We woke up bright and early at 7:15 am, dragged our outfits to our rickshaw, and prepped it for the start off of the Rickshaw Run. Many problems occurred during this time, including not being able to start the rickshaw. Luckily, we weren’t the last to leave. We got out of the field, waved goodbye to all the locals, and as everybody else turned right, we turned left and went back to our hotel. Antoine packed everything onto the rickshaw from our hotel room and I ordered breakfast. We quickly ate our food and went on our way towards the ferry. We totally thought that we would be last, but turns out a bunch of people tried to cut in line so they had to go to the back of the line, and we beat them right before they got there. The wait in the line lasted about an hour-long, but once we got on the ferry our true journey began.
During our 9 hour drive, we saw cows, students, goats, puppies, temples, tractors, cats, and many many potholes, except Antoine didn’t see the potholes. He drove the first two and a half-ish hours, during this time, we bought more water, food, and snacks. We had some very spicy samosas for lunch. I actually cried as I ate them because of how spicy they were. We actually stopped in front of a giant bright gold temple to eat lunch, this way I could grab some pictures. The guy manning the entrance helped me pick spots to take pictures of, so I got a picture of him as well. I drove for the two hours after we ate and I stalled every single time I was in a traffic jam in an intersection. Everyone was so excited to see us every single time we passed any group of people. Some people even drove up next to us as we were driving to talk to us. It was as if we were famous.
After I passed on the driving back to Antoine, we stopped in front of a beautiful field to take some pictures. Everybody else stopped to take pictures of us. A bunch of kids showed up and talked to us, just making fun of our driving and such. One kid wanted my sunglasses, which I said no to, and he just stared at me all sad.
The sun was setting and we were still 20-some kilometers away from where we wanted to be, and we still needed to take a ferry across a river first. The sun was almost completely down when we got to the ferry stop, and we watched the sunset as the ferry crossed the river. Antoine drove as much and as safe as he could as the sky got darker, it was harder to see. Even with our headlights, it was hard to see because they sucked and all the other car’s headlights were right in our eyes. We missed a turn here and there, got lost in a neighborhood, which wasn’t on the map, but we finally made it to the hotel we found an hour before we got there. I ran in to get the room as Antoine relaxed and unloaded the rickshaw. We parked next to a fellow rickshaw runner. After cleaning up, we went down and got a semi-nice dinner of chicken fried rice, chicken curry, and some chai tea. Antoine also got some tomato soup, which wasn’t half bad.
Tomorrow we begin our journey at 6 am, waking up at 5:30 in the morning, hopefully, we won’t make the same night mistake as we did today.
-Jamie