No tigers. No elephants.
Date: 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)
