How much adventure can you pack into a fortnight? Loads, if you opt for the Rickshaw Run, a 3,500km race across India in a “glorified lawnmower”.
The event is organised by the Adventurists, a UK tour operator that lives up to its slogan: “Fighting to make the world less boring.”
It supplies the three-wheeled rickshaws. You supply the route, the accommodation, the survival skills and the fee. Each vehicle carries a team of four, and it costs £1,395 per team.
Is it dangerous? Very.
As the company is at pains to point out, your chances of being seriously injured – or worse – as a result of taking part in its adventures are significant. Package holiday it ain’t. Completely unsupported. You either make it or you don’t, and if you don’t, you sort yourself out.
Your unreliable rickshaw – top speed 55km per hour – is tiny and never feels more so than when a succession of massive Tata trucks is bearing down on it at speed, on whatever side of the road happens to appeal to the lorry driver.
Rickshaw Runs go south to north, from Kerala to Shillong, or east to west from Shillong to Jaisalmar, with about 70 per cent of participants typically making it across the line. (Relax, the rest don’t die – they just don’t finish).
Each race begins and ends with a party, but don’t expect a prize: remaining part of the human race is reward enough. Especially as it means you have lived to sign up for one of the Adventurists’ five other madcap adventures.
