A 5am alarm clock (the cock crowed at 4.15!), an early breakfast and briefing.
Disaster!
our day should have been a 295km run, starting with an ascent to the hill station at Ooty, famous as the British decamped to during the stifling heat of the summer, and for the narrow guage railway that took them there. However, there was a land slide blocking the road and we were told that we would have to divert, missing out many of the places we planned to pass through, that we had no prepared maps for the trip and that it would be 470km to the hill station at Kodaikanal.
We left at 7.15, the weather deteriorating all of the time, and spent most of the drive in pouring rain. We made a brief stop for chai and the leaders made a mistake in one small town, causing us too make TWO three point turns, blocking all of the traffic with twenty white Ambis and support vehicles!
The roads were fast - speeds of 100km/h for a lot of the time - and traffic manic, and just before 6pm we turned for the ascent of 18km of hairpin bends (36 of them ) - we had descended 17 in the morning, to the smell of brakes overheating!) - most of which was completed in darkness and rain, with the road surface deteriorating as we ascended and other traffic desperate to overtake us.
Finally, after seemingly climbing for ever, we reached the hill station, 7500 feet above sea level - passing on the way a billboard with some form of religious message: presumably you are so close to God up here that you have to take him seriously!
We pulled into the beautiful Carlton Hotel at 8pm, 470km in 12 hours.
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