First Causalty

Tonight our '3rd' has decided not to come on the run with us. This leaves us in quite a lurch to be honest, but as true adventurers, you gotta suck it up and move on! Both Paul and I were upset at first, but realize that life in India has a way of making sure that things happen for a reason and all signs point to just Paul and I being the ones meant to go on this trip. So off we go!

After an hour or so, Paul was super excited, once he got over the frustrations of having someone leave at the last minute, the worry over the amount of driving that will fall on just us, etc. And now we don't have to worry about 'democracy' or majority rule, we just do as we please! So no one knows at this point what that will entail. First thoughts are that we'll go through the cities as we had originally planned, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nagpur or we check out some of the coast or we just go as quick as possible the first few days so that we can spend some good time at some animal parks and/or Varanasi. The road is wide open and we'll just see where it takes us. Once the initial shock was over, complete and utter excitement took over.

Packing was no easy feat I tell you. We had to chuck the tent idea as it took up too much room. We had to throw out a lot of cold weather clothes and plan to just buy it along the way as needed. And so much for taking only 2 bags!! One half of the big bag is all supplies - tool kit, medical kit, spare tire tubes, etc and one bag is almost entirely camera equipment! I have seriously lost the ability to pack light.. even though at the moment I feel like I have done great with only 5 changes of clothes, I'm sure I've taken too much of something!

A big shout out to Kevin for letting us borrow his handycam! A shout out to our 'last minute' donors who have been so generous (keep donating!). It's 5:30 am and I'm going on 2.5 hrs of sleep and am super psyched. Pondi here we come....