Orientation

The roar of the engines was deafening as the challengers careened around the practice course. Well, there was a lot of careening, starts, stops, engine stalls and mud flying as the engines puttered.

The practice could not have been better planned as most of the challengers had toured around the prior day in the iconic tuk tuk of India. We wondered what had we got ourselves into. This is insanity. Traffic and people everywhere, complete disregard for traffic lanes, signs and signals, and a LOT of beeping. Each and every kilometer being more of the same chaos.

The practice course was complete with a goat and local students playing football (soccer), with the occasional ball and chasing child running through our desperate atttempts not to hit them.

By the end of the day, I was too tired to do an 18 km mini-challenge. So as I headed off to the hotel around 4:30 pm, 13 excited folks took off into the starting rain storm. One team and my partner came back two hours later completely soaked after having been thoroughly lost. By 8 pm, 8 people (4 teams) had actually made it to the destination. I had gone to sleep before anyone of them came back. And at this writing, I am hoping the one unaccounted team is safely asleep in bed. Seems my absence cost our team, Symanta Bear, some points ... No worries, we will be driving like locals in the next segment to make up the difference!

In just about 4 hours, we will set off on the longest of our treks...240 kms. We figured to get the longest day out of the way first.

I will update this posting prior to our leaving with information as to the condition of the teams from last nights expedition.