We are happy to report that we are still alive and kicking, but only barely. Our team took a great hit with (presumably) Mr Mustaffa's Pineapples of Great Purging and spent more time the night before taking turns destroying the toilet. It was so bad that we had to call maintenance to unchoke the plumbing. Also zero sleep night. No more street food for now, folks.
Being baller folks as we are, it was lomotil, charcoal pills, lacteolforte and the road. It was a long drive, to say the least.
This is me waving at a train going BOHHHHH as it rushes past. We got front seat views of the whole raucous affair. Interestingly, the junctions are completely manual. There's a dude who has a sole goal in life of raising and lowering barriers repeatedly.
Before the train came chugging along. We were so smashed that we were taking catnaps at every interval possible. The above represents the shiokest 2 minute sleep ever, featuring SAF gloves of clutch wrestling.
This is Jik the navigator, doing his navigating best.
Along the way we hit a craft village which was pretty awesome. There's this potter dude who uses a manual potter's wheel that he operates with a stick (he shoves it in a crevice in the wheel and uses the stick to spin it up). That's right. A stick.
This dude got some national award for carving and he's really good. The Buddha is a big block of cedar.
But my favourite was the hand knitted goods shop.
Because....
The shop keepers had a bit of laugh after but they were nice folks so they let me sleep for the few minutes that we were in the shop.
Night fall came really quick after that. The entire area was pitch black by around 7pm and that was some scary experience. Like I never want to do this again scary.
Indian drivers have a habit of crazy overtaking. It's harrowing enough facing off against a bus going against traffic in your lane but at night. Hoo boy.
Most of the time we were blinking off the lights of oncoming traffic, and there were moments where we were completely blind. Like absolutely zero. Bouncing off potholes and praying there's no car that's headed right for us.
Here's an example of how the roads otherwise looked when we were not blinded.
Yup. Not impressive.
That's our amazing headlight (on high beam, no less!)
It has no function at all in illuminating the road and serves more to let the guys overtaking in front to know that HEY THERE'S A TUKTUK HERE DON'T KILL US.
Not that it stopped the random huge-ass bus that came rampaging through a blind corner in our lane and persisted despite seeing us. Headlights in our face blind us to whatever is to come. We jammed brakes, tucked left, and prayed to our individual deities for protection against crushing from multitonned metal vehicles. Time slows down. Huge-ass bus made a great swooping swerve at the end and misses us by just a whisker. I'm sure it was less than a hand's span of clearance. Great whoosh, and we're alive!
Some hour or two later we make it to Mangalore.
Don't drive at night in India.
Yinghao
Pre near death experience sunset
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