Hyderabad to Cochin. Yesterday we did 300km and today we've probably done 70km today so we now have only 900km to go! Status update: we're stationary on the side of the road rebuilding Team Batman's carby. All done now so let's hope all is well.@
(Received at 03:33)

Day 10, Breakdowns 1, 2 and ... We've got long straight roads this morning so Percy, in Team Batman, decided to let Tom have a drive - for the first time since day 7 when Tom drove into a field. Within 2 minutes Tom had stopped. We managed to get it going again. A few minutes later it stopped again. It's again on the road. As it drives along it is spluttering and stalling. Rob has boarded their rick (whilst we're both in motion) to help figure out what's wrong (ergo figure out what Tom might be doing wrong somehow).
(Received at 03:08)

Nic's worst fears come true

Posted: Jan 10, 2010

Nic's worst fears are coming true: we're going to Bangalore. Yesterday, despite staring late (8:30 instead of 6:30) getting lost leaving town (another 1:30 till we knew we were out of city in correct direction) and finishing early (we had our first hotel checkin before nightfall) we still managed to cover 300km to reach Gooty, on Route 7. This town is the turn off to Goa, but alas for Nic (albeit for all the right reasons) we are heading south. For Nic the problem is this: he's been to India before. In fact he lived in Bangalore for 6 mths in the leafy suburb of Koromongala. He caught a rickshaw to work, and his rental car driver picked him up in the evenings. Idealic? No. Sustained living in India as a westerner is very different from the novelty of being a 2-week tourist. For example, something as sinple as his own street address was a tongue twister: 44 8th A Main Rd 4c Block Koromongala. Unfortunately Indian businesses don't outsource their call centres back to Australia so Nic had the weekly challange of trying to get something home delivered. They ordered pizza a lot because Dominos had the address on a computer. After 6 months Nic was ready to start going fisty cuffs on a number of Bangalorian residents. It was time to leave and never ever return. Alas, in 250km and about 5 hrs, his worst nightmare will come true: Nic will be back in Bangers.
(Received at 01:28)

Route decision made. We're not going to Goa. Tourists to India enjoy the Golden Triangle: Dehli, Agra (Taj M) and Japuir (palaces). We have instead enjoyed two points on our Poo Brown Triangle: no dead people in Varanasi, and no tigers at Kanha NP. We anticipated that in Goa we would be denied further tourist pleasure by the beaches being shut down due to a tsunami or something. The trip to Goa is 300km longer (a day on the road) than an alternate route through Mysore via Bangalore. At the town of Kurnool we finally had a showdown as the 5 of us surveyed the map and attempted to get our own way. "On Route 7 we can do 60, past Goa we'll do 40 because of all the coastal towns" "Goa has beaches, alcohol and chicks" "We won't have any time left to spend in Goa" "Chicks" In the end, "Chicks" wasn't enough to sway those on the fence. We've done 200km this afternoon to get to Kurnool and it's 3:20pm. We'll now aim for Anantapur for hotel/dinner. It's getting very warm during the day and even the evening.
(Received at 09:50)

After the flyover we were then pulled over by traffic police. We showed them various documents and licenses and pollution certificates and he still wanted to fine us for something. "500Rs" "200Rs" He barely spoke English so eventually he took us to his boss to resolve the issue of How much we will be fined and What it might be for. The boss asked '"Where you from?" ""Australia" "Excellent, have a nice day" and the minion got no bribe from us.
Location: Hydrabad - Andhra Pradesh, India (Received at 09:12)

cont... sign saying 'Bangaluru' begged to us. Nic pulled over and pleaded with the guards to allow us on the flyover. 'Just 2 autos?' 'Yes!' 'Ok, you go.' Woohoo! 500m along and we realised: there are no other cars on this flyover. Along 11km of magic road towering overall quarter of the city we saw 20 cars, in a city of 5m people.@
Location: Hydrabad - Andhra Pradesh, India (Received at 05:45)

World's Longest Flyover in Hyderabad? We had a lazy kickoff this morning, congruating at the ricks around 8, some mini coffees (6Rs) and teas (4Rs), and then discovered a disturbing trend amongst the locals. Many of them didn't know how to leave their city. Our planned route towards Cochin is still under discussion. The longest route (through Goa) is 1550km. The shortest route (through Bangalore and Mysore) is 1250km. All three start with the same first 300km, down our old favourite Route 7 headed towards Bangalore (re-re-named Bangalaru). So in asking locals how to exit their city we were asking for directions to Bangalore. Eventually we found someone who gave good directions, and later at a junction we asked for more directions from a Traffic Police. He was wrong. 10km and 30 minutes back into the city and we were told to turn around and go back. Fortunately we made a huge discovery: Hyderabad has an awesome flyover - a 4 lane road 3 to 6 stories in the air - that goes on and on for 11km around the city. There was a hitch, the following types of vehicles are prohibited: commercial trucks, 2 wheelers and 3 wheelers -us. But the huge blue sign above the entrance saying
Location: Hydrabad - Andhra Pradesh, India (Received at 05:38)

No tigers. No elephants.

Posted: Jan 08, 2010

Arrived in Napgur with Team Batman after solid 260km drive. Found a nice hotel with hot showers (need to ring reception to ask them to turn on boilers), great restuarant and then Rob and Nic met some amusing locals on the street. Current plan for tomorrow is to leave at 6am and put on 500km and reach Hydrabad; then start to head west to Goa in following days. Our rick was solid today, no faults at all.@
Location: Nagpur - Maharashtra, India (Received at 17:23)

Running roadblocks and tolls and being chased for money. Here's how we think a roadtoll should work: you build a nice new bypass and put impressive tollbooths at each end, with impressive signs stating the price for different vehicles. India has these and we like them and their nice bypasses. India also has lots of "hobby tolls" - toll gates that seem to be installed by locals for their own amusement. But the amusement is all ours. Firstly, they are often installed in the middle of truly awful roads. Secondly, we don't stop for them and we don't pay. How? They never have the boom gate down. Rather, 3 or 4 of them space themselves across the road to stop us (but no one else). The best game we've made up is to see how far you can make one of the highway thieves jump for their lives when you speed up and drive straight at them. Oh the laughs. Today, one gang of bandits realised they'd have to work harder to get our money. A few km down the road from the breeched toll gate, 3 men on a motorcycle were grabbing at Team Batman's rickshaw forcing them to stop. Just down the road, we stopped our rick, jumped out and raced towards the hijackers, yelling at them. We forced them away from Team Batman's rick, disabling one ruffian when the motorcycle started falling over and he alone struggled to hold it up. The other two yelled at us to pay 60Rs, and later changing it to 100Rs during our yelling match. The English gentlemen in Team Batman were initially shellshocked by the exhcange, but eventually hopped back in drove away up to our rickshaw. We physically towered over the local gangsters, screamed at them to 'Go back and get real jobs', 'Call the police, try it!' and much more. We walked away and looked behind to see them regroup at the rescued motorcycle. We never saw them again. Our tr ** some text is missing **
(Received at 09:08)

No tigers. No elephants. From freezing cold 6am to beautiful sunny 11am we drove around a large national park spotting spotted deer, jackels, wild boar and some monkeys. Not seeing any wild tigers and not having any elephants to ride is obviously a huge disappointment. Still, it's a lovely day in the sunshine.
(Received at 06:14)

Nic outruns the rickshaw to prove a point

Posted: Jan 06, 2010

Getting from A to B in a new city. Lonely Planet maps of a city aren't often useful for navigating. We've spent an hour or two driving around Indian cities finding hotels or trying to exit. We've learnt a pro-tip: hire a local rickshaw/taxi to take you there and follow him. Pow! An hour saved.
Location: Jabalpur - Madhya Pradesh, India (Received at 12:33)

Tensions mount between Nic and Rob. In the spirit of Top Gear Challenges, Nic took time in Varanasi to buy a gift for Rob and Greg: each received a silk table table runner with lovely feminine colours. Rob got an additional, personal gift. Rob's need to eat food without touching any local cooking drove him to mild hysterical thinking "we should buy eggs and cook them ourselves. We could feast on eggs in our rooms. We'll buy small cooking stoves, etc" Nic asked, "where will we store the eggs? There's no space and the rickshaw bounces around all day." Rob retorted with, "I can't see that as a problem." So, Nic's gift to Rob was a single egg. "Rob, if you can look after this egg in the rickshaw then we'll get more." Rob was very happy with his egg and promised to look after it. Fast forward to now: "Rob, how's the egg?" "It's in a chip packet in the storage tube; it's safe" Nic gently pulled out the packet and gooey egg white dripped everywhere. The broken egg became a broken friendship.@
Location: Rewa - Madhya Pradesh, India (Left at 08:17)

Who the hell is Jaypee Cement? In Australia roadside advertising is done with large billboards. In India, building walls are used and someone's entire house might have corporate advertising on it. Between Varanasi and Rewa and no doubt all over India there is one company that has accrued more signage than anyone else COMBINED: Jaypee Cement. They must expect to sell a lot of cement. We might ask a few questions about them. Other cement companies advertise too. We don't see much concrete anywhere but lots of brick buildings. Can someone google about Jaypee Cement and SMS me a summary at +61412002126 please?@
Location: Rewa - Madhya Pradesh, India (Left at 06:40)

Bypassing Rewa. Who needs Rewa? Our aim for today is 350km from Allahabad to Jabalpur. It will be our biggest day by far; yesterday we did 250km. We only achieved 135km in the first 5 hrs today, but since the samosa town the road has been great. Just before Rewa there is a new toll road bypass around it. We didn't have to pay, though that made the last toll gate people cranky that we didn't have a "tickets please!" Trucks started honking so they waved us through. 206km to Jabalpur. A big task ahead.
Location: Rewa - Madhya Pradesh, India (Left at 06:28)

Not many 'Indian Restaurants' in India. Nice hotel restaurants are perhaps the few places that offer a menu, butter chicken and naan. So it takes each person some time to realise that day-to-day food is only available from stalls and street vendors. Nic is the most adventurous yet. He wanders up to vendors and watches people buying food, watches it being prepared and tries a few different things. "Guys, you're not going to get diahhrea from this; try it, it's delicious!" 30km from Rewa we stopped at a town with a busy little vendor. Turns out he makes some awesome samosas (2 for 5 Rs including a little soup) and coffee (3 Rs in many parts of India). We're told the road into Rewa is much nicer and we should find a petrol station soon - our 2x10l jerry cans are empty.@
Location: Rewa - Madhya Pradesh, India (Left at 05:32)

Nic outruns the rickshaw to prove a point. Our rickshaw can do 50-60kmh. These roads are so bad this morning that Nic was able to jump out of the moving rick and run ahead for a few 100m until the next small section of flat road
Location: Rewa - Madhya Pradesh, India (Left at 03:40)

Road to Rewa is barely a road. One thing is uncertain in India: how bad must a road surface degrade to before it is rebuilt? The road to Varanasi was bad: multileveled with bitumen on top of bitumen. The road to Rewa is riddled with big potholes sometimes larger than remaining road surface. The good news is two fold: India does have multilane highways that are smooth and we can do 60kmh (though people do drive down the wrong side and others walk along it) which we experienced between Varanasi and Allahabad. Secondly, we discovered there is a new highway that our map doesn't show and it's on our route! As disastrous as the roads are today, perhaps we'll reach nice highways tonight.
Location: Allahabad - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 03:28)

End to a perfect day

Posted: Jan 05, 2010

End to a perfect day: shit, shower and shave. Obviously edible food and flat roads aren't the only two things that are difficult to find in India. Three of life's pleasures are hard to orchestrate: hot water doesn't flow from hotel taps so you can't shave, shower heads and/or shower taps are removed preventing showers, and toilets are holes in the ground in hotels, and completely unfindable throughout the day. Tonight in Allahabad is the first time since leaving Pokhara that we've found these modern/western amenities. I've just had a shower, then and a shave and am working on the third item on the list as I write this. Sadly for Rob, it's the 5th of the new year and he's yet to work his magic on any toilet yet.
Location: Varanasi - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 17:57)

And we're off and racing. They fixed the carby, cleaned and adjusted the brakes, lubbed our drive shifts, changed the gear box oil and all this whilst NOT working on any other competitors car (except the Cow Team having their engine overhauled). Our 'driver' is now taking us back to the coffee stall and then Allabad here we come!
Location: Varanasi - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 09:07)

Success! We have a mechanic. The man who drove us here must be lower caste as the mechanic manager keeps trying to throw him out, but we really would like to keep him so he can get us back to his coffee shop and we can keep going to Allabad without getting lost. Plus he's cleaning our filthy rick at the moment. Champion! Rob and Greg have just gone to find food and look around the town. Nic guards the rick and ensures we don't lose our mechanic and thus precious time. This is still a race!@
Location: Varanasi - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 07:24)

No dead people on the Ganga River. Varanasi is famous for dead people floating down the river, so we went there as our major tourist attraction. Sadly we didn't see dead people. Our skills at navigating huge cities were 1000% better today. We only asked 'Which way to Varanasi?' and avoided yes/no questions. In, see a dirty river, and out; following huge blue signs to Allabad. Being in large cities is a crazy driving experience. Nic (me) drove through Varanasi and earnt his black belt in Indian driving. Dive into junctions, drive straight at oncoming cars, bikes etc and gamble they will move out of the way. Honk and then honk some more. Brilliant and satisfying when you know you're comfortable within the mayhem. We got 10km out of Varanasi and Rob and Nic stopped for coffee. We've had glass cups, plastic cups and even normal coffee mugs before. This time we were served in ceramic mini bowls that are thrown on the ground after you finish. Greg and Nic both claim they felt lightheaded (hallucinating - Rob) after it too! Sadly it wore off in a few minutes. At the coffee shop we picked up a local man who is now driving us back into Varanasi to an official Bajaj mechanic. Our carby still is playing up, the rick doesn't idle, and mostly needs push starting. Perhaps we'll only make it to Allabad tonight, which will mean we will do 250km in a day. A team first!
Location: Varanasi - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 06:16)

Our speedo is wrong. When we only did 50km in 1.5hr we became suspicious of our speedo - we thought we were doing 50kmh. Using the 1km roadside markers and doing a steady 50kmh we calculated we're actually doing only 44kmh.
(Left at 02:37)

50km in 85 mins but we've overtaken 2 teams of sleepy heads when we drove past their ricks at their hotel at 7:50.
(Left at 02:12)

We and Team Batman woke at 5:45 and look to have the ricks packed and ready to depart Mau at 6:30. This is a fine effort. The hotel lights/power is switched off over night so it's like packing up in the dark when camping.
(Left at 00:44)

On the road to Varanasi

Posted: Jan 04, 2010

Cash crisis averted. There is an amusing situation in India: the ATM machine gives out 500Rs notes but the coffee vendor charges 3Rs. The vendors don't have suitable change. Small notes and coins are hard to find and we've found we couldn't buy from some vendors. So we've begun aggressively collecting coins and small notes (mostly 10Rs). Tonight we were rewarded by feasting at the stalls in Mau. Battered hard boiled egg, vegetable mix burger, fried egg plant, 3Rs coffee, and three grown men were well fed for less than 50Rs ($1). The rick went really well this afternoon/evening and we're keen to pack on the miles tomorrow. First to Varanasi to see dead people float on a river, then onwards south-west.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 16:15)

Road to Varanasi is a minefield of massive potholes. Our new engine can do 60kmh instead of just 40kmh, woohoo! Unfortunately the route 29 south has so much big truck traffic and is littered with crater potholes that we aren't often permitted to enjoy it's awesomeness. It's day 3 and approaching night time. Previously this is when we break down for a few hours. Let's cross our fingers.@
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 11:39)

Finally found road to Varenasi at 4:15 English sign, 210 km to go. Here we come!
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 10:32)

Wrong direction! We followed instructions from a man and confirmed it (albeit poorly) with 3 people along the road but we still went 10 km down the wrong road going west, when we are aiming east and south. We're back on the edge of Gorukhpur, having our front wheel looked at and getting new directions. Now 3:13 and no closer to Varanasi.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 09:29)

We are off and racing! It's now 2:30 and we are on the road to Varanasi. 200 km and at least 6 hrs of driving. Once again we will roll into town after dark.@
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 08:42)

It's alive! Sort of. The boys came back with new piston and head, and by 1:15pm we pulled the starter lever and it sprang to life! But there was a death rattle, so the head and piston are back off.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 07:40)

Now noon and our rick has been towed into Gorukhpur to find a Bajaj mechanic. Rob found one whilst Greg and Nic fielded thousands of questions from the few locals who spoke English and watched by a much larger crowd of others. Our luggage is only loosely thrown in back of rick, not strapped to roof rack, so need to constantly watch it all. Rob and Greg have gone back to mechanics workshop to get new piston for engine as old one has holes in it!
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 06:19)

We have a plan to rescue our rick. We started today with breakfast, unlike yesterday, which gave us some planning time to figure out how we are getting 20km back to our rick and get it to a Bajaj mechanic. We'd stupidly left our map of India in the back of the rick, so we drew a simple map [Gorukhpur ------ India/Nepal border] and asked a hotel manager to tell us the name of the town were our rick probably is. We have no idea - it was dark and no one understands most English. We waved down a heavy duty desiel rickshaw and negotiated 600 Rs to take us to Gigigang. Hopefully on the way we find our rick on the side of the road and the nearest Bajaj mechanic.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Left at 03:12)

Rickshaw Rescue

Posted: Jan 03, 2010

We made it to Gorahkpur and found a room by 9pm. Finished dinner by 11pm. Time for a vodka and then bed. Tomorrow we return to rescue our rickshaw.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 17:15)

We are now 15km out of Gorahkpur getting a lift with Batman rick. Except their rick just stopped too :) Adventure!
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 13:33)

Rob arrived back with a mechanic in the Batman team rick. Confirmed that our engine has blown up. We are now towing our rick behind the other rick with 2 foot of slack. Pitch dark. Greg is driving and screaming Aaaaaaagh@
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 12:58)

No sign of Rob yet. It's now pitch dark and we have a crowd of 19 locals attempting social chit chat in broken English.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 12:34)

Rob has hitched a ride with the Batman team to the next town. Nic and Greg wait by the rick, with about 10 locals, to see if Rob comes back with a mechanic or a truck or comes back at all.@
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 11:57)

Engine finally dead. It's been running bad for 2 days. We're 4km from nearest town. Conceiving a plan.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 11:43)

The critical ingredients: petrol, oil, and cash. In Nepal, we had petrol and cash but no oil. Across the border we found oil but we had very little cash. We've seen other teams realise that they couldn't use Nepal Rs nor credit card. 60 km across the border and we found the first ATM. We now have all three things. Golden.
Location: Gorakhpur - Uttar Pradesh, India (Received at 11:42)

We're thru to India! The intensity of this crossing can barely be absorbed yet described. The smog is terribly as we sit behind '46000 trucks' [Rob]. We paid 4000Rs in 'fees' to various people, our passports are stamped and we are in a very slow convoy out of the crossing area. We exchanged 1385 Nepal Rs for 702 Indian Rs. I'm confident we for screwed but cannot find a real money changer or an ATM yet. We're in India! We're aiming for the town of Gorakhpur 95 km from here and stay there the night. 1:30 now so perhaps it's 3 hrs away.
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 07:45)

Border crossing mayhem! We reached the border at noon and fortunately Rickshaw Run organisers helped us to the front of the queue. Turns out we're missing paperwork for our car for the border crossing. Apparently everyone had it attached to their windscreen wipers. We don't have wipers. Nic also had a brief panic: he always has his passport in his pocket, but here at the border it was missing! Fortunately it was found in his bag. Grabbing some lunch since we missed breakfast and then hit the rockslide. Soon: India.
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 07:36)

We're through! We were there for 2 and a bit hours. Onward to the border! 30km to India! Need to buy oil still.
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 05:02)

A huge bulldozer has arrived (50 mins later from Bulwar 4km down the road) and is moving the 'smaller' rocks. The very huge one hasn't moved at all yet. Nonetheless exciting to see action. Our map says the route around the rockslide is over 150km - further than we've travelled from Pokhara in 12 hrs@
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 05:01)

Rockslide!! We're covered in dust from watching up close a secondary rockslide. The first rockslide had already completely blocked the road an hour before we arrived. There still looks to be precarious rocks (one shaped and sized like a grand piano) so this could take hours or days to clear.@
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 04:33)

On our team Rob is the mechanic. He's rebuilt our carby and pulled off and cleaned our engine reed yesterday. That is in addition to helping 6 other ricks yesterday. Go Rob!
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 01:56)

She's alive!! Choke on, key in, first pull of the starter lever and she started. We're a few km down the road topping up fuel. 2 stroke oil is more difficult to find. We've borrowed some from one team but petrol is useless with 1:20 oil in it.@
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 01:26)

We slept on the floor of a 'hotel room' that cost $3 for everyone. We're all slightly broken this morning. Hopefully our rick has enjoyed her night off and is ready for the 70km to the border today. Let's go!
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 00:32)

We've discovered other teams

Posted: Jan 02, 2010

We've discovered other teams!! It's 9pm and we've arrived at Bartang near Tansen and found a group of ricks at a hotel/restaurant. We immediately stopped and sat down for dinner. No rooms for us. We'll worry about that after dinner.
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 15:10)

And then we run out of fuel. Not a crisis as we had bought 10l in our jerrycan earlier in the day, but at the time when the rick stopped dead again it was frightening. We're using two water bottles to form a funnel. Classy.
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 15:06)

Still going though 'baby' is sounding terrible and maxes at 20km/hr. Sign just said '80 km to Sunhil' which is the town across the Indian border.
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 13:50)

It's alive! We roll started it and going to next town!!!
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 13:33)

Uh oh. Major issues whilst still in the mountains. We've been trying to fix it for almost 2 hrs. Don't think it's the carby - the sparkplug isn't getting wet, so perhaps a compression /suction issue. We think all rickshaws are ahead of us. That is, we're last :) 7pm here now.@
Location: Butwal - Nepal (Received at 13:21)

hrs of driving has reaped us 85 km and a roadside rebuilt carby through the mountain stage. 120 km to the Indian border to go. Still aiming for that today/tonight. Our front wheel needs a realignment when we reach India and the Bajaj mechanics. This trip is amazing so far.@
Received at 09:48)

Yeah! We rebuilt the carby and we've done several trouble free kms thru mountains!
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 07:21)

We're off and running. The convoy toured the streets of Pokhara and we waved and cheered at the locals. Troubles started when we hit the mountains. We overtook other ricks then broke down ourselves. Still investigating some problem with the carby.
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 06:32)

A minor crisis before kickoff when we misjudged the size of our jerrycan so we put the wrong amount of oil in. Now draining the petrol out.
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 03:57)

We've arrived at the compound, packing bags onto rick now, topping up the fuel. Mixing in the oil is a delicate activity.
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 03:09)

RACE DAY! We took the extra day off to pimp the rick some more, including a huge Australian flag. Quiet night at a pub with 6 other teams. Time for brekkie and then we're off to the rickshaw grounds for 8:30 for 10am start.
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 01:12)

Race Day - Not!

Posted: Jan 01, 2010

Race Day! Great party last night but the Nepalese Strike on New Years Day has begun and means no vehicles will be on the road. This means the Rickshaw Run is postponed till tomorrow. Very sad. Everyone excited to get started.
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 02:46)

We've taken delivery of our bright blue rickshaw. It works. We're giggling like school girls. Applying stickers and decorations now. Let the pimping begin!@
Location: Pokhara - Nepal (Received at 05:02)

Dr Nic does Standup

Posted: Dec 03, 2009

Our very own Dr Nic has shown he's not just a super nerd, but a super funny nerd, and he's been on stage to prove it.
Read all about it and see the video here!

Meet Rick

Posted: Nov 28, 2009

Rick the Shaw? Richard? Geraldine? Thats not been officially decided yet. Neither has this fine paint job, but this is pretty close.

3d View

Something missing? Just like and your company can be immortalised in film and print in front of such famous landmarks as the Taj Mahal or Praneel's mobile roadside poppadom emporium.

Schematic view

Thanks Railscampers

Posted: Nov 25, 2009

So we just got back from Railscamp 6, yay programming camp, go nerds! And while at said camp, we ran a little raffle. All the proceeds were to go towards our charities.

Well we always knew that we were part of an awesome community of ruby hackers, but we found out they were also very generous. We took 300 tickets and it was a sell out!

So this is a great big thank you to all the people at Railscamp who helped get us into first place on the charity fundraising leaderboard. Give yourselves a great big pat on the back.

The Draw

It was dark so the quality is not great.

Let the pimping begin

Posted: Nov 14, 2009

No we're not resorting to prostitution to pay for our adventure, distance pimping is the age old art of decorating your rickshaw from the other side of the world.

Anyone have a longish paintbrush extension?

First try, wanted something bright

Noddy mobile?

Maybe a tropical theme?

Hmmm maybe I need to work on this a bit more.

Vaccinations aren't that easy

Posted: Nov 09, 2009

Turns out when you off on a wild adventure, things are not quite so simple. Me being mostly lazy, I asked Cristy to book me a doctors appointment so I can get my vaccinations. Easy right? Not quite.

Cristy has just emailed me back with:

Vaccines aren't easy.. You need to go to the doctor who will request a list of vaccines from QML pathology, QML will send a list to the doctor with possible side effects and you and the Dr decide which ones you need, then you order them, then you get them injected or take the tablets depending on what you decide.

Then:

I called the doctor first and she told me to call QML, I called QML and they said they only give information to the doctor so I called the doctors back and now she is finding out and calling me back... Rob isn't going to do this...

Yes, Rob is Lazy too, it's a family thing.

Anyway did all the above and behold:

After attempting a world record as a human pincushion, I should be immune to just about anything except trucks.

Greg Breaks a Leg

Posted: Oct 13, 2009

When people embark on something exciting it's common to say "Break a leg!" Greg did, 3 months before the Rickshaw Run.

All this was made possible by this machine:

So, will Greg be going to India for the Rickshaw Run in 80 days time? Or will he cause grief and mayhem for the team and all the charities we're raising money for?

Fortunately he said this on twitter:

also popped my shoulder, thumb and hip but will still do #rickshawrun

Woohoo!

I mean, err, "Greg, get better soon!!"

Fancy Charity Counter

Posted: Oct 06, 2009

We badly wanted to be able to show off how generous people have been when they donate to our two charities, so we added a counter at the top of the site. The tricky part was "how do we update the counter?"

Let me rephrase that: as nerds, how cool would it be for the counter to automatically calculate the donations from the donation home pages? (Frank Water and OLPC)

To see a demonstration, donate now and the counter above automatically changes. Do it. Do it for the children.

Nerd's Explanation

This little bit of magic is done using JavaScript, Yahoo Pipes and RSS feeds for each of the donation pages.

We take the raw RSS feed for each donation page (for example) and use Yahoo Pipes to clean up one element into a raw total of the amount donated.

The tricky bit is conning Yahoo Pipes into invoking our counter code with the current value. There is no obvious way to do this from Yahoo Pipes' website.

What Yahoo give you is a "Get as JSON" URL. If you open this URL in your browser you will see the raw JSON data. The question is, how do you download this URL and trigger the counter code?

The answer is: you need a callback method.

Fortunately, Yahoo Pipes has a sneaky callback method argument _callback. That is, add to the URL &_callback=myMethod and the resulting JSON will be wrapped in a call to a myMethod function (that your JavaScript needs to implement).

If you open up the URL with the callback

The resulting JavaScript is:

Charity.frankWatersAmount({"count":1,"value":{"items":[{"title":"581.00", ...}], ...}})

So now we just need a method to update the counter (see whole script):

Charity.frankWatersAmount = function(amount) {
  this.frankWatersValue = parseInt(amount.value.items[0].title, 10);
  this.updateSignage();
};

To trigger the load of the JSON, which then calls our callback method, we add the following to the bottom of every page:

<script src='http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=4ec120cc28c82031e7bac7e810107c24&amp;_render=json&amp;_callback=Charity.frankWatersAmount'></script>
<script src='http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=c0b542d7338705199733887c38dc8b63&amp;_render=json&amp;_callback=Charity.olpcAmount'></script>

A victory for Nerds around the world!

One person CAN make a difference

Posted: Oct 06, 2009

So the mighty MOR website has been online for about two hours, and we have had to go to the extreme effort of doubling the target for one of our charities, Frank Water Projects, which took up to a minute of our precious time.

Why so? All because of a certain Liam McLennan http://hackingon.net who with one fell swoop, and a few deft keystrokes at his electronic computing device, donated $1000.

Now because Frank Water Projects are a bunch of boffins (that means them is smart), they don't just hand out bottled water. They go into a village and build sustainable filtration facilities that are owned, run and maintained by the local community, with support workers on hand to provide advice when needed. When you do the maths it works out that about $2 buys healthy drinking water for a person, for life.

So Liam, on behalf of 500 people who will now have safe drinking water, or as you put it, errr, clean beer making water (http://twitter.com/liammclennan/status/4645831259) we thank you. It's people like you who make the world a nice place to live.

Mmmmm Rabies

Posted: Oct 04, 2009

Good news is, if we get bitten by a monkey or a dog we still have 24 hours to make it to a hospital before we die.

Considering we'll be in the middle give or take a few miles from nowhere, in nothing more than the love child of a moped and a caravan (not the fastest contraption in the world) I think we better get some vaccinations organised, need to hurry as it's a three or four dose course to build up immunity.

After that were all clear to wrestle any stray dogs and monkeys we come across. Yay.

Website approaching launch

Posted: Oct 04, 2009

We know your all chomping at the bit to get to the MOR (for the uninitiated, that's Mocra Off Railers) website. So that may not be entirely true given that few of you will have ever heard of MOR, but thats all about to change.

With only 88 days until the start of the Winter 2010 Rickshaw Run and approximately everything we need to accomplish still profoundly undone, we feel it's time maybe to start doing, lest nothing gets done.

After Elle from Design By Elle did such a great job on the design it's only right that we do our bit and show it off to the world. Not to mention that it's only right for you to go staright to the charity page and donate to one or both these worthy causes.

Website work

Posted: Sep 01, 2009

OK, better get this website happening, have some new content, but I need to learn how to drive webby, I could ask the eminent Dr Nic but that would be cheating. Better get cracking and figure it out for myself.

The adventure begins!

Posted: Jun 24, 2009

So we tried to start the rickshaw but couldn't figure out how, so we're going to push it the entire distance! Wish us luck!