So I have to start with a story Phil told me when I talked with him before the season. He recounted that he ran into Aastha in the airport years back and said to you that you should apply for the show. Is that what got you where you are today?Aastha Lal: I was a foreign exchange student in Hong Kong. And Phil gets it wrong! It wasn’t at an airport. It was close to the airport. It was near the skyline. And so there were cameras in front of them. He was filming. And he was filming the season Nat and Kat won. This was like 2009 or 2010. So I see all these cameras, and I see Phil. And I yell out to him. I was like, “Hey, Phil! I love The Amazing Race.” (Laughs.) I feel like I ruined his take.Nina Duong: Very Aastha.Aastha: I’m a shouter. And he’s like, “You should apply then. Thank you for supporting the show!” I can’t do the New Zealand accent.Nina: She’s probably done that accent on like 50 different interviews. Still can’t get it right.I think your German accent is better.Aastha: (Laughs.) Touche, Mike.So due to the Scramble, you and the other teams didn’t really have any idea where you were going to place until you arrived at the pit stop. But did you guess where you were when you ran up to Phil at the mat?Nina: It’s actually so interesting. Because I felt like sometimes Aastha and I were running two different races. In regular life, I’m a realist. But she’s an overly optimistic person. And it showed in the race because I was like, “I have a good inkling of where we’re at, based on the amount of clues I’m seeing and how we’re interacting with every single activity.” And then, near the end, I saw all the cars lined up, and I was like, “Oh my god, we’re last.” She was like, “Oh my god, I think we’re first!” (Laughs.)Aastha: No, it wasn’t that. Up until barrel roll, I thought we were in first place. Because we were doing the tasks so fast and getting there so fast.Nina: What race were you watching?! (Laughs.)Aastha: I’m an eternal optimist. (Laughs.)I’ll admit it’s tough to figure out why you got eliminated, considering how chaotic the Scramble ended up being. What happened, both on-screen and off, to get you two talking with me today?Aastha: I think there were two critical errors. We took a little bit too long at the beginning to get directions. That took a couple of minutes off. And then what you didn’t see was in the barrel roll, I think we did five or six attempts. And in between the attempts, they make you wait two minutes. So adding on and on, that’s what killed us at the end. We kept getting 56 seconds, and we needed to hit 55 seconds. We were one second off every single time, and that two-minute penalty kept adding on.As fans, what was your reaction to the Scramble? I can imagine you’re of a couple of minds when you participate in Amazing Race history, but it ends your game.Nina: Oh my gosh. People call it the Scramble, but it really scrambled our brains. I didn’t anticipate how much it would impact the way that logic normally functions within my mental processing power. But I will say it was the decisions we made; I was just like, “What was I doing? Why was I taking so long?” (Laughs.)Aastha: I hated it. Because that’s not what we’re here for. Nina and I were so prepared for this race. We learned different languages. We learned dances. We learned rock climbing and kayaking. We learned the Botswana and Tanzania national anthem. We did cardio, everything you could possibly do. And that Scramble really messed us up. We were like, “Cannot compute. Don’t know what’s going on.” He told us right at the starting line, and two minutes later, he’s like, “Go!” So I wish there was no scramble for the first episode.Nina: Things happen for a reason. I think at the end of the day, you’ve seen previous seasons where, if you get saved the very first round, you eventually pick up your stride. We just didn’t get that opportunity. But I genuinely believe that if given the opportunity, I think we would have made improvements.Aastha: I’m a stand-up comedian. I had two prayers before going on to this race. I was like, “I want to be a famous comedian by the end of this. And I want to win The Amazing Race.” And then God is like, “Hold my beer. You know what? It would be funny if you were eliminated first on The Amazing Race.“Nina: I mean, how many teams can say they were twelfth place? There’s only been like five or six.Aastha: So many winners!Nina: But how many twelfth place finishers?Aastha: Mike, we have to find the silver lining. We have to! (Laughs.)(Laughs.) I love that optimism! You mentioned before that one of your “critical errors” was taking too long to get directions to all the tasks. You were one of a couple of teams to take the time to figure out where everything was before leaving. How advantageous or disadvantageous was that choice?Aastha: Good question. Nina, maybe you should take that one.Nina: Don’t have that snarky attitude! (Laughs.) Here’s what happened. So I’m a veteran. They didn’t show that on the show; there’s lots of jam-packed into a one-hour block. But I actually drove military vehicles overseas in Iraq. So driving sick was something that I was very comfortable with. And so we were practicing for the race, I was always going to be the driver, and then Aastha was going to be the one navigating us. But whenever we hit the ground in Munich, we realized that the car was automatic. So then, at that point, we made a last-minute decision, despite all of our training, to switch. And I think that was probably the one thing that got us. We never had that conversation of like, “Well, you should probably drive if it’s automatic.“Aastha: Our strategy went out the window. I mean, in our practice, I’m sitting in the backseat with a map, and she’d be in the front. But at the last minute, we switched, and I don’t know why. Our brands were probably scrambled. And I’m really good with maps. And she’s a really good driver, as you can tell. But the Scramble just messed up our minds. You’re not thinking clearly because the level of adrenaline that’s running through your veins at that point is really crazy. We’re not used to that on a day-to-day basis. Nina: This might be TMI. But I had my contacts in. And terrible time to try new contact lenses, by the way! Just don’t do it, people. I wear glasses normally. And I decided, “Well, I’ll try new contact lenses because I’m gonna go on a race.” And then they were drying out my eyes. And then they were blurring. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m looking at. I’m writing all these instructions, but they’re not registering.” (Laughs.)Aastha: There are a lot of things that worked against us, yeah. (Laughs.)Was there any point during the leg where you debated working with other teams to get to the tasks easier, or was it more about putting your heads down and pushing through?Nina: I felt as if it was more of the latter. But mostly because it moves so fast. Even in real life, when we were doing the actual activities, regardless of the editing, all three activities went so fast as well. So I felt most teams were “head down, get moving” because it was a new element that nobody really knew how to navigate. So we were all just pushing.Aastha: And we were thinking of forming alliances later in the race. We wanted to form alliances with Abby and Will and Derek and Claire. But in the beginning, no one was allowed to talk to each other. Nina is 5'4”; I’m 5'2”. No one wants to be in an alliance with tiny lesbians!Nina: But if the first episode was all puzzles–Aastha: Memory challenges, math. We would have killed it!Nina: Do you know how many people cheated off of me in high school and college? All of them would have been surrounding us! (Laughs.)Aastha: We’re Asian overachievers. So for us to be in last place was like, “Woof.” (Laughs.)Any reason why you were eyeballing Abby and Will and Derek and Claire in particular?Aastha: We had no idea who Derek and Claire were! We just thought they were nice. And so a lot of time before the race starts, you have to do a lot of protocols and COVID testing and whatnot. And then we just vibed with them really well. Also, we were lined up in alphabetical order. So we were just closest to them. So we were making hand gestures and eye gestures.Nina: It was mostly Aastha. She’s creepy like that. (Laughs.)Aastha: (Laughs.) We had this understanding that we’d help each other in the race. But it didn’t happen.You talked in your preseason video about being mentally strong rather than physically strong. And unfortunately, you came up against your worst nightmare in that keg-rolling task. What was it that took you five tries to finish?Nina: Okay, so paired with the contact lenses, I was dehydrated. Because we were like, “Okay, we’re two little girls. We can’t carry a gallon of water.” Little women. Like the book. (Laughs.) So we had this tiny little bottle of water that we split between us. And after that keg roll, I kid you not, we had this little bit of water. And then we were both like, “Who’s gonna get that last little bit?” (Laughs.)Aastha: Yeah, we were tired and so dehydrated. You can’t see properly. And then it was that two-minute penalty, and in between the rain. Nina: But I think it was mostly the keg and trying to drive it correctly. When I first saw the episode yesterday, that’s when I realized, “Holy crap. The clue says, ‘get the barrel across,’ and I kept on trying to travel along with it with me to cross the finish.“All that preparation, and what’s the number one rule of Amazing Race? Read your clue!Aastha: Exactly!Nina: Yeah, those fine details you can’t skirt around.Was there anything you learned about each other while racing together in Munich?Aastha: That’s a really good question. So before the race, we knew we knew who would split up the tasks. Nina’s a carpentry lesbian. She’s good at building; she’s good at like working with her hands. I’m a sports lesbian. I’m good at volleyball, soccer, baseball. She’s not good at high-velocity balls coming at her face.Nina: No lesbian is!Aastha: We knew our strengths and weaknesses. We’ve been together for four years. And I think what we realized is that we’re not as good communicators as we thought we were. We’re lesbians; we communicate about everything. Every single emotion that goes through our body, we communicate about it. But for this race, I think it was hard at that moment.Nina: And I think this is something that hits a lot of racers. Whenever you’re paired with someone who, if you’ve never worked on a team with before, a relationship has been so different up until that point, you really underestimate it until you’re present in that space under that pressure. Because no matter if we were planning to be working as a team, when you get in that space, you’re stressed. Both of you have different ideas into what direction to go. You thought you were on the same page, until you’re not, and that’s what happened. Next, read our Amazing Race 34 preseason interview with host Phil Keoghan.
