Curried Away

The route was open to suggestions and negotiation and was always highly likely to change on a regular basis. The initial plan is marked in red, and our actual route in blue.

We started in Cochin, near the southern tip of India. Then drove east until we hit water, then headed ‘up’ until we saw some big mountains - heading just to the right of the biggest one (Everest). That saw us get to Darjeeling.

Risks to our chances of success are:

a) rickshaws are illegal on the streets of Darjeeling. That one was okay, the police welcomed us, and closed roads to enable us to pass through, in a procession, headed by a marching band!

b) the road to Darjeeling is by all accounts inaccessible to anything other than 4×4’s. Piffle. Was easy. Nearly verticle, but fine. All the people who said it was impossible are clearly wrong!

c) to get to the point of facing problems ‘a’ and ‘b’, we’ll have had to cross the entire country without being flattened by lorries. Ha ha… they tried