Optimizing in the Maximum City

January 15, 2011.

first of all sorry for not blogging for such a long time. it seems that short facebook updates come easier when on the road than the 'proper' blog post but rest assured, we always do our best to stay in touch regularly one way or another.

they say plans work but only till the battle begins. our plans don't seem to be working, so the battle must have begun! ;-)

we were supposed to start riding on the 15th of december. however, things took longer than anticipated at protovillage (the sister project the glass half full is intricately linked with). at protovillage, our first tangible goal was to set up a rural enterprise that treats the available water and distributes clean drinking water to all the 500 households... an enterprise run by the villagers, for the villagers. all the things that needed to be done to make this happen, including innumerable surprises, pushed the time line by about 20 days. and we were quite happy to push it because of the kind of impact it promised. and on the 31st of december 2010, we celebrated the end of the year with the first trial run of the water treatment system. so the delay in riding out was totally worth it!

right now we are in mumbai. this is where we will be riding out from. the past week or so here has been such amazing fun, meeting a number of incredible people who so kindly went out of their way to help us prepare for the trip. we've started our stay here with presenting at an evening at bombay hub with two other riders cycling for a cause and it is from here that synchronicity again and again leads us to meeting awesome and inspiring entrepreneurs from corporations and social businesses taking an interest in our project.

on a couple of occasions we had to carry the bike on top of a cab, and on both, we had to explain the purpose to the cab drivers. incidentally both were from the state of uttar pradesh, a state in which we were thinking of mostly using public transport, for safety reasons. but both of them gave me their phone numbers and said they will ask the people from their respective villages to expect us and to ride along with us. they insisted that there's absolutely nothing to worry about, and that people from UP will love us just the same! so the cold winters are going to be gently warm thanks to the rural hearts! while we are super excited about that, we are taking some extra time to make sure we get a few things sorted out, so we don't have to look back once we hit the track.

hovering in and out of the bombay hub, we've been working on a couple of things in the last few days - we've been refining the research templates that we will use to collect stories from the villages that we pass through. we're working on the process or a list of must-do things (in terms of safety) every time we enter a new district in any state. we found some partners on the PR bit so that we generate a little buzz around what we are setting out to do. also, we seem to have found the solution for the audio/visual data logistics problem while on the go. meanwhile our friends and believers started contributing what they can to keep us going on our 'km sale' put out on www.tghf.betterplace.org.

of course, there've been the usual 'Indian' health issues as well, which still need sitting out. last but not the least, we still wait for the front carriers for our cycles that've been shipped from boston and are due to arrive here in mumbai any day. while this extended prep time is adding to the delay, it's creating the essential peace space inside us. we needed this time indeed.

summing up for now - we are determined to ride out coming week! are we excited!!!