Into the tropics

We arrived into the beachside resort of Puri about the middle of day 7. A few mediocre hotels over the previous few days had the boys hankering for some luxury, so it was time to splash out. It didn't take long before we were checked into a swanky resort and down by the pool working on the bar tab. A couple of good nights there to recharge and give the rickshaws some TLC at the local mechanic and it was time to hit the road.

The next few days saw us up at the crack of dawn and driving mainly on 4 lane national highways, heading south into the relentless tropical heat. Rice paddy fields turned into palm tree groves and swollen rivers have become dry river beds. We've struck massive cities we didn't know existed and we've even had to be ferried across an inlet on a rickety old wooden boat during a 'shortcut'. Temperatures seem to sit somewhere in the high 30s, the highest temp we've recorded a scalding 41degrees. Its not surprising that Sunburn is par for the course - there's a few pink arms, legs and feet out there.

I'm not sure if it's the heat or the thrashing we've given our rickshaws for the last 3000kms, but despite regular services they seem to be starting to limp a little. Roadside breakdowns, troubleshooting and stops at both mechanics and welders has become a daily occurrence and cost us a lot of time on the road. We've had mufflers dragging out the back of the engine showering the highway with sparks (I've never been so grateful for earplugs). We've had punctures, a broken carburettor, an entire engine block bouncing around trying to fall onto the road, and every electrical issue possible. Lights and horns come and go at will. Just as a quick aside while I mention horns: Diving without a horn in India = very bad. A beep is needed every time you overtake someone so they know to make some room. It's needed to make sure people know you're coming through an intersection and it's needed to move cyclists, people and animals just far enough to the side to let you squeeze past. This is especially critical in the cities - I've never felt so vulnerable as when horn-less in a big city.

Anyway, as I was saying: Breakdowns. So it turns out, getting things fixed over in this part of the world ain't particularly easy. Firstly language is a nightmare; I'm sure everyone who has travelled knows what I'm talking about. Some of the towns we have found ourselves in literally have no one who can speak english, making explaining a rickshaws mechanical woes slightly difficult. Describing what you need often involves a pronloged conversation of pigeon English, hand gestures and 30 people crowding around throwing in their 2 cents before some sort of plan can be agreed upon.

Secondly, Indian tradies are absolute cowboys. If there's a right way to do something, it's almost certain they will do it the opposite way. For us this has meant trips to multiple shops to get one simple issue sorted, usually costing half a day on the road. Our 'best' repair job would have to be glueing a broken engine mount back onto the chassis - needless no say this repair job lasted about 50 metres. If there's one thing we've learned however, it's that the only way to fix a rickshaw in India is to weld the shit out of it. Weld everything that has the potential to come loose or break. Weld it all. Oh, and find a respectable looking welder - the better the welders teeth, the better the job.

Aside from the daily frustration of breaking down, the boys are in high spirits. The further south we get, the drier it's becoming with no monsoon rain to speak of, making driving pretty easy. The people are friendly (sometimes a little too friendly - personal space isn't really a thing in India). The curries are tasty and the chai is sweet. Delhi belly hasn't struck anyone despite frequenting the street food stalls. In 12 days we've done well over 3000kms, spending 130 hours on the road. We've got 4 days to get 900km to the finish line in Kochi - time to bring it home.


Himalayan foothills to Bay of Bengal

After rolling into Darjeeling at about 7am on what was now day three of the Rickshaw run the boys were pretty shattered. A rest day was needed - luckily Darjeeling is a pretty damn good place to kill some time. We enjoyed the friendly people and their hospitality, some good feeds, a visit to one of the tea plantations and a few beers. Unfortunately the mist was in close around the mountains and we didn't get to see any of the tall Himalayan peaks.

After a good sleep we got up at about 5am and cracked into day 4. Driving down the mountain was a piece of cake after the ordeal we had getting up. Mike even had the chance to jump over the border into Nepal and spend some left over Nepalese rupees. Before we knew it we had weaved our way through tea fields and lush jungle back down to the river flats, and although it was nice to be back on the flat, unfortunately we were reunited with the heat, dust, potholes, cows and busy roads that we had happily left behind during our brief stint in the mountains.

The next three days saw us on the road for a total of 36 hours. Roads ranged from gravel potholed pieces of shit to pristine 4 lane highways. We passed through monsoon rains, busy cities and a washed out bridge to clock up over 300km per day on our way past Bangladesh and down to the town of Puri on the Bay of Bengal.

Here's a few things we've seen while on the road...

1) Overtaking: The overtaking is a very sketchy thing that takes a while to get used to. Trucks rule the road and drive in either lane in order to dodge potholes or other traffic. Unfortunately the rickshaw is slightly down the pecking order meaning we have frequently found ourselves pulling off the edge of the road while a big trucks bear down upon us. Fortunately it seems that trucks only drive straight at you when they can see u have some gravel or something to pull into - I hope this theory doesn't get disproven.

2) Traffic jams: A broken down truck can cause cause mayhem if it happens in the wrong place. We experienced this first hand when we struck a traffic jam at least 5km long which was caused by a breakdown on a bridge. Luckily this is where rickshaws come into their own. With Mike, Fruit and Fozz (aka Peter Solberg, Sebastian Loeb and Colin McRae) behind the wheel we weaved between the endless queues of trucks, drove along the gravel road edges and navigated through narrow village paths to make it to the front of the queue within an hour or two while the trucks had hardly moved an inch. Only a small bit of damage sustained to Rickshaw #1 as we clipped a truck trying to sneak through a gap that wasn't quite there.

3) Indian people: Every time we stop, and I mean EVERY time, we find ourselves instantly surrounded by hordes of Indians taking photos and staring at us. Very few of them speak English and only the odd one is brave enough to try and start a conversation, but they have no issue standing in your personal space and intensely staring you down as though we were attractions in a zoo. We have also met a lot of very friendly people though - head bobbles all round.

4) Food: Absolutely all it's cracked up to be. It's cheap and bloody delicious. They boys have been getting into street food the whole way. No gastro yet, with everyone tending towards constipation (touch wood) and only a few emergency roadside squats.

5) Countryside: The most green, lush country I've been to. Rice paddies as far as the eye can see.

6) Potholes: Fuck them. No punctures or broken axles yet - winning.

7) Rickshaws: Absolute battle axes. A total of about 5 hours spent in the pits to fix some electrics, change oil and a few other bits and pieces. No break downs yet after over 2000km (again touch wood).

8) Animals: Every road is strewn with goats, cows and dogs. The goats and cows are so road-aware and predictable that they hardly pose a threat - you just have to dodge them. Dogs on the other hand ain't so smart, we haven't hit any but have seen at least a dozen road killed dogs.

9) City driving: Absolutely manic. Cars, bikes, rickshaws, buses, scooters all weaving around one another at top speed and surprisingly still haven't seen a single accident. Kinda like playing a video game.

Anyway, until next time... Days on the road: 7 Hours on the road: 85.5 Total Kilometres so far: 2010km ![Uploading file...]()

We ride till dawn

We have 2 days of the rickshaw run under the belt and I'm happy to report that all 8 of us and our Rickshaws have made it to Darjeeling, still in one piece. Day 1 kicked off with a mass 80-rickshaw start, straight into a 1200m vertical descent from Shillong to Guwahati, made a lot more sketchy by heavy monsoon rains that turned the road into a river for most of the descent. After completing the descent, we collected Fozzy's second lost bag from Guwahati airport (this time not quite as much his own fault), and pushed on a couple of hours beyond dusk to a small town called Dudhnoi. After a cold one, some dog/offal fried rice and a hell of a lot of chat about riding from 'dusk-till-dawn' the next day, it was time to rest up.

The next day we were up at 5am and promptly on the road enjoying some cool quiet conditions on a paved highway, getting some good miles under the belt. This wasn't quite good enough though, so we thought we'd take a shortcut. Before we knew it we were dodging potholes, swerving cows (who seem to live on the roads because everywhere else is flooded rice fields), honking at pedestrians and vehicles to maybe achieve a solid 20kph. After a few hours of this and a 1.5 hour break to get rickshaw #2's lights fixed, we found our way back to the motorway. From here we kept the hammer down along the river flats, covering about 350kms and getting to within 40kms of Darjeeling by 7pm.

Darjeeling is a town in the Himalayan foothills formed by the British in the 1800s and is now a site of pilgrimage for travellers for many reasons, but especially its tea and stunning views of the nearby Himalayas. Also something worth noting - it's altitude is 7100ft.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was 7pm, pitch black and we had already been driving for 14 hours. But we figured we were so damn close to Darjeeling that we might as well just push on and stay the night up at the beautiful mountain village. So we plugged it in to google maps and started following that wee blue line.

The road we found ourselves on had us at a snails pace, relentlessly dodging trucks and potholes as we made our way up the side of the river gorge for the next 3 hours. We could hardly believe our eyes when we then reached a sign that read: altitude 750feet. It seemed almost impossible that this was all the ascent we had achieved, especially considering we were now only 20km away from Darjeeling. Also worth noting, by this time we had been approached by numerous locals who looked completely bemused when we told them where we intended to go, the almost universal response: "ohh no...that no possible." "Far to steep for auto/rickshaw."

At this point, a few minor alarm bells were ringing, so we had a group huddle and thought maybe this was a good time to weigh things up.

1) We had already been on the road for 18 hours straight. 2) It was 10pm and pitch black. 3) Our headlights would hardly have been suitable for a pushbike, and bulbs/fuses seemed to be blowing out every hour. 4) We had a 6000ft + climb ahead which we had no idea if our rickshaws were even capable of. 5) Every Indian and his dog telling us we were crazy and didn't have a shit show of making it up there.

A sense of self preservation/survival instinct kicked in and we came to a group decision to find a lodge and rest up for the night. We drove around the only nearby town for half an hour but it was deserted and we and became progressively dejected as we found absolutely nothing. Tired, fed up and unsure what to do we eventually just gave in and said "Fuck it - WE RIDE TILL DAWN."

We soon realised what climbing 6000ft across 20km of road in rickshaws truly meant. After leaving the river gorge, we were soon thrashing our 7hp rickshaws up treacherously steep jungle roads in first gear, the 2 passengers having to get out and run behind pushing every minute or two just to make sure the thing didn't stall. This went on for a couple of hours, making the drivers shattered with apprehension and the passengers shattered because they'd spent more time running behind the rickshaw than they managed sitting in it.

Next....the lead rickshaw captained by Frizz stalled on a steep section of hill - out of gas. We get all our jerrycans together, and realising that we had forgot to fill them at the last petrol station, came to the conclusion there ain't no way all 3 of our rickshaws were going to make it to Darjeeling - not the best realisation at 1am when you are in the middle of nowhere. So we top up Fozz and Bratney, offload all their heavy luggage and send them on their way to Darjeeling to get gas and come back to rescue the rest of us. Not long after we send the boys on their way, it starts to rain so we all get ready to settle down for the night in an abandoned concrete shelter perched just off the road on the edge of the sheer mountainside.

In a rare moment of clarity, one of the boys decides to have a closer look at the empty rickshaw and realised that it wasn't empty after all, but the spark plug had just vibrated and fallen out. We put this back in, and surprise-surprise she fired up like a dream. Just like that we were off again, flogging the rickshaws up the hill as fast as they could go. In pursuit of Bratney and Fozz. The faster of the two soon opened up a lead with the most gutless of the two, carrying Mick, Mike and myself falling well behind, eventually reaching an insurmountable hill. The three of us had finally succumbed to the exhaustion, the rain, the sheer hill and proceeded roll back to the last shanty house we had passed and camp, under their porch soaked and freezing cold waiting for daylight to come around and our rescuer to magically appear. The next morning we managed to flag down a 4wd on its way to Darjeeling, offloading as much weight as we could in the form of Pannett and all of our luggage. Carrying only mike and myself, the rickshaw had just enough juice to make it up the steep section and press on. A couple of hours later we had made it to Darjeeling, reunited with Pannett, our luggage, our other two rickshaws and some wary looking lads. As it turned out the front two rickshaws had reached Darjeeling but still had to sleep rough that night: One rickshaw under a tarpaulin near a petrol station and the other one in the middle of town in a street deserted by all but stray dogs and rats. Day 2 of rickshaw run complete. Time taken 26 hours.