Tuesday 24 February 2015

23 February 2015 the road to Mandalay!

We awoke to begin the journey up the road to Mandalay, it's been a long journey and although this is the name of the rally it doesn't actually end in Mandalay, now the road, a busy dual carriageway full of a trillion badly ridden mopeds with numerous passengers all wishing obviously to die!  A nightmare from start to finish!  As the cars left Nay Pyi Taw and headed into the hills to do the penultimate competitive section the super highways suddenly went from a massive 20 lane road down to a single lane road that obviously doesn't get used by any vehicles, this road then loses the tarmac and becomes gravel, so in a space of four kilometres we have gone from basically a super smooth highway to a dirt track, this country is bizarre to the extremes!  As we climbed the hills away from the ghost town it became more and more poor returning to the bad roads and wooden homes, the scenery is changing everyday and we've passed areas of beauty to areas of rubbish!  As we approach Mandalay the Kiplingesque vision we have built up in our minds is rapidly disappearing as we pass one rundown concrete monstrosity to the next, the whole place is a bit of a dump to be honest only saved by the reconstructed palace in the middle near our hotel destroyed in World War Two, I think it needs to be bombed again so they can build a decent city instead of the hole we have arrived in!
Peter and Zoe have dropped behind Gerry and Matt by 2 seconds today but to be honest either one would be deserved winners, let's see what happens tomorrow when they do the last competitive section before arriving at the finish archway.


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