DAY THREE - BIJAPUR TO BEED

Our good luck with our little rickshaw came to an end today moments after we crossed the border into our third state – Maharashtra. Having just rolled over the Bhima River bridge, we pulled into a fuel station – for yet another pee-break for the girls (I hasten to add, we’ve yet to stop for one for me!!) and discovered we had a rear-wheel puncture – and that we didn’t have a jack! So necessity being the mother of invention we used a block of concrete and a length of wood – plus the weight of the girls’ backsides to raise the rear end off the ground. Ten minutes later and we’re back on the road with our spare and heading back over the bridge for the film crew to shoot us entering Maharashtra again. Loads of weird looks from the border guards (who apparently got a very good deal from our ‘fixer’ in the toilets at the border… say no more!))

With time and the kilometres slowly clicking away, the last thing we needed was to run out of fuel, but when you don’t have a fuel gauge and your calculations are rough estimates at best, it’s very easily done (we found that out later on again with just 20km of our intended 280km journey left to do). We also found out that the reserve tank didn’t work either so we were completely stranded. We’d just left Usmanabad and fortunately rolled up outside a truck stop. Whether it was the girls or a genuine desire to help us, we were quickly surrounded by quite a few beaming guys who turned out to be really helpful.

However, we had a major issue with communication: we couldn’t contact the film crew because the ‘walkies’ weren’t powerful enough and they’d gone on ahead to reccy the next location; the mobile phone we’d been given didn’t have credit so we couldn’t call out; and we were struggling to tell our new friends that ‘yes, we would love to share some chai with them and accept their offer for help but we needed to wait for our back-up to appear' – which they eventually did some 40 minutes later. In the meantime one of the girls went with this really helpful little guy down the road to get some petrol. Obviously the director was livid when he arrived. I’m still in two minds: We may possibly have been naïve or the director may just be too cynical. He wasn’t there to gauge this guy’s character and the fact that he had tried everything else before offering to take us to the petrol station: if he’d wanted to abduct Katie I think he would have been far less contriving about the whole thing.

With steam still coming out of the director’s ears and the ‘bitch bus’ topped up and back on the road we plodded on towards Bid, our overnight stop. Our delay had caused us daylight and now it was getting dark. I don’t know what the candle-power of the headlamp of a rickshaw is, but a candle would probably be more powerful. Even on full beam and with two dainty spotlights, you’re always playing 'Spot the Pothole' on Expert level. Even with one support car up front to follow and the other on full beam behind is to try and light the way, it’s challenging, shall we say. Talking of full beam: one of the delightful idiosyncracies of Indian roads is that unlike in Europe for example where we dip our headlights to assist the visibility of oncoming traffic, here they give you full beam just in case you haven’t seen them! Great if you’re a forty-foot truck with a couple of hundred watts of halogens; not so great if you’re a rickshaw with a puny 6 volt battery. Basically, you see nothing ahead of you for about 300 metres – just very bright lights. You might hit potholes, cattle, people, rocks etc. I said initially that I’m not a spiritual person but maybe India will make me so – it’s at times like night-driving when I have to admit I am praying to somebody to get us to our destination!