The first few days

Allahabad
We're on the move! (albeit at a slower pace than predicted)
Strike completed, Rickshaw and start line found, we got on the road on the 2nd. The sight of 40 or so of our outstandingly garish vehicles all trundling down the road in convoy was quite something to behold. It had a real carnival feel. Our instruction in the use of the 'shaw lasted approximately 30 seconds so we had to get to grips with it on the open road. As you can imagine, this made for some pretty tasty moments on Nepal's mountain roads and even more treacherous roundabouts!
Within the first hour we had broken down; our fuel line simply popped off the engine and dumped a whole tank of fuel all over the road! I popped the line back on, gaffer taped it together for security and we were back on the road in no time. Various bits have since fallen off our motor but we have generally been able to rescue them before anything too vital has gone missing. We've had to reattach the engine to the chassis (no joke), replace the spark plug lead, dismantle the carburetor, TIE our exhaust on with rope and fix the battery in place with steel wire!
But the locals have been great and we have been able to continue, weird noises and spluttering engine considered part of the fun...
With the technical challenges and one day of severe hangovers, progress has been slow. But today we managed to get up at 5:45 and cover a good 250 km which, when you can only do 50-60 km/h maximum, is not bad at all. We've been trying to reach our destinations before night fall because when we have arrived at night things get very hectic and visibility drops to near zero because EVERYBODY drives with their main beams glaring. Reaching Allahabad today is the first time we've actually managed it before dark, but after some hairy moments in a place called Mau yesterday we swore to ourselves to try and stick to the daylight in future!
We've been travelling in a sort of convoy with a team of Australians at the moment since we rescued them in the dark 21km from their destination. We ended up having to tow their rickshaw to safety before squeezing 5 of us in to ours and driving all of us to our hotel!
 Gotta go - I need feeding.
James
Ps. My phone is not working at all so I can't receive texts or calls afraid :-( TOm's phone is working fine so if you need me, call him.