On the morning of Day 4, we left Jodhpur and our Indian disco dancing mechanic friends and headed south to Ranakpur Temple.

Ranakpur Temple is an extraordinary (and very much in tact) temple built in 1439.

Every measurement of the temple is based on the number 72 (it is 72 yards square, held up by 72 intricately carved pillars, etc). 72 is the age at which the founder of Jainism buddhism achieved nirvana.

So naturally, we set off well before sunrise in search of Nirvana.

Initially, what we found was an extraordinarily crappy road, which had the pot-holed texture of an enormous (and obnoxiously long) piece of Swiss cheese.

For those of you in Switzerland who don’t know what Swiss cheese is (because it’s an American term for an otherwise unnamed cheese), Swiss cheese has lots (and lots) of holes. In fact, it is the holes that define the cheese, much like it was the holes that defined the road to Enlightenment.

For several hours we plotted along at a snail’s pace over pot holes, determined to find Enlightenment. Alas, half through the journey, in the middle of nowhere, we found the most amazing little restaurant, which made perfect wood oven pizza. It wasn’t quite enlightenment, but it was something.

After many hours of driving 9 km/h over pot-holes, we finally arrived at Ranakpur Temple (see photos) and we were each given-five minute blessings by the high priest of Ranakpur Temple. Apparently, the high priest’s descendants have all been the high priests of Ranakpur for 600 hundred years.

He also gave blessings to our families, so given that you are all family, consider yourselves to have been blessed by the high priest of Ranakpur.

When we left Ranakpur for Udaipur, we had the choice to take the long flat road around the Aravalli mountains or the more direct route up and over the mountains.

We weren’t convinced our tuk tuk had the power to climb the mountains on the way up, nor the brakes to halt our speed on the way down. So after a few seconds of deliberating, we decided to take the logical and pragmatic approach and go straight up and over the mountains.

It turns out, the road from Enlightenment, while hilly, is filled with beautiful mountain vistas, palm trees, rice terraces built into the hills, funky little huts made of straw and… monkeys.

We passed by a funny looking monkey on the side of the road and I yelled out, “MONKEY!!!”

He sort of grimaced and looked at me as if to say, “Who are you calling a monkey?”

The road from Enlightenment was also incredibly smooth (well paved) and led us straight to Udaipur, which is a magical city on a huge lake in the middle of the desert.

On our quest to find our hotel in Udaipur, we managed to get our tuk tuk wedged between two barriers that prevented traffic from going left (which is absolutely the direction we needed to go to get to our hotel).

There was a policeman standing there who looked at us and said, “You want go left?”

We nodded.

Technically, it was a one-way road (going right), but traffic laws in India are, well, redundant.

He removed the barrier and waived his arm, “Go left…” (see video)

Happily, we turned left and drove straight… into a market. There was complete chaos. People, cars, scooters, vendors, SUVs, fruit stands and us all vying for the same narrow strip of “road” that a single, normal car would have difficulty driving through.

In the midst of all this chaos a car bumped into a fruit stand, a cantaloupe rolled off the stand, across the road and a few people recoiled in terror at the sight.

I don’t know if cantaloupe has religious significance (perhaps it is the God Vishnu in the form of fruit), but their reactions were certainly a bit unusual (even for the land of unusual).

Navigating the market towards our hotel was chaos. Our maps became useless in the warren of tiny alleys and we got stuck trying to go up a tiny, narrow hill (about 4 feet wide). Our little tuk tuk just couldn’t get up the hill. She kept losing momentum and rolling back down.

Defeated, we tried an alternate route through the tiny twisting little alleys. We went up another hill, then down the backside and got stuck at the bottom.

We were on a narrow, 4 foot wide street with a small old building straight ahead, stairs going down to our right, a narrow alley to our left and the desperate need to turn around (with no space to turnaround). We were doomed.

Out of nowhere, a small Indian man in his late twenties appeared. “You need hotel?”

“No. Thanks. We have booked a hotel. Thank you, though. We need to turn around.”

“You can turn around here.”

“Here? How can do you that?”

“I can do it.”

“OK…”

Both desperate to be un-doomed and impressed by his bravado, we got out of the tuk tuk and let him try. He promptly got in the tuk tuk and disappeared down the alley to our left.

“There goes our stuff…”, murmured Eric.

Oh shit!! Out tuk tuk disappeared around the corner and we both ran flat out after it. We watched our passports, money, laptop, cameras, clothes, phones and vehicle vanish into thin air. In a flash, everything we needed to survive, progress and get home was gone.

We ran through the alley, around a corner and reached a little courtyard, where the man in our tuk tuk had already turned around, was heading back towards us and was now looking at us as if to say, “What are you doing? I told you I would be right back.”

Once our tuk tuk was turned around, we had to ascend back up the hill and resume our futile quest in the labyrinth for our hotel. No easy task.

Eric skilfully got us half up the tiny narrow alley when, out of nowhere, there was a cow! Cow ranks waaaay higher than tuk tuk, so of course we stopped. We lost all our (much needed) momentum and rolled slowly back down the narrow street to where we had first met our man. We were going nowhere. And with great effort.

“I can do it.” he said, after watching us slowly slide back down.

“OK…”

We got out of the tuk tuk. He got in. He drove the tuk tuk up the hill and disappeared down the back side of the hill.

Again!!

For the second time in 30 seconds we had given our tuk tuk, and everything of value, to a man we had met only 31 seconds prior.

And for the second time in 30 seconds, our tuk tuk disappeared out of site.

We ran for our lives up the street and chased after the tuk tuk.

If someone had been watching the scene from a window above they would have seen two Americans driving a tuk tuk with little signs on the sides advertising something called “Ro-ghee Naan” and 2 plastic phalluses (our light sabers) sticking out the front like bull horns.

Even more peculiar, the owners of this alien vehicle seemed strangely more interested in chasing it around than driving it. For sure, these observers would have been thinking, ‘Perhaps it is not so wise to eat this “ro-ghee naan” after all.’

Out of breath, we caught up with our man (and our tuk tuk) on the other side of the hill.

Instinctively, Eric and I agreed on what needed to happen next. I leaned over and asked our little magic friend, “Can you…”

“You like me to drive you to your hotel?”

“Please.”

With almost imperceptible movements (twitches of his hand), he was able shift from 1^st to 2^nd gear up steep, 4 feet wide “streets” (just wide enough for our tuk tuk) that suddenly twisted and turned left right. We thought we had just met the Michael Schumacher of tuk tuk drivers.

Our knuckles were pasty white as we held on for dear life. We watched in sheer terror, delight and awe as he made our little tuk tuk dance, sing, hum, levitate and perform miracles. He sped at reckless speeds straight towards a pair of tourists. We both let out a gasp. “Look out!”

Without looking back, he muttered, “Don’t worry.”

If you had seen a video of nothing but his hands, it would have looked like he had been at a stop light the whole time. He barely moved. I’m not even sure he was actually looking at the road.

Just before careening into the tourists, he turned left on a dime and flew in between a scooter on the right and another person on the left. He climbed up the narrow hill that first defeated Eric, banged right then a quick left, flew down a narrow lane, spun the thing around in a little courtyard and popped out of the tuk tuk, “Your hotel”.

We realized later that we had in fact met… Yoda.