Not much sleep for us tonight. we got to our hotel in solapur quite late and are set to leave at 5.30 am in order to make it to hyderabad by 5 pm > 335 kms away.
this might not sound like much, but applied to indian roads – believe me – this is a lot!
we get to see the sunrise over the dusty planes of rural india – a big red fireball rises. very impressive and not easily photographed.
navigation-wise we never really face any problems – either we’ve got our good friend google with us or – even better – we are picked up from the main road and escorted to the next place we need to go.
surroundings are nice and driving the TWIKE here is still very special – have a look how a TWIKE passing by looks like just before humnabad:
here in humnabad the local college has organized for us to be picked up
when we arrived, they set up the charging infrastructure: connect cables to power line and get them to the podium 400m away. when i asked the guy at which rate the fuses would go the answer was – there are no fuses.
after recharging we drive onwards – i’m working and updating the blog on the move! it’s really hard to keep everything in balance – noone at work knows i’m gone, mails keep pouring in and approvals are waiting for me. at the same time i’d really like to help to make as much impact as possible – which takes time, too.
close to hyderabad we are invited to speak to another college and they invite me to drive their modified tata nano.
and what’s more, they offer me to try a new project – a head-motion controlled wheelchair.
then desaster strikes! the twike starts to act very, very strangely and then stops working altogether.
thanks to skype on my mobile and the availability of ralph schnyder, the creator of the TWIKE, i am able to get the TWIKE back up and running. the problem is a very indian one: due to vibration some connectors have come loose and the one this time was of a piggy-back pcb of the main controller.
with a sigh of relief we make our way to hyderabad and our hotel for the night.