Rickshaw Run Update From the Road #5

I’m traveling 2,000 miles through India by motorized rickshaw, raising $15,000 for charity: water. While I’m sweating buckets, becoming one with my horn, avoiding cows, and getting grease under my nails on the road, you can follow along with my Instagram updates.

Day 11 update

After being locked inside our hotel today and having to bang the metal gate for someone to wake up and let us out, we knew it would be a great day. Three minutes after taking off, the NYPD’s muffler fell completely off, and we spent the morning deafened by their noise and looking for a welder.

Of course, an hour after we left the welder, our roof rack completely broke, and we had to quickly move all of our bags down in the rickshaw…so it’s a bit cozy now. But at least we didn’t lose anything. Lots of indecision today among the teams – but we finally decided that we had ‘plenty of time’ to make it halfway to Darjeeling in the tea region and up the mountains to get a change of scenery.

We are staying at a cool mountain lodge surrounded by tea plantations tonight in Kurseong. However, getting up this mountain to over 3000 feet with about 17 switchback turns while climbing on crap roads and dealing with oncoming vehicles was a ridiculous adventure that involved our rickshaw having to get pushed constantly by teammates and locals. Even in 1st gear, it didn’t have enough power to climb the mountain – I had it full throttle, and it would peter out.

Our engine was taking a beating and was completely overheated, requiring us to stop frequently to try to cool it down with a spray bottle. I’ve never had such a hard time driving a manual transmission vehicle in my life. I actually gave up once, and we asked one of the guys to drive it up, but they couldn’t do it either, and they had more strength to push, so that left me in the driver’s seat.

The sun went down, and we were climbing and pushing in the dark, as we couldn’t run the light, as it was too much of a drain on the engine! But after a couple of hours, we made it to the 12 km to our lodge. Rejoice!

Now…what goes up must come down tomorrow morning…

Day 12 update

It’s getting near the end, and I must admit – I’m ready for a day where we don’t have to drive – it’s been really intense every day, and I think when we arrive, I’m just going to sleep for 24 hours. This morning, though, we did something we never do – we slept in a little bit (until 6 AM) and started later so that we could enjoy the mountains a bit and have a proper breakfast and tea.

After talking to some of the locals, we found out that there was a better road we should have taken up the mountain the night before, which was new and wider – of course, this was all news to us – so we took that one down the mountain. Regardless, the drive down the mountain was nail-biting, and we had to stop a few times to cool down our brakes with little spritzer bottles. Then we took off, thinking we could cover a lot of ground, but we were pretty quickly slowed down due to poor road conditions. Pot holes that swallow a whole rickshaw!

One of our caravan rickshaws had issues again with the suspension, so we stopped early today to try to get that fixed. Hoping it’s the last fix we need…but somehow I hardly doubt that.

We sang Christmas songs in the rickshaw today to try to get in a cooler state of mind…yes, the fumes have made us delirious. We also just found out that the finish line is at 3000+ feet, which means another fiasco of driving in 1st gear for hours to get up a hill and pushing.

Why does the end have to be so hard?!

Day 13 update

Team dynamics and decision-making are always the most challenging in these types of races, and today we had to make a hard team decision. Our convoy of 3 rickshaws, with whom we’ve been since day 2, got up at 4:30 AM, packed up our rickshaws, and were on the road at 5 AM in an attempt to make it all the way to Shillong tonight.

A pretty low probability that it would be possible before nightfall based on the road conditions and the distance we had to travel, but we were all willing to try. However, as the day burned on and potholes and traffic slowed us down, it was clear that there was no way we were going to make it to Shillong before the sun went down.

We arrived in Guwahati at 3:30 pm with 2 hrs and 30 minutes of sunlight left and only 89 km to go, which would normally be doable. But, all of the intel we had received thus far said that the road from Guwahati to Shillong is a mountain climb to 3000+ ft, and it would take approximately 5 to 6 hrs to complete.

Charlie and I had a very hard decision to make, as if we were to push on to Shillong like the rest of the convoy wanted, then it meant we’d probably be driving until 9 PM at night on mountain road,s and the finish line would be closed so there wasn’t even a possibility of having a finish if we did arrive in Shillong. It would be dark, so we couldn’t film or take photos either.

The rickshaws had been driven hard all day and needed a rest. So Charlie and I decided to stay in Guwahati on our own and leave the convoy so that we could shoot for a proper finish tomorrow. We deliberated on this for hours between the two of us and then with the convoy, but in the end, we knew that we’d have more fun if we did the drive in the morning when we could see, and when we could drive to the finish. So, we are on our own again, just like day one.

It wasn’t an easy decision, and we have no idea how our Rickshaw will fare up the mountain climb (especially based on our last experience trying to climb a mountain and having the guys have to push it up), but we decided that we would make it work somehow, even if we had to be towed. The finish line is in our sights tomorrow! Our fundraising goals are also in our sights. Fingers crossed it will be a good morning for the two of us and our little rickshaw.

Day 14 – the finish!

We tried to sleep in today since we only had 90km to go to the finish line – but both of us were anxious and ended up still waking up at 4:30 AM thinking about what was ahead of us…the glorious finish line.

We packed up the shaw one last time and took off at 6:15 am on our own. We slowly climbed the mountain roads passing between trucks like pros. Our little rickshaw handles pretty well in the mornings, so it did ok on the climb this time, and the incline was more gradual, which helped tremendously – no pushing required! At the halfway point, we stopped for chai and some breakfast and let the shaw cool down, then I took over the last half of the driving.

The scenery in the state of Meghalaya is really the best we’ve seen; green trees, lakes and rivers with water in them, and little hillside towns. It is a weird mix of cultures in this part of India – near Burma, Bhutan, and Nepal – people’s look and style change. It doesn’t really feel like India. We drove past a beautiful lake and even stopped to take pictures at the ‘Welcome to Shillong’ sign.

We were entrapped in Shillong city traffic for a while, in which I was so anxious to get to the finish line (only 1 km away) that Charlie had to tell me to stop whining! But finally we saw it – the big banner on the left side of the road, “FINISH.” The feeling of elation and accomplishment overcame us – we had made it there alive!

We drove 2,300 miles in 14 days, the length of India, in a 3-wheeled, 7-horsepower rickshaw – insanity. We did this all in temps well over 100 degrees every day and slept an average of 5 ½ hours a night. We had three major breakdowns, a few minor ones, we hit a gate, rear-ended another rickshaw in front of us, and I accidentally ran over a dog’s tail…but no major accidents.

And the best part – we raised over $15,000 for charity: water and $1000 for Cool Earth. All done with a fabulous teammate, Charlie Grosso, who is the only person I’d ever consider doing this insanity with – she’s a rock. Mission accomplished. Now it’s time for a few beers and about 24 hours of sleep!