Day 10 - Tuesday 28th October 2008

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So our last driving day - a 190 Km streach from Thekkady - Capital of Spice Country to Kottayam in the Kelara backwaters, estimated to tak 6 hours, so not the longest of stages.

The main theme of the briefing was "Get there safely" as having come so far, to have a problem now would be terrible. The first section was out through the busy town so there were 60 Ambies more or less nose to tail. The road then became rough and unfortunately some of more adreneline affected colleagues started a little race using all of the road (and sometimes a bit more). On particular favourite was "My pothole is smaller (I think) than yours (I hope)". Dinesh and I had a front row seat but I decided to hang back in case of trouble. Fortunately the road opened out and soon Maygo was cruising well on her own.

I really enjoyed the drive as we only had one session of bicep workout going up a hill and then down 14 hairpin bends - a piece of cake! We did stop on a hilltop and Dinesh went to take some snaps. Meanwhile Maygo quickly caught the attention of three beautiful girls who appeared out of nowhere. We were asked in perfect English what we were doing, where we were going and why. Soon the whole family came to join us and Dinesh got some nice snaps when he came back. This was typical of the friendly way we have all been treated throughout the rally.

30 km to go and we came across some real skidmarks in the road. A little way further up was Len and John with their Ambie, that had been redesigned at the front by an Indian bus. Two buses were trying to overtake each other. Len and John managed to stop. The bus did not. Luckily both Ambie pilots were shaken not stirred and they managed to get their Ambie going again after a bit of ad-hoc metalwork and they made it to the finish. Our excellent medical team were also on the scene.

At 3 Kms out we were all stopped and formed into a convoy for the run in. Maygo, wearing fresh garlands was about five from the front before the Karma control vehicles. Unfortunately thanks to two lorries and a bus getting onto a narrow bridge in a village we lost sight of the car in front. After that we pressed on and I managed to miss the very last turn, despite Dinesh teling me to turn. 3 km's later we realised the mistake and turned around. We then sailed past the other Ambies who had followed with slightly red face (Melvyn) and innocent smile (Dinesh). So we missed the very first and the very last turning. Thank goodness the 2,100 Kms in between were OK!

So we rolled in to be met by a large crowd, two huge ceremonial elephant and a 15 piece tabla band........oh and a huge party.

I said goodbye to Maygo with a kiss and wished her luck in her new career as a taxi. For sure she will not work harder than she has in the past two weeks!

How do I feel? Not sure yet - tell you tomorrow

Tomorrow - Life after Karma

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