We got a late start after spending over an hour under the hot Keralan sun watching the festivities at the start line alongside approximately 60 other rickshaws all waiting impatiently for the start-gun. Once we all set off we decided to avoid the inevitable rickshaw traffic through the narrow lanes of Fort Kochi and took off in the opposite direction. This was all well and good until we realized that following a map in a city with few if any road signs is a lot trickier than we had anticipated. We have become very accustomed to asking for directions at every fork in the road, although the most common response has been something to the effect of “go to next village and ask again”. We have since learned not to waste time asking directions of off anyone who isn’t driving a motorized vehicle. The guy with the ox drawn cart is unlikely to have heard of where you’re going much less know which direction it is…that’s assuming he has any  clue what I’m asking him!

We came inches from our first collision as a motorcycle cut across to turn right in front of us. Lionel nearly had a heart attack, I checked behind to make sure everyone was alive and they drove off as if nothing happened. You get the sense that such near death experiences are an ever day occurrence on these roads.

After heading north for a couple of hours we decided that rather than heading to Trissur and then cutting across we would take the “scenic route” through the tea plantations and national parks. The fact this was marked as a national highway on the map had me thinking it was probably a fairly good road through the valley…wrong! We learnt a lot about the state of India’s national highways that day; most importantly, a national highway is not necessarily a well-maintained road and may involve a significant amount of “off-road” driving up steep mountain roads with multiple hairpin bends. The scenery was beautiful but we were doing well to average 20kph today and it was no way to break in our brand new rickshaw.  The poor dear.  Not to mention the fact that when you’re driving at that speed the villages are VERY far apart; so much so that we broke the first rule of safe rickshaw driving (not in the dark) on our first day.  

It was 8pm and we were 26km from the next village. We could not see more than a couple meters in front of us and the roads were steep and full of pot-holes so when a bus overtook us we got the bright idea to follow it figuring it must be going to the main town and at least it opened the road and gave us some light by which to drive. Turns out the bus was going in a different direction (which was not on the map).  Since we were now miles from the next town and pretty fed up we found a shop by the roadside which had an adjacent room for rent. The shop owner cooked up some chapattis and dahl and we were fast asleep awaking early the next morning with a cool mist and beautiful view over the rolling tea plantations. The good thing about surviving a rotten first day is that it can’t get much worse…can it?