Day 9-12: Important Update
I'm going to put this as lightly as possible. It's going to sound bad, but it isn't terrible and could be much worse. On Monday upon exiting Kolkata, we had an accident. Our car flipped on its right side at full speed and skidded down the highway. Sonny and Allen were on the right side and sustained large surface skin wounds. Nothing internal was injured. The skin wounds were properly treated and they are both going to be ok. I got away with a minor cut on my head, nothing else. However, Sonny (who had greater wounds than Allen) had to drop out for awhile as he feared infection. He is resting in Kolkata where his family members can take care of him. This has been a huge blow to our team, but nevertheless, Allen and I intend to finish the race. There are many teams racing that have only two team members and no one who speaks Hindi. Yes it will be harder from here on out, but our main intention now is to just get to the finish line as quickly (and safely) as possible. We are done sight seeing as it is raining buckets anyways. I know many of you may be worried, but fear not. Allen and I are both in high spirits and are ever eager to finish this things with a more heightened sense of safety. Also, Sonny plans on flying down to Chennai where we will pick him up and drive to the finish line.
To continue on the rest of that day...well, it sucked. We got our first glimpse of a rural hospital in India...not pretty. More like a prison again. After Sonny and Allen were treated we had to get out because soon the hospital would call the West Bengal police and we'd have to report an accident, possibly ending our race. Great, now we're on the run from the cops. So we drove our way to Balasore without a windshield, as it got destroyed in the crash. As luck would have it, as soon as we leave the hospital, I hit the wheel of a cycle rickshaw. Townspeople start yelling and chasing the car as we dash away. We make an escape, and then it starts pouring. The monsoon's come to West Bengal in full force. I tied a bedsheet to the side of the rickshaw to protect the guy's wounds from getting wet and bared stabbing raindrops for 200 km to our destination. For the first time in India I feared hypothermia. We got to a hotel, lodged in their best suite they had, and just relaxed.
The following day we were stuck in Balasore. The windshield would take longer than we thought to repair. We had our first experiences of trying to communicate with people without Sonny. It wasn't pretty. For instance, going to the bank to exchange money was a 1 1/2 hour ordeal, which should've been 5 minutes. Don't go to banks in India. They're 10 times worse than the DMV. Aside from getting a repair, we just stayed in and ordered room service while bearing continuous blackouts.
Yesterday and today have just been me and Allen driving to Chennai. It's been pretty uneventful, which at this time we don't mind. We've had our fill for adventure. We're passing through the state of Andrah Pradesh, which is known to have high Naxalite terrorist activity, so we've been kind of freaked out about that. At least the scenery is nice. We're driving close to the coast so the region is very tropical and lush. No elephant or tiger sightings yet, but we're crossing our fingers to encounter at least one before we get out of here. We've also met some of the more indigenous people of India in this region. I cant even begin to explain the crazy piercings they have. But the people here and the way they live is very picturesque. We've noticed the more south we go that the people get darker. The sun must be more harsh here. Allen and I ares still creating crowds, and it's getting pretty annoying. We try to be as polite and cordial as possible, but we're just getting so sick of telling our story over and over again. Also, people here stare more. And it would be nice if they stared with a smile, or even a blank and confused face. But instead we're stared at with scowls. Naxalites?
Anyways, Allen and I are now in Vijayawada, about 600 km from Pondicherry! We got one more long day driving to Chennai tomorrow, then we head to Pondicherry with Sonny on Saturday morning. Then we can kiss this piece of crap goodbye! Again, don't worry about us. You'll hear from us at the finish line!
- Brian
