The team separated today.

Matthew, Amy and Chris have headed up to Dehli to explore more of Northern India. Kate and Brad will spend some hot and steamy days on the beach, Andrew is doing some hiking in the South Indian mountians.

Matthew, Andrew, Kate and Brad will reunite in Mumbai for some final curry before heading back to Sydney for Australia Day and multiple sausages.

Amy and Chris have another couple of days to ride camels (or get exchanged for them) before heading home on their own.

We will all come together some time in Febuary in Australia to use our newly learned Indian cookery skills (Matthew is the Chappati man!) and make a reunion dinner and share some photos.

A few things we learnt along the way:

- Indians like to use their horn way too much

- Any mechanical problem can be fixed only after checking the spark plug and carborutor multiple times

- It is really cold when you drive at night, in North India, in a Cold snap, without a polar bear fur coat

- Way too many men, not enough ladies

- 4 wheels on a vehcile is 1 wheel too many

- If you leave you high beams on while driving at night it makes it easy to see, but blinds everyone else making it hard for them to see... so no one can see...

- Eating Indian food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 4 weeks is hard. Think oil and bread and potato and chilli every single meal...

- Cows, goats, pigs, dogs, tractors, hay bails should stay on the farm

- The adventurist couldn't organise a rickshaw in the middle of Mumbai

- Nepal is a haven for the Unions, when they strike, they strike.

- Indian mechanics could cut the cable supporting the harbour bridge with their teeth, and taste the difference between unleaded, 2 stroke, premium, deisel, and LPG. It part of the apprenticeship.

- Matthew and Amy are not so good at getting up in the Morning, Chris for some reason is way too keen to get his cloths off, Andrew needs more shirts (not white), Kate drives a little to hard and breaks pistons and cylinder heads, Brad can only spend 14hours in a rickshaw and wait for 5mins in a hotel lobby before the hotel staff need to take him to his room, immediately.

- Good time had by all, recommend trying it.

180km of hot, windy, coastal roads! That's was all that needed to be done! Spring in step all were out of bed and ready to roll by 7am, the supposed starting time of each day, but a first for the run.

And Daal Lemma wouldn't start!

A spark plug change, and some tightening, and a blow into the carburetor later we were on the road and cruising.

For the most part we had a pleasant drive. The roads were narrow, very crowded and buses as usual pushed rickshaws off to the side, but that's run of the mill after 2 weeks! There was even a fresh coconut stop.

AND THEN WE MADE IT!

The finish line was found, crossed, uncrossed and revisited to see who else had finished. The rickshaws were dropped off. And the party began!

Final thoughts from us all will come through over the next few weeks! Thank you for your support, don't forget you can still support the charities; and if you have any other crazy adventure ideas then there are 6 people who are all ears!

Under the challenge of the finish party we set off for another 350km drive. It went beautifully. In fact the scenery was beautiful: National Parks etc... and towards the end of the day we came over a saddle in the mountains and had a spectacular view (of fog) towards the coast.

That's when the day got a little intense. It was getting dark. We had windy roads. About 50km worth. The front light on Daal Lemma doesn't work. So we ran the gauntlet (probably the least safe thing of the whole trip).

Arriving safely in Calicut we discovered that most accommodation in our price range was full for a local festival! Arrgh! After some stress, a few dubious u-turns and some weird looks we checked into a hotel, ate, and slept. The big finish day was coming up after all.

Lot's of driving. Lot's and lot's of driving.

The boy's in the 'Dosa came to realise that the finish party on the 16th of Jan was with in striking distance this morning - and so in order to set a challenge: we struck out to drive our mighty rickshaws 950km in 3 days!

Things weren't looking good when we had Daal Lemma jacked up on a rock but the next town fixed that brake issue; and we got ice cream for morale boosting :-). Around 3hrs later we we're in Bengaluru (Bangalore).

Traffic in the city was intense - and we decided to hit up tourist central. And then we got KFC: the vego's say it was better than McDonalds. (I, Andrew, have now had my Maccas and KFC feeds for 2010 so I suppose that's good - but mmmmm).

After waking the hotel man (at 7am) we jumped back on NH7 and scooted south towards Hyderabad. After a quick hour the road became nice! Smooth dual lane dual carriage way... and then we got to Hyderabad just as a nice flash flood storm blew in!

Rain! Rain! Rain!

And then it happened! We found a McDonalds: the verdict was generally poor; but a few people had to get their McMaharaja Mac and so it was done.

Hyderabad to Kurnool saw more rain, lot's of highway construction diversions, and one of the weirdest one hotel towns (which had more than one hotel) so far. But we made it: a massive 400ish kilometers in one day!