Jaisalmer to Barmer to Mount Abu: 2 days on the road

The Rickshaw race started out on New Year's day with great pomp and circumstance... Lots of teams came dressed in costume and some of the get-ups were great. It was fun to go up and down the row and see each Tuk Tuk and their teams.

The best was a 4 person team of boys from California who wore bright green morph suits and were dressed as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They came running through the holding area with fake swords and wild screams. I'll bet money that they end up rolling their tuk tuk, burning out their engine or one of them will fall off the roof as they seem intent on having a team member ride along up there at all times.

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There are several all-girl teams (which seems very brave) and a few four person teams (all of which are regretting that decision since there really is not enough space for more than 3 people in the vehicles).

Then it was time to start the race. Camels all decorated with colorful headdresses led the convoy, a full marching band with bagpipes played away and 77 Tuk Tuks roared past the starting line. We then scattered in multiple directions. There are a couple different ways out of town and the group divided pretty evenly going in every direction. We chose to head for Barmer: a small town about 150 KM away. Since we did not leave the grounds until almost 12.30, we thought that 150KM was about all we could expect to achieve today. Good thing: We've had two breakdowns already. First our Tuk Tuk - Run Around Sue - just stopped working. No explanation. It just stopped and would not start again. It quickly became clear that we had run out of fuel which made no sense as we'd filled up all of the Tuk Tuks together yesterday and everyone else still had lots of gas. (You have to remember that none of our gauges work: not the gas level or speedometer... so we have no idea how far we have come, how much fuel we have etc.). The other two went to the nearest gas station and filled up all of our Jerry cans and helped us out. When we next stopped - and ran into a few other teams - we heard the same story from various teams (TukTuks running out of gas long before they should have). Our best guess is that someone siphoned gas from some of the vehicles last night which is why we ended up with much less gas than the other two Tuk Tuks. The second breakdown came about an hour later when a metal clip fell out of Chris and Chloe's steering column and they lost all gears. Apparently a part of their gear mechanism had come loose and a clip had jumped out. Luckily it feel right at Chris' feet. Thank God for Chris and Bop as they were able to figure out how to repair it (at least temporarily) and we were back on the road to Barmer. We'll have to get a new clip at some point and getting in and out of neutral is a tricky experience but once Big Mon stays in 4th gear, she's fine. We are trying to average 40 KM per hour but dodging potholes and the two breakdowns set us back a bit in our estimated arrival time. The road to Barmer was relatively quiet and VERY DESOLATE (except for goats and cows that are constantly in the road). There was really nothing to see for hour after hour and Heidi and I passed the time p;laying scrabble on my Ipad. In fact, the road was good enough that the girls drove for some of the way. Having done a stretch of it I can say that driving is really nervewracking and I have no courage for maneuvering this thing in a city. Just dodging livestock was giving me heartattacks. And clearly a woman driving a Tuk Tuk here is as common as aliens riding rodeo bulls because every truck driver that passed us spent the next 5 minutes leaning out of his window looking backwards at the spectacle of 3 women driving three decorated Tuk-Tuks in a row.
The weather is remarkably bipolar. When you're driving along, it is freezing and I'm bundled up in a jacket and wool scarf and hat. But the moment you stop and the sun hits you - without the wind, you are sweating to death. The massive temperature swings is making us sick. Rainey already has a cold and my throat is feeling itchy. We're taking lots of Vitamin C to combat it but I think we are losing the battle.
The landscape between Jaisalmer and Barmer is beyond bland... no real towns and lots of open scrubby land with camels, cows and sheep scavenging for food in the dusty ground. Every few miles you see a goat herder - usually a young boy about 9 or 10. It makes you think: this child has no opportunity for education, his every day is spent alone tending a flock, he walks miles and miles each day barefoot and likely goes to bed hungry every night. What could his hopes and dreams be? When he lays down to sleep at the end of each day, what is in his thoughts? Good thing someone thought up a religion based upon reincarnation as believing that you will come back in better circumstances in your next life must be a powerful salve for such desperate life conditions.

Then we reached Barmer... and to say that we have now traveled through the bowels of hell would not be an underestimation. Barmer is AWFUL, DISGUSTING, NASTY...it is a sewer pit of a town in the middle of barren countryside. There a piles of open garbage on the sides of the roads with feral dogs foraging in the waste. The shops are wooden boxes with hordes of dirty people crowded around open flames. I've been all over the world and seen awful poverty but I've never seen anything as putrid and hopeless as Barmer.

By then it was dusk and we did not know where our hotel was and certainly nothing about the town of Barmer gave us out any hope for decent accommodations. We were all hungry - having not eaten since breakfast as there was NO PLACE to stop - at all - on the way to Barmer. And the temperature dropped sharply at sunset so we were also freezing. There was rising hysteria among the group as we confronted rotten, stink poverty in the almost dark. Finally we found our hotel and realized that since they have found oil in Barmer, Schlumberger has an entire unit of engineers / field hands that they house each night in the only decent hotel in the area... the one that we were booked into. Although listed on the internet as a 5 star hotel, I'd give it 2 1/2 to 3 stars but in comparison to the surroundings it was like a slice of heaven: hot water showers (although limited amounts), almost clean sheets, a warm comforter and - best of all - a restaurant that served a very limited selection of warm food (almost everything we ordered was "not available" and we had to choose again). And yes, every dish was flavored with curry including the cheese sticks and the pasta carbonara. We were a sad and miserable bunch as the hours of driving in desolate terrain plus two breakdowns plus nastiness of Barmer had sapped our enthusiasm. Savannah was ready to head to the nearest airport and fly home and Chloe had to take anti-anxiety meds to talk herself off the cliff. I was so tired and cold that I felt physically ill but I went to sleep as soon as dinner was over (before 9 PM) and slept heavy until our alarm at 6 AM..
Today we all woke up with a better attitude. We decided to set out for Mount Abu (about 260 KMs away) and supposedly a nice, green, lush town in the hills. We'd plan to stop for lunch at the ONLY town between us and Mount Abu but when we got there we found Barmer # 2.... another nasty, nasty place with absolutely no restaurants or even shops that you'd ever be willing to stop at. I am thoroughly ready to be out of Rajasthan as it SUCKS. With no place to stop we had to just keep trucking along and make due with granola bars and hot bottled water.

As soon as we stop for even a minute - we get swarmed by people.... literally hundreds of them crowd around the Tuk Tuks and stare at you as if you are an alien creature landed straight from mars. It's a little overwhelming even though they are not aggressive or hostile. They just stare and smile.