Day 48: Team XPD covers 475 km from UFA - Samara, experiencing Russian kindness in the guise of Mechanics!

Day 48 did not kick-start well for the XPD Asia Beyond team with Sheru's engine stalling and stopping. Sheru did not move at all, being stuck in the middle of the highway, with weather conditions continuing to be rainy and cold. 

In spite of several attempts to move Sheru, nothing happened. Sanjay and Pradeep took Dhanno to find someone to help restart Sheru, while the other team members waited. Meenakshi and Sharath tried calling Tata Motors in Coimbatore and Nepal to figure out the next course of action.

"We were asked to drain the water-sediment, and we did that on the highway. We were completely wet and cold since it was raining and the temperature was 2.3 C," explains Meenakshi. The others had found a huge workshop that services only trucks. The team was only 35 km from UFA. 

At the workshop, the team was told that the problem with Shery could be due to bad fuel and hence were asked to drain the fuel completely, change the fuel filter, water sedimentary and still nothing moved. 

Presuming that the fuel injectors could have gotten clogged, Meenakshi mentioned that they had always carried necessary spares and so air filters too were changed. 

The workshop folk were so smart that they downloaded the diagnostics software and everything was fortunately otherwise alright. But to clean the fuel injectors, they had to take the car to another workshop because of the fact that it was done better there. The mechanics at both workshops were extremely kind and helpful, and spent a lot of time with the team and Sheru.

The team resorted to communicating with them through Google Translate. "When things like this happen, it reminds me that "good" exists in the world and helps me regain faith in humanity. They even refused to take money for the work they did. John, one of the mechanics accompanied us to Samara, just in case anything went wrong along the way. It was incredible as to how people were to us today," said a grateful Meenakshi.

Meenakshi also expessed her gratitude to Tata Motors Nepal and SRT Tata Motors, Coimbatore who were able to instruct the people in Russia on how to do the needful. Meenakshi added that it would not have been possible for Sheru to be back on wheels, and ont he roads without Kumar and Swami from Tata Motors.

It has been a traumatic long cold day, and the team almost got frostbite from being drenched in the rain. By the time the team left UFA, it was 8 pm and they reached Samara only at 2.45 am. The team was exhausted at having pent over 8 hours at the workshop and another 7 hours of late-night driving, in the unrelenting rain and snow. The team was hopeful to get a few hours of sleep before they left Moscow, which was about 1000 km at least.