Day Twelve: A devasting lost....

RICKSHAW RUN 2008
Day Twelve: Saturday 12th January 2008

I don't know if it's just because I knew that at the end of today we would reach the border and therefore mentally feel that the home straight was ahead of us, but it was a hellish day today. Tonights final 100kms in the dark was probably the toughest to date. While the roads were bad, they were probably no worse than many we encountered. It just seemed that we hit every pot hole, nearly went into the back of every vehicle that came too close.

Even more devastating news is that among the pot holes tonight the flag and flag pole has gone. Probably injuring a by-stander what with it's size, we noticed the startling news on parking up at the hotel. What was going to be an official flag changing ceremony inbetween the Indian and Nepalese border points is no more. As Anita will tesitfy, I became rather close to that flag and to lose it on the last day....
Oh and we lost one of our (non) melody horn speakers as well.

After 12 days of driving for 12-14 hours a day we have tonight reached a town only 20kms away from the India/Nepal border. Making it in decent time allows both us and the rickshaw a day off tomorrow as we will get a taxi up the 86kms of long and winding road to Darjeeling.

The hotel is proper nice though, but I have rather low standards now.

Day Twelve: Barauni to Siliguri
Total Daily Distance: 380kms
Total so far: 3847kms
Total Distance to go: 653kms