Test day ahead two regularities woke up this morning feeling refreshed and ready to go. Very civilized time. Lots of rest. One more day in this region and supposedly the hotel is even nicer than this one. That’s going to be difficult.
Down to breakfast and low and behold I walk into the dining room to a resounding rendition of HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎂 from the drivers. What fun. The waiters came by minutes later to sing it all again and present me with a chocolate cake with a candle and happy birthday written on the cake.
Lots of fun.
Off we go, we know our start time 10: 10am but The crew keep everything hush hush we can’t know anything about the route until 30 minutes prior to our start time. We are almost out of petrol too, need to fill up. I get my tulip map and then wait for sign out from officials.
Tony gets in car and has it running as I run out the door. Time is of the essence as we need to stop for petrol. Get in car and MONIT not working. We are blind for route so have to guess. We blow by the gas station so worried about taking a wrong turn. Finally GPS kicks in on Monit but we are not sure how much we are out. Thankfully it takes only 20 minutes to get through to start of race outside of town. Route was pretty straight. Travelling through the first village i spy a large black bull actually very large bull sauntering across the road with purpose. He walks right in front of us and into a small vegetable shop and grabs some potatoes. The owner takes a broom to him he turns and lowers his horns and heads straight for our beautiful hand made protective front grill created by Andy in Delta. (he also made a skid plate for Mongolia which saved our ..... in Mongolia many times).
The “Palace”; on Shael ridge, summer home of Local Raj
Anyway bull heads towards the grill head down but looses steam and runs by. He was not a happy bull nor was there a happy storekeeper as the bull upset his vegetable carts.
On we drove -dodged that one.
Still no petrol, but headed for the start of the regularity. Came up on the timers and got our start. Off we headed. Not bad at first but as roads aren’t clear of traffic we have to hold speed constant and not waiver. It didn’t go well. Finally turned the corner 8 km s latter and had a penalty of 30 seconds. Not good. Previous penalty had been 3 sec.
On we drove up winding roads and super narrow hill roads to a Palace where we learned a RAJ had been banished there for taking a lover in the early 1900´s. Not a bad house to be banished too. We were served afternoon tea and sandwiches. What’s neat is, due to the previous delays due to inclement weather conditions ERA had organized this all in one day.
Drivers want to race so some were getting a little cabin fever, sitting around so this was great, we were all impressed by their ingenuity.
On to second race, this time ominous black clouds hovered overhead. We arrived at the start with the roof off the car. The first splashes of rain started as we clocked in to the start. Not enough time to get out of the car to put roof on. So off we went, hoping we might dodge it. Well sadly I screwed up again. I confused the time and mileage Tony thought he had to speed up when really he should have slowed down. We got back on track at 3km but lost it again when a car pulled out onto the road. We speeded up to round the corner to see the finish line. Not good. You see you aren’t told where finishes will be. You just must maintain an exact speed. We had another penalty, I thought 32 seconds but Tony missed the finish line so we were penalized some more. Had to back up. Another 30 minutes. NOT GOOD. A whole 1 minute on the day. Back to the drawing board for me. I need to figure this out.
By now the hail had started and it was lashing down. The hail was the size of marbles. It hurt. We jumped out of the car after we cleared the finish line and quickly put the roof on. The hail was relentless. I thought it might dent the car or tear the roof. It hailed the whole way down the mountain.
The hail continued right to the Wildflower hotel. Which, yes is even more spectacular than the previous night. It’s major drawback the hill to the top to get there. The hotel sits at 2644metres 8674 feet. It seemed straight up. Car 3 stalled and had to slide to the side of a very narrow road. Lars and Annette sat in the pouring rain while a tow truck came. The next car an old ford went ahead of us. We followed. He stalled half way up and started rolling back almost hitting us. Sputtering and clutch slipping.
We had started up the hill thinking he was OK.
Two days in Shimla - the first rest day then the ‘test’ day to our new HOtell outside of Shimla, “The Wild flower"
We had to stop, not good. We waited took a deep breath and Tony slowly engaged the clutch. She barely moved, no momentum minutes passed, but slowly the engine grabbed and off we climbed albeit slowly. I am guessing a 30percent grade. A Saab also was stuck at the bottom of the hill. We drove under the front archways of the hotel. Staff came out and due to the heavy rains we pulled to the side and sheltered the car there. Didn’t want it soaked again. We were Not moving it and wanted to protect her from the horrible weather. We signed into Time control in the hotel. Were handed warm towels to help remove some of the grim and I was anointed in the usual Indian manner with a dot to the forehead. We were shown to our rooms and unpacked. The accumulation of slush was significant. We quickly headed to the downstairs bar where once again the group sang Happy birthday and champagne flowed and drinks abounded. Our crowd has come to want to celebrate anything that takes our minds off of what was. The storm today was a reminder we aren’t out of Monsoon season yet.
One of the Rally crew was talking to the hotel we were to stay at in Kaza at 4500 metres he got a photo from them. I am going to get a copy and added when I see him. They have 2 metres of snow all routes and passes are closed now for the season and some hikers are stranded up there.
We also got news that the bridge we crossed two days ago had to be closed at 10am just after we all crossed. The stress was to great. So if you are in Manali now you are stranded there or you walk out.
Back to Sept 28th and night time now, we got into our room only to find a lovely gift from the hotel and another lovely chocolate cake, rose petals and a rose on the bed and towels wound into a rose and a rose in the middle. There was also a gift from the spa. Some crèmes and cleansers. Really lovely. Certainly after a couple of glasses of champagne, I was feeling no pain. Thank goodness tomorrow is not a race day.
Day after tomorrow we embark on 7straight days of long drives and racing into the heart of the Himalayas, skirting Tibet and then entering Nepal.
Happy 39th Birthday - Lee-ann….!!!!!
Night
