A mad dash

A mad dash

Woke up on the Løkken beach in Denmark to a beautiful sunrise and decided to bitch slap the beach, which a week ago did not let me cycle on it. Now I would drive on it with four wheels. What I didn’t know was that while I was bitch slapping the beach, it was waiting to give me a sucker punch. I just went off the track a little bit and the beach took revenge. Guess what people? I got stuck on a beach, in Denmark, at 0400hrs. What a start to a long day’s drive.

Well this was Denmark and soon came a car full of students who were still tipsy from last night’s partying. The main point though was that they were still willing to help. Help they did and pushed the car out of the sand. I still belive half of them didn’t know where they were and what they were doing. If these guys were not there at that time of day I would have had to wait for hours to get help. Sometime strange things happen. That’s why I always try to help people on the road as much I can because you never know when you might need help. The way I do things I seem to always need help. Well their kindness was paid with 2 cans of last night’s beer and 3 cans of coke, which is all I had to offer. I’m not sure how they were going to share them but for now that’s not my problem.

The problem ahead was to reach Calais (France) at about 1700hrs to catch my ferry to England. It’s  1400km in less than 12 hours. You will never know untill you try it. This one I knew very well I wouldn’t make it but like my car crazy friend Gurpreet and Nikhil Kumar would say GO FOR IT BUDDY! I tried.  I even had a few cans of red bull and some chocolate to keep me up but I had not had a good sleep for a while. So I was falling asleep. I had to stop the car and take a nap. It was only supposed to be half an hour but I woke up after an hour. There is no way I could make it to France in time for the ferry; I was still in Denmark and there was Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France to come. My tour manager Amrit rebooked the ferry to 0115 the next morning.

Next problem was Hamburg, Germany. So many times before I had promised myself never to cross Hamburg by road again. I don’t know I have to test out my luck everytime to see if I can cross it without a traffic jam. I have found out that I have more chance of spotting a flying elephant than crossing Hamburg without delay. It’s just one of those things. The jam started about 100 km from Hamburg, so in all my smartness I waited and hoped for the elephant to fly by at any monent. Things became slower and slower and then they came to a standstill. By luck I was at an exit. I took a chance and took the exit and hoped it would take me somewhere. It was better than standing still and it was going in the right direction. It brought me right to the door step of Hamburg. 6km away lay Hamburg City and it was bumber to bumper all the way in. It was so slow or just standing that I could feel my nails grow. At one point I was a serious contender for the longest nails in the world. It took me about 3 hours to cross the city. I have promised myself never to drive through Hamburg again.

After Hamburg I still had a lot of milage to cover which was not helped by the roadworks on the autobahns. Every few kilometres one has to slow down and the road is reduced to 2 lanes. Where I was counting on no speed limits on the autobahns I was forced to drive at a snail’s pace.

I can’t tell you much about The Netherlands and Belgium. They are small countries that you pass through very quickly. Now I know why in The Netherlands they have made this highway roundabout which is so confusing that everytime I cross this place I get lost. I try to follow the signs, try the GPS but it just doesn’t seem to work. I think they made it in such a way that you are forced to spend a little more time in Holland. It’s always an extra 6 km on the highway. If you want to know the highway, it’s near Eindhoven. Have a try and let me know how to go about the maze.

Belgium, honestly people, I don’t have anything talk about. Maybe I should spend some more time there someday.

By the time I reached Calais it was 2300hrs and I was booked for 0115hrs. I was well ahead of time. I had driven from Denmark to France – 1400 km in 19 hours – I still had 250 km left to go before I got home to London. It’s a 90 minute pit stop onboard the ferry and then off to London.

It was not before 0300 on Saturday that I reached London almost 48 hours after I started from Norway .

It was dinner or breakfast, who knows, but there were aloo wale pranthas to be eaten at 0300 in the morning.

Sometime you ask to yourself WHY? , sometime you say to yourself WHY NOT.