after staying at the shopping centre overnight, we retrieve the cars at 11am and set off on our first official WAVE india 2011 stage!
the stage will take us to pune, a city on a plateau about 600m above sea level about 130kms from mumbai.
it takes ages to get out of mumbai. when we reach the outskirts, traffic lightens up immediately and thanks to good road surfaces are able to get a decent average speed.
the climb itself is impressive. the road takes us from about 30m above sea level to about 800m. the other cars stop for a good hour to recharge their batteries whilst we in the TWIKE just stop quicky see how the other teams are doing (since we’ve got still plenty of juice to get where we need to go)
it must be frustrating for the other teams: anywhere the TWIKE stops, it immediately draws huge crowds. as paul from team pasol put it: if you want to find the TWIKE, forget looking for the vehicle, look where the crowds are!
today something is different, however: today people actually recognize the TWIKE and tell us that they’ve seen us in the newspapers and on TV! a bystander then gives us one of the newspapers as a gift – what a feeling to be in the newspaper!
we then set off again and reach the plateau on which pune lies – here temperatures are at a pleasant 27°C instead of the 37°C of mumbai > perfect TWIKE’ing temperature! very nice views were to be seen as the sun sets.
without any further holdup we reach pune and finish the day with tending to the cars and seeing if we can get the think city cars to charge.