2 days of hell.

So we just had, for me atleast, the two worst days of the trip. It started out two days ago getting into the state of Bihar. Within the first 20km or so, there were four different groups who tried to stop us, in addition to the actual police checkpoint where they looked over our papers. At one point, there were guys with guns that didn't look very official, so we kept going. Then some random guys tried to block the road by stepping in front of us, and we kept going. After that, we came up to a piece of rope accross the road where a guys stopped us, and tried to sell us something, we kept going. Then, after the police checkpoint, some random guys made us pay them 5 rupees. When we got to the town of Bihar Shariff, it was the most shithole town I've been to in India. We found a decent (if still sketchy) hotel, and got a room. When we went outside to try and figure out our rickshaw's electrical problem, we were surrounded by about 40-50 guys all trying to "help" us. It got to the point where the hotel workers told us to come inside because it wasn't safe. We couldn't even go out that night, and had to send some of the hotel workers out to get us food and sodas.

The next day was cold, foggy, and the sun didn't come out all day. Not to mention, it was filled with horrible roads with the worst potholes I've ever seen in my life. Midway through the day, a group of guys tried to flag us down to get a ride. I guess they got upset when we didn't stop, and swerved around them as they were standing in the middle of the road. Right after that, we got stuck behind traffic and one guy from the group ran up to us. He tried to pull Mark out of the rickshaw and was yelling. Right when I thought we were about to have a serious problem, traffic cleared and we took off. I was pretty down after that.

Turns out, we made it to Purnea that night and found a pretty good hotel, and the best town we had been to in days. Did some shopping, and actually had a great night. Today I was drivig in the fog when a motorcycle decided to turn right in front of me. I had to hit the brakes and avoid him right as he decided to turn back into me to try to avoid me. I ended up going up on the shoulder and barely missing him by a few inches. It was totally his fault, but it still when have been really crappy to hit two guys on a motorcycle.

We've made it to Siliguri by about 12:30 in the afternoon, and gone straight to the three star hotel in town. We pulled up, and there were 6 other rickshaws outside. Unfortunatly, they've all taken a day trip up to Darjeeling, so we won't get to talk to any of them until tonight or tomorrow. We're now hoping to make it to Shillong in two days time. That would put us there one day early, after having two days broken down at the beginning of out trip. Hope the rickshaw holds out a little longer. - Mike