Day 0-1 : Death Denied

It's been barely 24 hours since we landed and it's already been great I've had not one but two near-death experiences already. Fresh from the airport, our taxi driver almost slams into the rear of a stationary lorry because he presumably was sleeping behind the wheel.

"Why are we headed straight to the back of this lorry?" - Yinghao

"HOLY SHIT!" - Jik

Not very impressive last words these would have made. But we survived. Despite how atrocious the rest of his driving was, none of it warrants further mention because it doesn't come close to comparing to staring death in the face via the back of a huge truck.

This morning we cross a busy highway on foot (because that's the only way across) and just as I think I have it figured out a scooter catches me off guard by going against traffic.

"And there is only one thing we say to Death: Not today."

Not today, indeed. The rest of the day was much less life-threatening and way more awesome though.

Say hello to celebrity Wenwen.

Remember what I said about her greatly raising the average attractiveness of our merry band? This little girl was so excited and wanted to get a photo with her. Complete with pro photographer too.

Not only did people want to take pictures with her, they wanted pictures taken by her.

Some cool kids.

Even had her WhatsApp the picture to them too after transferring it from her camera. Interesting bunch.

And for the highlight of the day...

The headshot of doom.

What's small, warm, wet, lumpy and drips down your forehead?

And being the great teammates we are BOTH of us were busy documenting this great moment before he could commence with the arguably more important task of wiping birdshit off his forehead.

Truly magnificent.

Last but not least, a sneak preview (somewhat literally, as we nearly scaled the wall of the encampment) of what's to come.

Yay! Hoo! Omg!

Oh yeah that's our very own tuk-tuk. To be very well acquainted with over the next few weeks. Some test driving and maintainence to be done, a bunch more revelry and it'll be off into the great unknown.

For now I'm gonna need sleep.

Cheerios, Jik.

The Odyssey begins...

Well...guess what.  Hello from Kochi.

After months of planning, we've made it.  To be frank, most of these months were spent in between brief spurts of planning but what's a bit of creative writing without artistic liberty.

First step was in boarding the plane intact.  Our CFO and resident cynic made it to the airport with time to spare, while the rest of our merry crew piled in as our real lives would allow.  Brief and furious debate on the merits of UberX (with or without promo codes) vs traditional cabs ensue.

Fast forward a bit and we're on our plane.  Brief and furious debate on whether the statement "X person is richer than Y" implies that either party is rich objectively (ie not just relative to each other) ensue.  Wen stays out of the fracas and plays Candy Crush on her phone. 

There are some really terrible ninja warrior reruns on board the flight.  The first real challenge might really be in surviving 4 hours of bad TV shows.  Our CFO has wisely put up his shield against the vagaries of life with his careful choice of survival equipment.  I watch two men in leotards bounce on large inflatable exercise balls on Just for Laughs.

 

Kei Kato hosts a really bad game show...ok it's actually kind of good 

This is us, featuring Jik's green cloak of eternal warmth and white earphones of alarmingly bad mandopop.  He also features a warning siren to ward away would-be predators by mimicking the grunting and snorting of the monsters-that-lie-beyond.  No careless carnivore prowling the galleyway is going to dare take on this ball of endless fury. 

 

If you see this post, we must have survived the ordeal of this modern day Odyssey.  Congratulate us.

I may tear blood from Just for Laughs! Live!  and be rendered deaf from the vicious snarling that emanates from my right.  

But we would have arrived, valiant in spirit, ready to take on exotic India.

Hello from Kochi!

Yinghao

Chief Medical Officer

The Third Wheel, Rickshaw Run 2016

https://give.asia/movement/rickshaw_run_-_driving_for_charity

And we're off!

Our merry crew!

In those bags we have what we'll be surviving on for the next 3 weeks. Doesn't look like much, but it's filled with hope and adventure.

The first week will showcase us gallivanting around Cochin and getting into all sorts of trouble. Kind of a last hurrah before the shit hits the fan on Jan 2.

The good doctor gets a new book each time he flies.

The die is cast, the gate is near and I'm out of WiFi soon.

We'll see you in India!

Do consider donating to our cause HERE! I promise to regale with tales of silliness.

Cheerios, Jik

D-1

Omg!

It's going to be tomorrow!

Will you believe it?  Thank you all you generous folks and anyone who is following this for lols.

 

Here are the fortune cookies that we're gonna open in India. To have a taste of what fortunes await us.  

 

Here are the tags that we bought for good luck.

I've also got bags of goodies including medication (zoo course, that's my job) as well as zip ties, because zip ties are awesome.  They're all packed with military precision ie into e-mart Ziplock bags. Because SAF. My military spec 4G SAF issued torch is also somewhat wonky but it goes into the bag too. 

The next time you hear from us might be from exotic India!

Wish us luck!

(Short post here. Trialling a blogging app.)

We are at T minus 3 days and 12 hours, random ravings and some notes about the IDP.

Ohhhhhhh my godddddd we are less than half a week away from takeoff. This is getting unreal.

But first and foremost, a big shout out to all our new donors - THANK YOU! On behalf of all the causes we are collecting for, thank you very much for your contribution! Also thank you for the support! You guys rock!

Our meticulous "planning".

Our current route has us driving 3122km, a 10% increase from what we initially estimated.

Well, we figured out even more about our route and...this is what we have. Completely thorough, if I may say so myself. Assuming we can do an excellent 40km/h an hour there are going to some pretty tough 10-11 hour drives, which to be honest seems a little optimistic to me given the relative discomfort of the vehicle we're sitting in. Assuming we start driving at 8am in the morning and somehow not have lunch or pee breaks or any sort of shenanigans, we might make it into the next town/city for dinner.

I think we may have to adjust a little on the fly. Even with this somewhat adventurous schedule it gives us only 2 non-driving days, which may even have to be pared down to one. The two places we've picked currently to have a break seem to be the more picturesque places so I do hope we can spend more time there.

Also, we have a few days to make our way to Delhi. Clearly no plans required because after traversing that much in an auto rickshaw getting to Delhi should be a walk in the park.

Yep. So that's about all the planning we're gonna be doing. HAHAHAHA!

This document makes no sense but cost me $20.

Also, I hauled my bum down to the Automobile Association of Singapore and got myself an International Driving Permit.

So this document was created in September 1949. Let that sink it for a bit folks. 19-friggin'-49. Let that sink in for a little bit, because in 1949 our country wasn't even a country, so we could only join this little party in 1972, a few years after independence.

I tried to research it a little online and apparently there's a 1968 convention which was amended as recently as 2011, but neither Singapore nor India are a party to that. Some countries are parties to both, some are only parties to one, but apparently just because a newer version exists doesn't make the older one any less invalid, so why have the newer one instead of just adding countries to the older one?

Also, I don't really know how relevant these things are because I didn't have to produce anything other than my original driver's licence to obtain this. Which begs the question, if the only thing I needed for this document was my driving licence, why is that not good enough for me to drive?

My first instinctual answer involved bureaucracy and someone making a living out of the $20 we pay to have this little paper booklet printed.

A little bit more research leads me to conclude that this document is actually a translation of my driver's licence, and the myriad of languages in the booklet seems to confirm that. However, the number of language translations does not seem to correlate very well with the number of countries in the list, for example there is clearly no Korean, despite South Korea being a party, nor are there nearly enough different Nordic languages for the amount of Norse involved.

It doesn't seem completely exhaustive. Nor does it seem culturally-related or displays bias in any way. In fact it seems really random.  English, unsurprisingly, is first on the list, but the second (surprisingly) is traditional Chinese, which is only used by two fairly minor parties in this list, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the former being previously a territory of the UK but now part of China and the latter being a country but then again not really recognized as a country.

Other strange oddities I noted or random facts I learnt today:

1. France, specifically lists itself as including its overseas territories, but New Caledonia, which is a French territory, is listed as a separate entity.

2. Taiwan is currently on the list in the book, except that on the 1949 Convention on Road Traffic it is not actually on the list, in fact the usual politics took place because there's even a footnote that reads: "The accession by the Taiwan authorities on 27 June 1957 by usurping the name of "China" to the Convention is illegal and therefore null and void." This actually makes the inclusion of traditional Chinese even stranger to me.

3. There's a place called the States of Jersey, which is extremely unrelated to New Jersey, the more commonly known state in the USA. It's a Crown Dependency but not part of the United Kingdom, which is somehow still responsible for its defence. Also, it's not actually part of the EU, but generally is considered to be in the EU on the same terms as the UK for purposes of trade and movement. Although due to some recent turmoil that may now be in question. Whoops.
4. I wondered why Czech Republic and Slovakia were both on this list when they only broke up in 1993, having previously been known by other names such as Czechoslovakia. Then I found out that they had applied in 1993, so this document is actually fairly up to date. In fact the most recent addition was Montenegro in 2006!

Okay I think I've bored the general audience with my random geographical and political trivia so if you're still with me at this point thanks very much for reading as always!

Cheerios, Jik

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

Pre-adventure adventures

Hello! It's Jik again.

So we haven't actually gotten round to getting to India and there have been some exciting times already involving applying for a visa.

Being the holders of the awesome Singaporean passport we generally don't have much experience in applying for visas outside of cursory electronic registrations and some fee payments. I had to do so for travel to the US and Australia but they were generally simple affairs involving some clicks online and a credit card payment. The one time I needed a full visa was when I went on exchange to Sweden, which involved an embassy trip and them asking me questions such as, "what about Sweden do you like". I was even "encouraged" to make my answer longer as to appear more presentable.

Anyway. The day rolls around and I try to fire up the Indian visa website to get myself one. I figure I'm going to be a tourist, so I try to fill out the e-Tourist Visa form. Immediately the page tries to be helpful and tells me this:

"Services of e-Tourist Visa involves completely online application for which no facilitation is required by any intermediary / agents etc. It is advised not to believe or fall in trap of any such unscrupulous elements. For any clarification or doubt may contact to indiatvoa@gov.in"

So, no agents, and a warning about scam pages. Helpful. Onward to the form.

I've never had to answer so many questions before trying to travel overseas. First it was all the basics: name, passport number, date of birth, port of entry, the usual expected questions.

Then it moved on to ask about my parents. Huh. Even wanted to know their previous nationality, if any.

The next few questions take a turn for the weird, but then it soon becomes clear what their purpose is. Straight for the jugular.

Were your Grandfather / Grandmother (paternal/maternal) Pakistan Nationals or Belong to Pakistan held area.

Ahhh, it all makes sense now. Even the questions about my current/past involvement in military organizations. Powering through page two of the form, I hit page 3 and then this.

TEN years? This is really testing my memory.

That took a while, and there was even a character limit so it wasn't possible to list them all. Still, I got to the final section where I had to upload a photo, which had a little message that it was compulsory to upload a photo for the registration of a visa.

I hit upload and...nothing. No pop-ups, no dialogue, no browse folder. Hm. I make sure my pop-up blocker is off and I try again. Nope. I'm not very tech savvy so I'm kinda stumped. I take to Facebook for some help and I got a lot of helpful advice about applying in person and places that I can do so, so I decide to do that instead. Sigh.

The thing I'm considering now is that I need my IC to apply in person (despite not needing it online), but I'm currently in the process of getting my new IC, since I've aged very badly since 15 years ago. I'm not sure if it should affect anything but after hearing the hoops Yinghao and Wenwen had to jump through to get theirs I think I might want to be safe.

In other news we've managed to transfer our vehicle deposit over to the organizers, and they've sent us a very long email detailing what electronics we should or should not try to install on our rickshaw.

Basically, we should install absolutely nothing.

"At Bajaj HQ they decided that they would include such luxuries as lights, a horn and even an electric windscreen wiper - which is lovely - except that the power used by even one of the aforementioned luxuries has a greater consumption rate than the charging system in the rickshaw can take."

Oh-kay. That's not very comforting, especially since they follow it up by suggesting that the engine could die every time we sound the horn or operate the lights.

"If you wish to have lighting in your rickshaw at night my advice is bring a torch - something you can tape to the front of the rickshaw when your lights fail."

Right. Point to note - let's try not to drive when it's dark. That would be prudent thing to do, but this adventure is already not exactly high on the prudent level so...we'll figure it out.

Well, so that was the excitement for the week. We have some vague plans of a route set up,  There's a pit-stop checkpoint in Goa on the 5th of December so we might aim for that, that gives us 3 days to get from Kochi to Goa. Other than that, a tentative checklist of cities we're going to go through is:

Kochi -> Goa -> Mumbai -> Surat -> Ahmedabad -> Jaisalmer. And then to Delhi, somehow.

Alright, glad I've been able to find some stuff to update everyone with, as we get more details and the dates draw closer I'm sure more things will come up. After all, efficiency increases exponentially as the deadline nears.

Edit: It has come to my attention that one of my teammates has actually fallen victim to one of the scam sites and paid about 3 times the amount that Mustafa charges. At least it wasn't a true scam and the visa application was actually processed. Oh well. At least not a total loss.

Cheerios, Jik

P.S. If you like what you see so far, do consider donating to our fundraiser HERE! All proceeds will go to the charities that we have adopted, none of the funds will be used for ourselves.