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Published: January 24th 2008
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Indianarc 2008 - Miss H
Miss Havisham with Jo aboard Miss Havisham (the moniker we had affectionately given our rickshaw) was now festooned with even more tat than you could shake a stick at, it being a badge of pride to collect as much crap as possible throughout the trip. In Pondicherry we eschewed stalls of sarees to find Spencer’s Shoppe, an emporium of all things naff. Leaving nothing to chance we bought both a Ganesh (A Hindu God and ‘remover of obstacles’) and Jesus to protect us on our travels. We had also acquired throughout the rally group:
Three bunches of red fake roses (one with dewdrops), in keeping with the England theme
Prayer beads - which were covered in yellow sandalwood incense which covered everything it touched in then yellow powder
Paper garlands
An old flip flop
Bunting and flags
Pink curtains (Thunderbirds)
Custom made signs of team names in Tamil
Temple flower garlands
Large, loud, horns
Bollywood stars’ posters
Grungy pair of pants
Hand painted signs “keep back 200 m”
Water pistols
Ganesh garlands
Pink feather boa
Fluffy monkey
Sadly our previous purchases of a pink stiletto shoe and ‘newspuppy’ soft toy sellotaped to the headlight were cruelly ‘half-inched’ in Pondicherry on New Year’s Eve. The
Indianarc 2008 - Miami Vice
Middle Eastern Muscle Patrol boys showing off their Miami Vice outfits youth of today, I don’t know. No respect, etc………….
Yesterday Jesus took at tumble from the dashboard and ‘hey presto’ we lost our headlight. This morning we were taking no chances and we taped him firmly to the front of Miss H. This probably didn’t do much for the aerodynamics or speed but looked great.
We started out the day in convoy (in daylight this time) to the temple in Thanjavur which was very impressive. The temples in Indian are an oasis of calm and are given a disproportionate amount of space if you consider the mayhem outside the walls. There is always ample room to walk around which seems incongruous when there is so much chaos outside the walls. Even when it is busy is never becomes crowded.
Yet again we took a wrong turning and had to double back on ourselves. Now that we knew not to expect all the place names to be the same, or indeed bear any relation to what was on our map (that was if we saw any signs at all), navigating had become a lot simpler and mainly involved a lot of pointing. We headed off the right direction
Indianarc 2008 - shark
Angie & Johno's 'Shark' shaw down a very rural road were the locals were drying their maize on road, they also laid out the corn from the fields so that passing vehicles (rickshaws included) could ‘thrash’ it for them. True cottage industry and truly rural India. It was blissful.
Sadly our day was not drama free as we trundled along Rebecca noticed a ‘knocking’ which she thought might be the axel, and after a visit to the local garage she was proved right. Once Miss Havisham was up in stirrups, for the princely sum of about £3 (parts and labour) we had a brand new axel fitted.
(Actually that some of that is a complete fabrication, we didn’t have a clue what the knocking was, but were worried that our steering was going to fail at any minute, however I believe we managed to convince the boys that we knew what we were talking about, so we’re sticking to it.)
For the first (joyous) time we managed to make to our destination in daylight, but this was only a temporary stop as our hotel was across the other side of town.
After all that we had experienced it couldn’t get any worse,
Indianarc 2008 - filming
The Sweet Chariot of Fire girls being interviewed for SS Music TV surely?
Cue hysterical laughter…….
If the layout of the centre of Madurai is anything to go by, I suspect the surveyors had been on a god almighty bender the day before their planning meeting. The sheer volume of every mode of transport was unbelievable and the amount of signposts was opposite to the amount of traffic. Carnage. Rebecca masterfully saved us from the path of a fast approaching coach when we somehow veered into its path when our brakes failed to respond. This rendered us all speechless for the rest of the journey apart from some very choice words from Rebecca. If other road users didn’t know that we were trying to follow someone, it wasn’t long before they did….
One of the boys’ comments summed the driving up perfectly, as we got out of our rickshaws, he turned round and said (with feeling), ‘That was vicious!’ Can’t say fairer.
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Tim and Catherine
non-member comment
We know you have returned 'cos we've seen Billie in the flesh but god only knows how you survived!
Spent a lovely evening with B and her parents hearing all about your amazing adventures. Incredible. All your travelblogs have been eagerly awaited, brilliantly written (well done J as believe this is mainly your doing), and so funny with it all seeming so easy but, I know you have had some really scary moments so have HUGE admiration for you all. Send photos of Miss H asap! Lol C and T