From the south at Madras to the north in Atari

There is nothing in life that could possibly prepare you for India, It should have been nothing more than a nine day drive from Chennai in the South to Atari in the North but this journey turned out to be one long nightmare from start to finish.
   
    Well here we are again and this time in India. I have to apologise for the long delay in getting this diary updated I know that many of you have been looking at my web site and there has been no change since Australia but I have not been able to connect to the internet for the time I have been in India, because there is no internet server I can use here, so I have had to use Sri Lanka as the connecting point and thats expensive. As I get closer to Europe I will find it a lot easier to get onto the net as the phones will work a lot better.
   
    I left England for India on the 9th of November, my birthday in fact and arrived at Chennai Madras at 12.30am on the 10th which is a great time to arrive anywhere really "I dont think". The flight was just like any other, long and slow and I got to watch 101 Dalmatians five times as that was the only film on.
   
    I had to be at London City Airport at 5.30am on the 9th, so that meant I didn't really get a lot of sleep the night before plus my poor Yuwadee had to drive me to the airport. Apparently she had to stop on her way home to take a twenty minute rest as she was falling asleep behind the wheel. I was looking forward to getting to a hotel as soon as possible and, by the time I had cleared customs and picked up my bags and some cash at the Thomas Cook office at the airport it was very late indeed. I made my way out to the taxi rank and was very surprised to find the heat was not as hot as I would have expected. I got into a taxi and was taken to a hotel about twenty minutes down the road. The taxi I could not explain to you in so many words but it was an experience to say the least, the first thing I noticed was the amount of mosquitoes in the cab so out came the repellent cream and I applied it to all the exposed areas almost immediately, then I got to the hotel which turned out to be very nice and in no time at all I was taken to my room where I then hit the sack almost straight away. It was a bit difficult to get any sleep that night and I found myself to be awake very early next morning so I got up and wasted a lot of time until I could get in touch with the P&O office which was just a few miles down the road, to my surprise they don't start work here until 10.00am and so I had to wait about for yet another hour. I made my contact and later went to the P&O office to produce all my paper work plus I had to go to yet more money exchanged to get the correct sum to pay the shipping fees.. I was told as it was a Thursday it would not be possible to get all the paper work sorted out in the time that I wanted and they estimated about ten days for the customs to clear the car. At that point I almost hit the roof and told them this was not such a good idea as I had to have the car as soon as possible so they said they would do all they could to get me the car after the weekend. I went away very unhappy indeed and was then taken to the handling agents who once again said it was going to take a long time to sort out. I came to the conclusion that they can only work at one speed but, just to prove me wrong, they pulled out all the stoppers and told me the documents would be finished at the beginning of the next week. Well with nothing else for me to do and I had to leave it all in their hands I was taken back to my hotel where I was going to have to just sit about and wait.
   
    I knew this was going to be a long and slow wait for me though I am not exactly the best of people to just sit about so I had to find things to do. The hotel has a very good taxi service and so I hired a cab for the day and had a tour around the city, this is not the sort of place you want to just walk around because there is too much pollution in the air and as I was not sure of the safety aspect I thought it best to sight see from the back of a cab. I was taken North, South ,East and West through the city and it is very big indeed plus I got to see the sea and all the ships that arrive from all over the world. Well that was that and I had seen all that I wanted but I still had a few days to waist so I spent most of my time in the hotel just lounging about trying to get as much rest as possible before I got the car, and then the fun would begin.
   
    It was not until the following Tuesday that I first got to see my car sitting in its container. I was so releived to see it was all OK and soon I would be able to take it out and leave. I was allowed to drive it out of the container for the customs to inspect it and the contents and, they spent about an hour doing that and said they would have to go back to their office and finish off the documents, I was told I could either wait with the car of go back to the hotel where I would be picked up later on and reunited with the car before the end of the day, so I elected to return to the hotel and wait there.
   
    At 4.30pm I was picked up from the hotel and once again taken to my car but I was not able to get it out of the container until gone 6.00 when it was already dark and I was not able to fix the oil leak that had developed during the time it was in the container.
   
    I drove the car out of the container and sat around while the rest of the paper work was finalised and then I was allowed to drive it away. This was a great load off my shoulders when I was driving it back to the hotel but I didnt realise the oil leak was quite as bad as it was and by the time I got to the hotel I had lost all but the last drop of oil. I was very concerned about it because from what I could see the oil was pouring from the rear of the engine and at first I thought the engine had somehow separated from the gearbox but, there was little I could do in the dark plus I don't like the mosquitos so I decided to call it a day. Well the next day I decided to spend the whole day just working on the car and preparing it for the next long haul and head for home, the oil leak turned out to be the oil pressure gauge pipe which had split and was ejecting oil out at a tremendous rate hitting the rear of the engine making it look like it was coming from another place and that day I finished all the sorting out and was then ready to hit the road and make tracks. Friday 19th November and I have started my drive. The temperature this morning as I drove out of Chennai reached 29°C by 11.00 oclock and I was sweating a lot in the car. Driving in India was yet another new experience for me and as usual it did not take me too long to adjust to there way of driving. At first I wasnt sure what side of the road they drive on over here as they seem to use any side they want and that is for oncoming traffic also so I came to the if I drive like a mad man then I would not go too far wrong, and thats the way it was going to be from now on. I was hoping to get to a big city called Hyderbad but after driving for over ten hours I only managed to cover 286 miles, a far cry from the Australian roads. I got as far as Guntur which is situated on the East coast and I had to find a hotel as there are no camp sites and I was not prepared to sleep in the car for the first night as I had not prepared the car for sleeping, plus I was very knackered.
   
    Until next time then! Duncan.
   
   
How about that, being overtaken by a Camel