Watching the live video again, you can clearly see that the train porter is touching Meredith on the toe as he "sleeps" and is holding the yellow route marker clue envelope in his left hand. So it now looks like that at least Meredith and Gretchen receive some kind of clue/task/route instruction while they are on the train.
We have been assuming that the teams are on the direct train from Lucknow to Jodhpur, BUT what if they are told to book a train to Delhi and while they are sleeping in the wee hours of the morning (the train leaves at night but maybe not as late as midnight) the teams are awakened and given a NEW instruction which tells them when they arrive in Delhi they have to find another train that will take them to JODHPUR! Now that would be a really new twist to the old game!!
Checking the Indian Railway schedules there are trains leaving Lucknow for New Delhi/Delhi during the evening from 19:00 to 22:30. Two good possiblities might be a train that leaves at 21:00 and arrives in New Delhi at 6:40AM; another train leaves at 22:00 and arrives at 7:15AM. Both trains connect with a train from New Delhi leaving at 8:25AM and arriving in Jodhpur at 7:40PM (after dark and time for the nighttime fireworks!
In any case whether they are going directly to Jodhpur or via Delhi, it looks like they will be attending some kind of local celebration of some sort. We have spotted a sign that says Welcome to the Marwar Festival, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. But something is wrong here since the Marwar Festival is always held during the full moon of Sharad Poomima which usually falls during the months of September-October and I think it was held in 2004 on Oct 8 and 9. So perhaps it is some other type of celebration or something that the producers arrange for just for TAR. And probably somewhere during the celebration they will find something or somebody who will give them the ROADBLOCK or DETOUR clue to start the day with. Again probably a bunchup waiting for either the camel park or elephant garage to open after daybreak.
We have been assuming that Joyce is the one shown having her hair shorn, and to back this up we have not seen either Uchenna nor Joyce in the camel race, or the elephant push/pull, so it is very possible that U/J do go for the FF and end up winning the leg finally. But did they actually renege on the head shaving at the last moment and are just way behind the others during the Detour and Roadblock?
Meredith looks like he is just about at the end of his rope. He looks absolutely exhausted. And at the end of the sequence with him pulling the elephant (who, by the way, is pushing?) he bends over in agony. Last again? Lost again? Or just plane tired? And why is Gretchen perched up on top? None of the other teams have a member up there, so perhaps she climbed up there to get a better view on where to go with the elephant. But again if this is unplanned on her part, why is there a small camera (like the mini ones mounted on the camels) mounted in front of her when none of the other elephants have a camera mounted up there on top? Maybe this has to do with the Detour Choices.
A lot of questions to ponder the 24 hours left before ep 8 continues or ep 9 begins.
