India - the homecoming!

Dear All,

Coming back to India really felt like coming home. It is without doubt our favourite country of our whole trip. I can't go into here why it is, I'd have to try and explain so many things; the atmosphere, the people, the chaos that somwhow works, the food, the cows, the roads etc etc! Anyway, we're back! Four months have passed since we had to temporarily surrender our truck to the Indian government and my goodness we were glad to get it back. We had to go and deal with the bureaucracy that is Indian customs in Goa and formally request that they release our vehicle. Our keys were in a wax sealed envelope, which we've kept as a souvenir. After a few hours we had our keys and headed to the warehouse where the truck was stored.

We hired out a little moped to get around and our first task was to find a place where we could work on our vehicle. We really didn't want to move it as it costs a good ammount to get it towed. It's pretty heavy so requires a crane to tow it! The man at the warehouse said 'yes', so Mark set off to pick up the parts in Margao and we took the engine apart that afternoon. I have to say here that Mark's Mum and Dad have been brilliant in ordering the parts for us and sending them through.

It was also much easier to do the work this time as Mark and Steffen had taken the engine apart four months ago and so every bolt, nut and screw came away much easier than before. The only thing that made it more challenging this time was the rain. It is well and truly monsoon season here so Mark found himself quite often soaked and laying in an inch of water whilst working on the engine. He was brilliant. Most of you have realised by now that I'm also more than just a pretty face! Between us we managed to have the engine up and running in two days. But then disaster struck! Well, that's an exageration, but the engine stopped working again and this time we knew it wasn't the timing chain and the tensioner. Somehow, somewhere air was getting into our system. We ended up taking out the fuel lines, both of which had perished dreadfully meaning we had to replace them. Off we went in search of decent fuel line and another day later we were up and running.

The next task was to get the new clutch fitted. I don't know if you remember or not, but our lovely cousin Jane had acted as our mule in February and brought us out our new clutch. What would we do without our families?! We wanted a decent garage to fit it, as we've found some mechanics here to be a bit hammer-heavy! We went first of all to Eicher and pleaded with them to do it. They said yes and after three days with much maneouvering we had a new clutch. We have two gear boxes on the truck as its a four wheel drive and we'd had real problems changing the oil in the rear gear box as we couldn't release the nut to empty it, but they managed that too and we changed oil in both gear boxes and in the engine too. Can you believe that all that work cost us the grand total of fifty pounds? We needed to do a good bit of maintenance as we're about to drive to and around the Himalayas. They're not the sort of roads you want to have mechanical failure on, trust me!

Whilst all of this has been going on we've also had to flush out our water system with chlorinated water as its been standing for 4 months, and many other interior jobs. The inside was actually filthy! It's now been washed and scrubbed and we've replenished all stocks and replaced and repacked many things. The roof has also been re-sealed to deal with the rains. We've now slept in it for two nights and it's lovely to be back in it.

Vasco de Gama, which is the home of Goa's airport and sea port has been a great place to do all of this as they have every shop you need. We're off this afternoon to Margao to pick up our new Carnet de Passage and International driving permits from the RAC and then we'll have a couple of days on the beach in Agonda to rest up before we drive the 2500 kilometers to the Himalayas. Our current Carnet runs out on the 19 July and that's the date when need to enter Nepal. We're taking the route No.7 up the centre of India to Varanasi and then its Kathmandu. How exciting! Our friends Amelie and Til are already in Pokhara, Nepal where there's an overlanders' campsite with hot showers! Woohoo!

Until the next time,

Love Jo and Mark xx