"The Amazing Race 18" [4] Trivia Quiz

Answer: Varanasi

Commencing Leg 7, the remaining seven teams opened their clues at the sixth Pit Stop, the Fountain of Joy in Kolkata, India, and were told to fly themselves from their present city all the way to Varanasi, one of the holiest cities of the country resting on the Sacred River, the Ganges.

Heading to their respective travel agents and ticket counters, six of the teams boarded the same flight arriving the following day in East India while Jet and Cord ended up hopping on a plane leaving later but with less connections.

They showed up nearly an hour later.

Answer: Five

Arriving in Varanasi, teams were told to take taxis to their next destination, a Tonga stand located in the city proper. Here, teams located the Road Block for this leg of the race requiring that one member use five pictures to find five different sadhus in the city streets.

These men would give them five different pieces of paper that would spell out a 'meaning of life' that they would need to recite to receive their next clue. This answer was 'once you're over the hill, you pick up speed'. Kent, Big Easy, Jen, Gary, Ron, Justin, and Cord completed this task before receiving their next clue.

Answer: Flight Time and Big Easy

Departing from the Tonga stand, teams were told to make their way through the crowded streets of Varanasi by tuk-tuk to Swaminath Akhara, a weight-training area for strongmen, in Tulsi Ghat. Here, teams located the Detour. In one of these options, 'Feed the Buffalo', teams needed to travel by boat across the Ganges River to locate a hut containing bundles of hay.

These bundles needed to be carried back over the river and through the narrow alleyways of Varanasi where teams needed to deliver them to the addresses marked on their bundle ropes. Flight Time and Big Easy, Zev and Justin, Jet and Cord, and Ron and Christina completed this task.

Answer: Animal dung

In the 'Feed the Fire' Detour option, Jen and Kisha, Gary and Mallory, and Kent and Vyxsin needed to travel to a riverside house and create a total of fifty dung patties by shaping and drying them on a wall with their hands. Once these fifty were made to dry to the satisfaction of the homeowner, they needed to start a fire using matches and a patty of cow dung fuel and warm a pot of milk in order to receive their next clue.

Answer: Ron and Christina

After the Detour task, teams needed to make their way by any means necessary to the seventh Pit Stop of the race depicted in a picture in their clue envelopes. This led them to a specific entrance of the Ramnagar Fort in Varanasi. Flight Time and Big Easy became the first team to arrive claiming their first win of this race.

They received a trip for two to Hawaii from Travelocity for their win. In the end it was Ron and Christina who ended up landing on the mat in last place as they not only fell behind due to Ron's confusion during the Road Block, but also decided to take the water taxi to the Pit Stop costing them precious time.

They became the fifth team eliminated from the race.

Answer: Austria

In Leg 8, teams departed from Ramnagar Fort in Varanasi, India and were told to head to a travel agency to book tickets to take them several thousand miles to Vienna, Austria (which is actually in winter weather at the time...a bit of a departure from Indian heat). To do this, five of the teams took the same flight while (yet again) Jet and Cord took a flight departing and arriving a bit later. Upon their arrival in Austria's capital, teams found a clue in their Ford Focus cars waiting in the airport parking lot.

This instructed them to use the on-board GPS and back-up camera to read their next destination on the parking lot pavement behind them. When teams correctly did this, they made their way to the castle known as Schloss Schallaburg.

Answer: A ferris wheel

Reaching Schloss Schallaburg, teams received a book which needed to be returned to its shelf in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. When teams handed this book off they received their Detour clue which, this time, included the 'Quick and Easy Meal' task. Attempted by Zev and Justin, Kisha and Jen, and Gary and Mallory (and completed by none of them), this task required that teams collect three plates of food (two featuring individual portions of schnitzel and sauerkraut, one featuring a slice of sachertorte) and finish them in a single twelve-minute sitting aboard the Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel.

This, of course, proved to be too difficult for all participating teams.

Answer: A psychiatrist's couch

Teams not opting to have a filling meal went for 'Long, Hard Walk' in which they needed to go to Sigmund Freud's Vienna home (on foot) and carry a psychiatrist's couch one mile away on foot (though they had a dolly to help them along through the uneven, occasionally uphill streets).

Although Kent and Vyxsin, Flight Time and Big Easy, and Jet and Cord were the only ones to select this challenge from the get-go, all six teams ended up finishing it. After this, they were told to take a drive to the city of Salzburg to get their next clue.

Answer: Big Easy

Heading to the city of Salzburg, Austria in the Alps, two hundred miles from Vienna, teams located their next clue box outside Sternbräu Restaurant and opened their envelopes to find this leg's Road Block task. For this one, Big Easy, Zev, Kisha, Vyxsin, Cord, and Gary all volunteered. Team members were required to get themselves into a chimney-sweep's outfit, ascend to the roof of the restaurant, and use a weighted chimney-cleaning device to scrub the inside of three chimneys.

When they successfully did this, they needed to go to the basement, open the dust traps, and receive their clues from inside.

Answer: Zev and Justin

After the Road Block, teams were told to drive themselves to the next Pit Stop, the Villa Trapp (known as one of the major settings in "The Sound of Music") outside Salzburg. En route, Zev and Justin passed by Flight Time and Big Easy (who took a wrong turn) earning themselves a third first place victory for this race. Both of them won 2012 Ford Focus cars for coming in first.

In the end, Jet and Cord maintained a small lead over Gary and Mallory and beat them to the Pit Stop. Luckily though, Gary and Mallory were spared from eliminated in the final of three predetermined non-elimination legs.

Although they would be leaving in last and forced to complete a Speed Bump, they would be staying in the race.