Days 3-5ish: We have fixage!

I'm still mourning the loss of the styrofoam head. It really held the rickshaw together. We'd drive by, all eyes would go to the off-center head bobbing back and forth, side to side, just like the heads of the people looking at it. But it blow away. Boo.

Mechanical issues became way more pronounced today; the knocking/bashing sound that previously manifested itself between 35 and 45 km per hour is now everpresent between 15 and 50 km per hour, and we finally figured out that it's the muffler, which is slowly falling off and bashing the vehicle frame in frustration as it clings on with its last remaining bolts. The pleather roof also is almost ripped off the front - I drove the last hour or two today holding it down with my left hand while steering/accelerating with my rapidly weakening right hand. Good thing I'm single though. Pieces of the upper frame are also both coming apart - the roof bar on the right lost its bolt some time ago, and the one on the left actually just broke, so the bolt is still there, but the bar is no longer attached to anything. No longer load-bearing, those bars are.

Most of us sunburned today, in weird tuk-tuk-driving patterns. Left forearm, left knee/half thigh, partial right hand and forearm, side of right thigh. I'm gonna look like Franken-tan by the team we get to Goa, just in time for the beach, woohoo! Jau and I are both trying to hydrate as much as possible, but still leaking Tang, so not hydrating enough I suppose. We're switching driving duties more often now too as we start to tire, as we're now on the highway now, which is gloriously smooth and boring. Went through a nice half-crappy section of road today that was invigorating though - pot-holed enough to require a lot of evasive maneuvering, but good enough to maintain speed so it was more like an insane slalom all over the road than just bashing the hell out of the suspension for 3 straight hours.

Toilets. Most of the facilities here are squat-style, so with regards to the hybrid squat/sitter Jau photographed the other day, whether you're on the ledge or the ground, you're still effectively in the same position. Hilariously enough, I know people in/from many countries with squat toilets that squat on regular toilets too. It got bad enough in one office I worked in in Jakarta that the stalls had signs that said "Please don't stand/squat on the toilet seats".

The positioning and muscle control definitely takes some getting used to, but provided you keep the pants in the right place, I think it's actually a bit MORE sanitary to use squatters in horribly disgusting areas, since only your feet touch any surface, and you don't need to float weirdly over the worst toilet in Scotland, kill a tree cleaning/padding the seat, or resort to something worse. Plus, there's minimal chance of the dreaded Backsplash-of-a-Thousand-Asses.

Getting good at yelling city names out of the auto while slowly coasting forward, to avoid stalling out. Raniganj, Raniganj, make sure to keep the question open ended and let people point in the direction rather than asking if a direction is correct, sinec the answer to all questions is a bobbled-headed sure-why-the-heck-not. We actually encountered a very helpful fellow in Bankura (still in West Bengal) who guided us through the city to the highway on his bicycle. With midday traffic, he actually moved faster on his bike than we did, and kept waiting and waving each time we got stuck behind a cow or goat or child or car or whatever.

Quick recap of the last few cities (that didn't have available internet access when we arrived). After Goalpara, we tried to get to Jangipur, but decided to spot just short of it after night fell, and we got stuck behind a slow train and terrible intersection. Stayed at a nice half-finished (or half-destroyed, not sure) guesthouse by the highway, had some kickass food, put mosquito net up in the room, tried to sleep in the sweltering concrete box. Then off further south, landing in Medinipur, driving through some crazy festival-light-prayer-yelling-over-loudspeaker business on the way into down, from what I'm told. I was passed the heck out at that point.

Uh-oh, internet place closing up. Last points.

Got into big city today. Traffic horrible. Swiped a motorcycle, got yelled out, tried to pull us over, kept driving (slowly).

Found mechanic!!!! Reattached, muffler, nailed roof pleather back on, and even adjusted the carb so we can idle. WOO!

And the funnel. It's awesome. Every time we fuel up is now a pleaaaasure.