Day 1-2: Nongstoin-or-something to Goalpara

Oh my goodness, this trip is freakin awesomesauce so far. Day 1 of the race, stalled out about eleventy billion times before even getting out of Shillong - apparently our beast of an auto doesn't like to idle for more than 7 milliseconds before the engine kicks out. Awesome. No neutral to speak of (although there is supposed to be) - gearing is funny on our baby, must use clutch instead. Second gear, kind of a grey area between where "neutral" is supposed be, and a more stable third gear.

Leaving Shillong was a hilarious disaster. The Governor of Meghalaya (the province, not an evil Transformer) came to wish us luck and see/kick us out of town, and we even had a "police escort" of sorts to make sure we exited the city before causing too much trouble. The escort involved strategically placed officers at roundabouts and intersections to motion in the general direction of get-the-hell-out-of-town. This was actually really useful given the lack of signage - until the lack of officerage. We became separated from the general pack pretty quickly, finally meeting up with a breakaway squad at a gas/petrol station on the way out of town.

Quick automotive note - we're rockin' an 8-horsepower two-stroke engine, for which you mix the engine oil and fuel together and pour it all into the gas tank. For us, this involves getting some amount of viscous neon green oil and pouring it into the 10-liter jerry can we swiped from one of the race mechanics. Then you pour fuel in, making a swirling mixture of very unnaturally dark-green-blue-moss looking gasolina. This feeds our little TwitchMobile. Too much oil, it gets angry. Too little oil, it gets angry.

We got the ratio just right! Then we popped a tire fishtailing out on a curb, and then the roofrack sheared off later on, nearly impaling us in the process as it cracked off the supports and almost tore through the top of the rickshaw. We are now sans roofrack.

This brings me non-time-linearly to the decorations of our 'shaw. Some teams opted to "pimp their rickshaws", which involved sending designs of desired paintjobs to the organization beforehand, and then arriving in Shillong to beautiful pre-painted vehicles. Of course we were too cheap, busy, lazy, and cheap to pay this extra cost, so we arrived to a default-blue rickshaw. While frantically packing beforehand, I happened upon some old college and house paraphenalia, and ended up bringing a bunch of old stickers, random cutouts of a buddy's face, and a styrofoam head with me to India. Luckily, since I pack light, there was plenty of room for a freaking life-size (for a child) styrofoam head in my backpack. Jau and I did what we could to spruce up our ride, which involved just throwing the stickers on willy-nilly, and then duct-taping the head to the top of the auto. So pretty much it looks like a cross between a live-music club bathroom, and a five-year-old's bedroom wall after being given stickers and then being left unsupervised.

Before, the roofrack was behind the roof-mounted head, so the overall silhouette was of a luggage rack, and those in front of us could see a weird little bleached head in front of the luggage. Now, it's nothing on top of the rickshaw - except an off-center head. I drew eyes on it to make it less creepy, and failed miserably. We don't even need to really check if the head's attached anymore - we just watch the eyes of people we pass as the float quizzically above our auto, and know the unblinking not-quite-human head is still there.

Oh yeah, race progress. There were two main camps of teams leaving Shillong - those going north to Gawahati (the safer, smarter route), and a few teams that were going "west" through the mountains for no specific reason. Jau and I decided that since we were among the least-prepared teams, it was a better idea to follow the pack and head north to Gawahati, to enable us to be lazy just a little longer.

So, of course, after losing everyone, the only autos we run into at the gas station are the small group who had decided to go "west". To the west we went - better small-group insanity than solo-trying-in-vain-to-catch-up-to-the-pack. That's how antelope get eaten.

The roads, scenery, people, everything - absolutely beautiful. Very good choice, we decided. Path less traveled, better scenery, more unknowns, great. The people were a curious mix of Indians I'm more used to (Punjabis, Gudratis, more north/west/centra types) and a heretofore unknown-to-me northeast ethnicity (Khasi) who are much more east-Asian looking. Holy crap they are beautiful. Putting this on the wife-shopping list (I didn't just say that).

Oh wait, did I say the roads were beautiful? I actually meant just the scenery. After a few dozen kilometers, the roads themselves degenerated into a potholed mess, then, broken-asphalt warzone, then just dirt/rocks hiking trails. This of course slowed our progress so that we were still puttering about well into nighttime, navigating by headlights and the occassion blinding-incoming-truck-light. There were multiple times when we somehow found ourselves at the head of the pack, and were certain we weren't actually on a road anymore, but some sort of driveway or just off-roading towards a cliff. Add to this attempting to pass semi-trucks on one-lane dirt roads, with their exhaust pipes aimed sideways straight at our faces, and the novelty kinda started to wear off. Novelty came back though with bridges where the beams were so weirdly narrow and oddly placed that we had to shut off the engines and push with people on either side in front guiding us to tightrope on the beams. So far only one auto had flipped/rolled, with minimal injuries.

Finally arrived at a little town called Nongstoin-or-something. Few people around. Ran into another group of rickshaw runners, and were all very glad for re-congregating, until we realized that we had no clue where we were going to sleep, or eat, or pee.

Somehow we got in touch with some influential people in town, who arranged to get us some sleeping space. In a Catholic school.

Luckily, being Easter Sunday and Easter week, school was out, so we could actually stay there overnight without the threat of waking up to children. Townspeople were ridiculously friendly and welcoming, opening up their school to let a bunch of dirty stinking (literally) foreigners into their kids' school. A nice mom even cooked us a whole pot full of noodles; given that pretty much none of us had eaten all day, you can imagine how difficult it was not to immediately kiss her and wash her feet.

So, we had a roof over our heads - and concrete floors and wooden benches to sleep on. Better than sleeping in the rickshaws at least, especially given that with the altitude and latitude, it was about 40-50F at nighttime. Hospitality, great - but not quite the most comfortable sleep I've ever had (sober). I was at least grateful for the sleeping bag and sleeping pad I totally didn't bring. Was ready to leave at about 4:30 AM when kidneys fell asleep for the fourth time.

Day 2 - everyone else woke up around 6 AM when the next-door church bells went off for morning Mass. Shillong and area is very much majority-Christian. No rampant cows on roads quite yet. Set off to continue west, apparently towards a city named Goalpara. About 30 minutes into it, we got the flat tire - and promptly lost the remainder of the alterna-pack we ended up with. Roads today were equally terrible as last night, giving Jau a fantastic chance to practice manual transmission in the worst conditions thinkable, sans trying to flee uphill away in the snow away from tigers. Jau drove the whole day today, doing a freakin fantastic job of bumping over the dirt roads, potholes, and later after we hit actual roads, slaloming between 1) cars 2) bicycles 3) cows 4) motorcycles 5) trucks passing on the wrong side of the road 6) cows 7) dogs 8) cats 9) cows 10) SNAKES and 11) cows.

Finally roll solo into Goalpara, with light and energy and patience dwindling. FIND OTHER RICKSHAW RUNNERS, HUZZAH. Eat awesome curry. Decide not to check into hotel with "electricity coming in about 30 minutes" and a face-sized spider that didn't fear fire. Went to hotel with creepy bellboy and air conditioning instead. Apparently some of the other guys, after checking in, had the weird experience of having one of them in the shower, the other napping on the bed, and the napper awakening to find the bellboy had let himself into the room, and was standing over the napper, smiling.

Now avoiding bellboy in internet cafe. The guys working here have taking about 40 pictures with us. There is literally a mentally unbalanced 60-year-old lady dancing around a telephone pole outside. I thought she was just super, super friendly, employees here keep saying "unstable, unstable, unstable" and making the finger-twirling-at-temples-crazy motion, and chasing her away. I liked her.

They're now listening to some Assamese Puri (some sort of harvest-new-year festival) music and drumming on their chairs, which is way better than the random Hindi death-metal song they had playing on repeat for the previous 37 minutes.

About time to sleep, brainpower is spent. Tryin for 5 am departure tomorrow. Anticipate failure. Hope bellboy is off-shift.

Short walk back past crazy lady to hotel with no spiders.

Life's good, yeah?