Success! And progress!

That's right, 2 weeks later and I have my visa. There's no stopping me now!

If you recall the things we had to do way back in October were:

1. Figure out our rough route (although we've been advised that will absolutely be of no help).
2. Buy air tickets.
3. Raise more funds (need all your help here, esteemed readers, please please)
4. Figure out what to pack, and how to pack it.
5. Discover more things to put onto this list.

I'm also glad that we can now cross out item number 1. Only two weeks before the actual day of departure. I love how swell our timeline is going.

1. Figure out our rough route.

Actually looks somewhat detailed...if you don't zoom in.

So we went onto Google Maps, set up a map, and assigned out portions of the route that we would each research and and pin interesting places that were hopefully somewhat on the way.

It looks like a nice little trail of blue dots up to about two-thirds of the way before becoming an absolute whirlwind of a scatter plot. Stay with me, my intrepid reader, and I'll try to make sense of the picture for you.

The blue dot at right at the bottom is where we fly in from (big red arrow), arriving at Kochi. The general game plan is to head up the western coast of India and hit Goa (bottom red circle), which is currently our first and only confirmed pit stop. Interestingly, we'll travel through what used to be French India, so we might see some differences compared to the rest of India, which was mostly under British rule.

Also we have a random blue dot out in the middle of nowhere to the east of Goa. Not sure if we're really going to attempt that, but it should make for an interesting detour if we do.

Following that we have another somewhat coastal-ish route up. The little mess of blue in the middle around Mumbai (central big red circle) was me being unable to decide whether we should try to brave the absolute insanity that is Mumbai city traffic, or to take a longer circle around it, so I ended up pinning all the various towns and cities in the area.

https://www.motorbeam.com/2016/10/general/mumbai-hc-suggests-one-car-per-family-rule/

Apparently the traffic is so bad the Mumbai High Court has suggested that vehicle control measures such as "one car per family" be implemented. So yeah. I'm sure we'll have a little discussion about this. My general preference is to avoid major cities, but I feel like this might be the only time in my life I'm going to get to visit this place and I should make the most out of it. Including getting caught in some up-to-your-nose kind of traffic.

And now for the top section.

That...sort of makes sense, I guess.

So, the blue dot circled in red is Jaisalmer, our END POINT. Or rather, the end point of our driving adventure, because then we need to make our way to the red X, which is Delhi, for our flight back.

Which makes me wonder if we are going to continue our adventure past the end point to accomdate all the stops between Jaisalmer and Delhi. Because if we do I predict that I would like to be in a somewhat more comfortable vehicle.

That point way out to the left near the Pakistani border is the Great Rann of Kutch, which is the one of the largest salt deserts in the world. In fact it is so great that it has TWO Wikipedia entries, the Rann of Kutch, and because that wasn't great enough the other being the GREAT Rann of Kutch.

In more seriousness though, there's a nice festival that lasts 3 months, the  "Rann Utsav festival of the Rann".

"Rann Utsav gives visitors not only a chance to experience full moon on salt deserts but also get a taste of the local culture, cuisine and hospitality. Specially built local houses are also used to house tourists to give them a taste of local traditions."

That actually seems really awesome and feels like something worth seeing. Except that Kutch is also a 400km detour away from Ahmedabad. Maybe we'll make a loop. Actually, I just hope our vehicle is still in one piece by this point. I would consider that a roaring success.

On a side note, the top section was researched by our fearless, peerless YOLO leader Yinghao, demonstrating his absolute love of adventure. Truly remarkable. If we manage to somehow navigate and cover every single point it should be a crowning achievement.

Now that we've got somewhat of a plan, all that remains to see is whether or not the plan will actually make a difference when we get there. Actually getting excited! Hoo!

Cheerios, Jik