Last night we made the decision to put in a couple of long days in order to treat ourselves to a rest/sightseeing day in Varanasi a couple of days from now. So today we pushed Hillary 366km (227 miles) to Lucknow — not the most direct route from Agra to Varanasi, but a far nicer place than other options along the way. The other logical option that several teams took was to stop over tonight in Kanpur. We passed through Kanpur en-route and the air is simply poison. The coal-burning brick kilns are going full blast, and smoke fills the air. Tomorrow (Friday) we will move on from Lucknow to Varanasi and stay until Sunday morning. That will give us a chance to have Hillary serviced, get some laundry done, and rest our very sore asses.

Jason has a touch of Delhi belly today, so I had to do a lot of driving. The only upside of his illness is that he does far less back-seat driving when he’s asleep! He’s feeling a bit better tonight, so we’re optimistic he’s going to be perky again when the alarm goes off at 5am. He’s already fast asleep and I’m on my way to bed as well. Apologies for the short, un-witty post… I promise more when we get settled in Varanasi. For now, just know that everything is going fine and we are well ahead of schedule.

Oh, and a shout out to our friends at Pelagic bottle shop in Raleigh, NC… Jason took this snap of me while I was driving up NH25 to Lucknow.

Cheers,
Jason and Brian