Hello! I'm back. And I'm alive, which is great, considering the road and traffic conditions. Actually, it wasn't that bad. Our vehicle though, was pretty ass. 40km/h top speed for the lose.
Edit: This post didn't go up in a timely fashion because halfway through it I was hit by the Demon of Infinite Fatigue, and then in the middle of the night we were visited by the Indian God of Bowel Destruction who reduced our entire team to whimpering sods. Right now I'm typing while trying to force down a single donut because I have absolutely no appetite. That's one donut more than Yinghao who looks like he's just run a full marathon in his sleep.
But anyway, in the spirit of chronicling, I press on. The original post continues from below.
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| Girl in festival - 2017 |
This picture pretty much sums up the Cochin New Year Carnival, which was held yesterday. Throngs of people, tuk-tuks lining up, an elephant and some celebrities.
The guy at the bottom left is actually Nicholas Hoult, the actor who plays Beast in the X-Men movies. And then we have our own celebrity Wenwen, who needs no further introduction.
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| Singapore represent |
And then there's us cruising along. Literally, taking 3 hours to complete the 2km circuit.
Hell fun though. Just masses and masses of happy adoring folk, although at one point the "everyone has a strong opinion" part of India showed up because one usher asked us to turn right, while the other asked us to turn left, and both did it at the second time. Continuously and insistently.
Imagine two guys standing in front of you one yelling, "right, right!" And the other going, "left, left!" All complete with wild gesticulating hand movements. We went right, which seemed to leave Mr Left a little disappointed.
So after that day of merry fun we were finally good to go!
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| Pumping up and ready to go! |
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| I'm on a boat! |
The initial flurry of activity involved us getting petrol, mixing in the 2-stroke oil, getting our spare tanks filled and mixed and generally trying to get out of Fort Kochi, which we eventually did by the eastward land route, as opposed to the northward ferry route.
The Catbus was a little miffed at missing the boat, so we looped back to the coast for some boating. Which was great because it simultaneously was a break for the engine and a break for us. Good times.
Interesting cultural snippet of Kerala which I had never known before: The Communist party is pretty popular here, and a lot of people outside of Cochin are Muslim. More interestingly, there's a significant Christian presence in Cochin itself. Language of choice is mostly Malayalam and English.
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| Mobbed by locals |
Literally everywhere we stop this happens. Without exception. I realize if I tie my hair they think I'm from Japan if not I'm from China. Interesting view into their perceptions. Other common topics include where we're going, for how long and how is Kerala. Which has been pretty great so far, actually. Other than the food hygiene and grime pretty much everything has way surpassed my initial expectations.
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| Catbus goes to the beach. |
Another fairly interesting observation was that no matter where we drove we never actually left civilization. There were almost always buildings along the roads, even the main trunk roads. Cities towns and villages just seemed to blend into one another without any distinct start or end.
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| Mr Mustafa |
At the last river crossing we met this very happy man who told us his name was Mustafa. Generally everyone seemed very happy wherever we went but he seemed to be on a whole new level of that. A fisherman by trade, between broken English and sign language he helped me buy the ferry ticket for the Catbus and us.
Also he treated us to a few slices of pineapple and refused to let us pay, during which I felt a sort of "achievement unlocked" moment. But let it not take away from how nice and friendly he was.
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| Sunset over the Purappuzha bridge at Tirur |
And that winds up day 1 of driving! Complete with bowel destruction soon after we stopped.
I really hope the rest of the days feature as much adventure but maybe less sitting on the toilet.
Last but not least I'd like to thank every single donor for their contributions thus far! Stay tuned for more to come! I'll update best as I can if I'm not... incapacitated.
Cheerios, Jik
https://give.asia/movement/rickshaw_run_-_driving_for_charity
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