Episode 7

By far, this was the most confusing episode ever!

It all started with the teams leaving Botswana for Lucknow, India (LKO). I had never heard of this city, so of course I went to Google to find a map of India. Well, Lucknow was not on it; sigh... But here is a link to a map of the small town: http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/uttarpradesh/Lucknow-city-map.htm. I looked on Air India's site and realized that it is Southeast of New Delhi. Here is a link to Air India's route map: http://www.airindia.com/page.asp?pageid=89.

I tried to use my timetable from SkyGuide, but that did not find Lucknow as it is not served by major carriers it seems. This one was going to be tough...

Here is what they had to do:
1). Get on a charter flight to Francistown, Botswana (FRW) from the game reserve where they were
2). Once in FRW, they had to get to LKO.

The Race producers tried to explain how they would get there, but failed to mention that they had to go back to Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB). The route map they showed actually showed a line from Francistown directly to Lucknow, LOL.

As it turns out, here is the routing they took:

Francistown, Botswana (FRW) to Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB) on Air Botswana
Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB) on South African Airways to Mumbai, India (BOM)
Mumbai, India (BOM) to Delhi, India (DEL) can't tell on which carrier possibly Air India
Delhi, India (DEL) to Lucknow, India (LKO) can't tell on which carrier either, possibly with Indian Airlines or Air India again, depending on the day of week they got there

They could have also done Mumbai to Luknow on Indian Airlines, but it is possible that there were no seats available. There are also daily flights from Delhi to Lucknow on Indian Airlines.

This was quite the journey. LKO is not served daily by Air India
You can check out their schedule here at http://www.airindia.co.in/yatrik/ytimetable.html.
The ride from the resort to Francistown was on a Cessna Caravan that was at least registered in Botswana.

At Francistown, they had to buy their tickets for the rest of the journey. This was intersting as there was just one agent there to help. So half of the team worked with her and the other half got on a cell phone and called some travel agent and got their tickets booked.

My timetable program does not have schedules for Air Botswana, but the Race producers did well, as they did show Air Botswana's ATR being boarded and also landing in what appeared to be JNB. They then showed the contestants getting on a South African Airways Airbus (just the open door, but I know it is South African)

At that point it got weird; they showed a FedEx DC-10 taking off from some airport; not sure which and they even showed what looked like a Northwest Boeing 747-400 landing in what was supposed to be Lucknow! Although this may have been an Air India Boeing 747-400 landing in Delhi or possibly Mumbai, who knows. In the background at Lucknow, there was what looked like an Airbus A320 from Indian Airlines.

By the time they landed in Lucknow, India, I was wondering where the heck they were since there was no sign that they had arrived at their intended destination.

In terms of the show itself, it was interesting as I'm not sure what was going on with Gretchen as she was whining about having to search through the tins in the tin factory for the clue while almost all of the residents of Lucknow watched. It was quite funny to see her frustration, but I think it was also the fact that it was quite hot there.

Lynn and Alex had a little quarrel about whether or not to take a rickshaw or a cab for a 3 mile journey, as did the POW and the beauty queen. It was pretty much a no-brainer to take the rickshaw as the cab would get stuck in the traffic. The intense heat had a lot to do with as well. They were all sweating like pigs.

The POW and the beauty queen failed to yield Rob and Amber when they had the chance; what a mistake! So of course, Rob and Amber got to Phil first; just ahead of the two of them.

The saga continues next week from the same town as there was no pit stop this week.