Well, that’s what babelfish gave me for Pea Soup.
Photo by Sebastien Banuls
The last fortnight has seen the whole plan get torn to shreds as the fog has reeked havoc throughout northern routes, especially around Delhi and all the way to the east of Assam. See the section of Fog reports in the margin.
One silver lining on all this is that the data I was getting on published actual running times over the autumn and earlier winter, which was just looking too good to be true, appears a lot more believable now. (You can just look them up, http://trainenquiry.com)
But with delays of up to 30 hours on some of our required trains in January, it’s as clear as ever that if we get hit with this kind of fog during the trip we will be completely shami kebabed. Things are back to normal now, our plans look as solid as ever. Either way we will be Ram bharose to get all the way round inside 2 weeks (anyone know the Hindu equivalent of St Christopher ?).
The steering committee inaugural meeting took place in Westbourne Grove this week. The key findings from the meeting were as follows
1. Everyone likes beer and curry
The only other concrete result was that we’re now definitely on to do this. One of the big problems with doing this kind of trip is that, even if you can find someone stupid enough to come with you, the stress of keeping your eye on what little stuff you’ve decided to take, once you’re totally knackered, can really get to you after about a week even if you like doing this kind of thing. Having a whole posse of like minded lunatics makes this particular kind of odyssey that bit more do-able.
We are now going through the plan with a second phase of disaster recovery analysis by checking out where the trains that make up the trains that we’ll be getting spend their time. This will enable us to work out if theres going to be a problem when we are “live” and take corrective action as soon as is prudent.
For a day to day update on what the heck is going on with this project, check out the IndiaMike thread.
For an in your face analysis of what the charity stuff is all about, watch this The Slumdog Children of Mumbai
