The Adventures of Rick Shaw

Been a long time (We shouldn’t have left you)

October 9, 2009 at 9:27 am (General)

It has been a while since we last updated you via the blog but the twitter has been live with some of our happenings.  On the road from Ahmedabad to Agra we only had the choice of small villages to really stay at.  We managed to bypass our mid-destination, Jaipur, and so as you can appreciate, Internet Cafes were not in abundance in the outback.

We have arrived in Dehli (the capital of Indeeeeaarrr) and are typing to you in a cyber cafe.  Just had some grub so will be here for the next twenty minutes or so.

Monkey attacks windshield

On the road we stopped off for our routine bottles of Bisleri and some punk with a couple of monkeys decided to rip us off like a right rickshaw of mugs.

It was pretty cool to be honest.  He had the monkeys performing tricks on his wood Gandalf staff.  However, it turned a little sour when he asked for money and then gestured for the David Parry lookalike primate sideburns to jump on our windshield!  We decided to pay him twenty roops to prevent the monkey giving us rabies or throwing faeces.

You may have seen the twitter pics of us on the way to, and in, Agra.  We went to the Taj Mahal (one of the 7th wonders of the modern world) and wow what a place.  It was kinda surreal being there as you see it so much on TV but I thnk we were all blown away with the impressive dominance that it holds on the small “City of Love”.    Our guide kept asking us why three dudes were frequenting the “honeymoon escape” because it is common for couples to come to this place together  So chicks, holla holla.

Also … small piece of interesting history.  The Emporer that build the Masoleum was planning to build an identical black one on the opposite side of the river (some foundations remain).  How bad ass is that!!!

The Taj Mahal

So here is a quick sneak peak of the majestic tomb and for those interested here is a little history.

It is a tale of love, betrayl, despair and some dude who was SERIOUSLY UNDER THE THUMB (Mohsen).  He needs to learn a lesson from the Fletcher book of tricks.  Damn.

We have had some rough nights up until now.  One involved a serious muddy issue with the tent that nearly saw it swept away in some kind of mudslide and the tent was literally sinking in this quagmire caused by the final remnants of the monsoon season.  If we had been in that tent we would have been swallowed up by Mother Earth for sure.

We were then housed up in a bus station toilet sleeping on the floor which was one of the nastiest experiences of my life but adventure is adventure right?  Seriously, I have not come across one toilet in this country that has a routine cleaner.

We got kicked out of the bus station by two armed guards and simply hopped buildings to the train station and kipped on a couple of benches.  Life is rough but there are people here who have to do this every single day who don’t have homes and work the streets.

Besides the guards we had to deal with some moustache clad street gang.  This guy was taking random photos of us and then his troop gathered.  About fifteen ugly dudes staring at us and we just thought it was all normal and genuine intrigue but we were wrong.  Sensing the angst we packed up and moved out of the train station only to be charged at.  Luckily India has a decent security presence at public transport services and the guys backed off before we hightailed it at 30kms in our beast.

Why are we in Dehli?

Dehli was never a place that we intended to stop at.  When we left Agra yesterday !somebody! held the compass vertical and not flat.  This of course led to an incorrect reading and we ended up heading North and not South.  By the time we started picking up major signs they were reading “Dehli 120KM”.  We decided to press ahead as we are a day ahead of schedule anyway and the weather has cleared up leaving no rain pockets in sight.

We are going to check out a few sights here and hopefully get involved in some cultural activities.

Once we leave Dehli we are headed for our final stop, Mumbai.  This is the end of our journey and we expect it to take approximately four days from now.  Of course, things might go wrong.  Manon is going to try and hook us up with a guy he knows and get us a part in a Bollywood movie as extras.  This should be funny.

PS.  It is forty degrees and I am still white.