Thursday night (July 10) on "The Amazing Race," some of the six remaining teams struggled when their taxis ran out of gas in India.

Unfortunately, their plight served as an apt metaphor for the episode. Now at its midway point, the game seems to lack some of the difficult and exciting challenges of previous editions.

The entire episode transpires inside India, where David and Jeff start off from Mumbai in the lead. The teams are to travel more than 800 miles south by train to Ernakulam Junction, where the game will pick up again.

Everyone gets on the same train to Ernakulam, making for a decidedly unexciting first portion of the stage -- unless you count Kelly and Jon again talking smack about "Millie Mole" and her partner, Chuck "the Werewolf," exciting.

Following the train trip, the teams have to find a billboard with a route marker to get their next task, and it's here that some teams. Reichen and Chip's cab runs out of gas, dropping them to the back of the pack. Millie and Chuck also have some car trouble.

David and Jeff hold their lead going in to the Roadblock, in which a member of each team is dragged through a mud pit behind two bulls. We're told this is a popular local sport. The players come through it filthy but otherwise no worse for wear.

The race heats up somewhat at the Detour, where the teams have to choose between riding an elephant to deliver fabric to a store or delivering a basket full of chickens to a farm using a bike. The first five teams all choose the elephant, while Reichen and Chip, hoping to make up time, take the chicken challenge.

Somehow -- although it's not entirely clear how -- Reichen and Chip's gamble works, and they make it to the pit stop in fifth place. Models Tian and Jaree set their bickering aside just long enough to be eliminated. Tian ruefully notes that maybe they should have stayed mad at each other.