A breather for this afternoon - Day 7?

Aug here. Pretty sure I lost or mislabeled a few days, but still alive and kicking, and healthy and regular! Arrived in Gopalpur mid-afternoon, to have a bit of rest for the day. A week of waking up at 5 or 6 every morning and driving hard for 10 to 12 hours of insanity is starting to wear on the convoy, waaaa.

Roadkill. So far there's been about 13 dogs, amazingly no cows or goats, and today even spotted some weird hyena-thing and an exploded baboon, sorry Rafiki. Passed into the mountains today and good golly miss molly, was it nice to climb to a higher altitude where the temp is slightly less than melty.

Repairs to the muffler lasted about 70 km. At first driving our newly tuned auto was a dream, rolling around nude on velvet. Then, the rattling began anew, around 50 km per hour - seems one of the nuts fell off, and then upon further inspection, one of the mountings had actually cracked. Awesome. A kid we chatted with insisted it was impossible and a bad idea to drive any distance in our horrid 'shaws, until we told him we'd come from Shillong, some 1600 km away.

We've developed a sort of affinity towards other rickshaws and their drivers, and them to us as well. I smile internally and externally when I see one on the road, and when we parked in a rickshaw lot in Bhubaneswar near the hotel, it felt like walking into a room full of engineers after hanging out with lawyers all day. Wanted to point my fingers out and say "heeeeeeeey!" This also helped recently with our repairs, as other drivers are keen to peek at our vehicles and help with repairs, or at least stand around looking interested. We discussed the finer points of petrol vs diesel over muffler (re)repairs today, contrasting mileage, noise, ride smoothness, fuel cost. Learning quite a lot about two-stroke engines too.

We has beers. After days of exhaustion and dehydration, a little Kingfisher or Royal Challenge (a terrible name for a beer or any consumable) go a long way. Swam in the ocean for the first time this trip too, and managed not to emerge nude from some wicked pants-wanting undertow and cross-currents, sorry bystanders.

Now at a ridiculously expensive seafood restaurant with two other teams (Shillong Way to Goa and Bombay City Rollers) that we ran into here, which seems pretty miraculous given how slow I thought we've been going, and the fact that Gopalpur is not on the main highway. I guess we all got beat down by that last midsize city and wanted to relax a bit. After getting used to 15 rupee (about 30 cents) awesome dal fry, 200 rupee crab curry (like 4 bucks) seems exhorbitant, especially for my cheap ass. Speaking of which, I sure hope getting crab is ok...