The toilet exploded and smells of raw sewage

Light flickers, something circles over head, sounds in the distance, is that Michael Jackson? What the…..? Ooh, stomach churning, hazed lights burning, sweat…oh the sweat, ooh…. guts, eyes open, running through the haze, hurdling a body on the floor, heading for the bright light of the bathroom, and relax………..It’s 7.40 am and the baggage truck was due to leave at 7.45. But this is India and it’s also the AutoRaja Rickshaw Rally, absolutely nothing so far has happened on time. Every morning we wait around for a good extra hour., the evening meetings with the highly respected Rotarians start maybe 2 hours after the proposed time, surely there is nothing to worry about. We throw all our heavily soiled clothes back in our backpacks and make our way to the baggage truck at approximately 7:46 and 12 seconds, but miraculously it had for once left on the dot. Splendid, we have to now travel in an already cramped Tuk Tuk with 2 large rucksacks, a large sports bag, 2 day sacks and 2 cloth satchels that were passed to us from the sponsors.

We head on out of the hidden valley and into the wilderness of NH17 with joy in our heart only 1 hour after the proposed flagoff time; yet again the organisers do their best to annoy us by making us wait for no reason…apart from to tell us that it is never their fault that things go wrong ‘hey you’re in India’ is a very popular phrase. We have a theory that Aravind used to work with Dupont as his shoulders are made of Teflon – more of this later.

We are expecting an easy day, only 100 click to eat up and all things are looking good; the mechanic from last night appears to have done a great job, the beast is running sweetly and we are convinced there is a little more pep even though we are dragging our bags with us.

The roads are nice and not to bumpy at first, we are running well and playing with dodgy overtakes with Team Dick Shore and the Dukes, our best chance of overtaking is running flat out over the rougher sections as the other teams slow up; much to the discomfort of the rear passenger….

Over a set of speed bumps at our usual heady 30ish mph we hear a loud clunk – which continues to rattle at every opportunity; at first we are concerned but as with most noisy things on this vehicle we learn to love the sound and can judge the ferocity of the road by the volume and tone of the clunking…..with not a thought to the damage we may have done; continuing to fly along we approach a roundabout and with a desire to not slow for other traffic Dirk hits it flat out so that the other teams don’t gain any advantage….

The tuk rises onto 2 wheels, the corner was tighter then expected, Dirk struggles with the helm and with more luck then judgement manages to land her with a huge clunk for the exit. Another huge clunk, power fails and she sinks alarmingly to the right…

It appears the suspension has collapsed, and the half-shaft fallen out – we have no power and the rear right wheel is sitting at an alarming angle. The Dukes reciprocate the towing and we are dragged with plumes of smoking being emitted from the rubbing tyre for 10 miles until we enter the town and dump the old girl into the allotted parking area.

After the nutty bearded brother has announced his entry into Goa with the ignition of lots of Chinese bangers we make our way to the hotel where Keith in a moment of brilliance convinces the very confused staff that we are expecting a suite and we settle in for 2 days. (Sunday being a day off)

Saturday Night Griever.

Ah the suite is a beautiful thing, all washing sent to the decontamination chambers, and we are clean at last. We meet up with the others and try to decide what to do. We hear people are heading to the Marriot hotel, so we make that our first port. On arrival we find out that there is a casino, aha, cool. We head to the casino and instantly take a liking to the place. Premiership football and some lovely hostesses, but just a little small. I (Maximus) ask out of curiosity if this is the only casino in Goa and find out that the largest casino in India is on a boat only a short cab ride away…woohoo, let’s do it.
1,500 rupees to get onto the boat including free ferry, food and as much drink as you like. This is going to be good. “6 Sex on the Beach and as many Kingfishers please?”

We change some money and head to the….what the….two scantily clad females wielding veils hurry past us and start belly dancing to some horrendous Indian music. It gets better and better…no hold “would you mind putting that veil back over your face please loveski?” The Russian dancers weren’t quite as nice with the veils off.
We sat at a blackjack table Max and Daisy promptly lost around 2000 rupee. Whilst Max was content to observe for a while, Daisy was a little furious changed some more money and sauntered of to the roulette tables to find an amazing winning streak that never died the entire time he was at the casino. Dirk and Raj were doing ok at the Blackjack table, doing their best to try out card counting techniques learnt from a novel. Max on the other hand after losing his money so quickly had no more courage to change up any more money and attempted to drink the bar dry. Daisy was happy with his fortune and he and Max decided to leave the others to it and went in search of a party.

They left the boat and wandered into the street to find a cab. None in sight. They start flagging wildly at anything moving with lights. Luckily a people carrier pulls up with a guy we noticed on the casino boat with 2 cute Indian girls in sitting in the back. The mans name was Kingsley and we think he shopped at homeboys r us with his really dodgy hip hop outfit. He offered to take us to the Marriott so we excepted and jumped in.
We walked into the Marriott nightclub to some bad bangra style music, which soon changed when when Daisys white face entered the room. Cheesy house music now blasted out off the low quality speakers while we both jumped around and flailed our arms. No one looked too impressed so we took the hint and left. “350 rupees for a taxi???” we said in unison “no thanks we’ll get a tuk tuk.” After reaching the main street we realised that actually Goa had completely emptied. We walked for a good 30 minutes and conversation soon turned into an argument about our bearings. I knew I was right and Daisy definitely knew he was right, so we cut our loses and headed back to the Marriott to spend some good money on a cab. After a few wrong turns here and there, they eventually found it and jumped in a cab to the Hotel Fidalgo for some much needed rest and a toilet visit for Max. Turns out, Daisy was right about our bearings and realised that we were a few steps away from the road our Hotel was on before we returned to the Marriott.

Back in Hotel Fidalgo

“see you tomorrow Damo”
“yeah catch you in the morning son, quality night”
Oh things are a churning, quick, I need my room open. However the night was again going to have the last say and the lock on my room door had jammed.
It’s now about 4:30am and after about an hour of holding my stomach and begging the hotle staff to stop fiddling with the door and let me have another “suite”, I eventually got my way. Qua\lity, huge bed clean room and more importantly a toilet. Before letting the manager of the hotel leave I did dirk a favour and made absolutely sure that when he got into the hotel he would get a suite to himself as well. Like that was going to happen. He arrived back at the hotel at about 5am and had to go through exactly the same scenario with the same staff who seemed to have the fact that our door was stuck, erased completely from their memory. Eventually he got his own huge suite as well.
Sleep.