Every traveler has a story to tell, some are more interesting than others...and some have more veracity than others. So when Will and John started to tell us their story in a bar in Kochi, we were pretty sure they were having us on. It really did seem quite far fetched. Now though, I think it should be the subject of a very, very entertaining movie.
(Photo Credit: Courtesy of TheAdventurists.com)
Will and John are two exceedingly affable twenty-something chaps from Tenby in Wales. Will surveys the ocean floor for a living while John mentors disadvantaged youths. They certainly seemed pretty genuine guys, but the cheeky telling of a "tall" story didn't seem beyond them at all. So we were on our guard.
Initially their tales of India were about the same things as everyone else's: scams, confusion, squalor and the perrenial bad toilet experiences. Will had a very amusing story about a Camel he was riding sprinkling him with urine via his tail - just to show him who was boss he supposed. He had another about a strange shaving scope creep: his 50 rupee cut-throat shave that quickly escalated into a bizarre metallic ear-acure; followed by a dry head massage, then an oily and strangley sensual one; all of which resulted in a weird "Widow's Peak" hairline advertising his gullibility to all as he walked down the street. Suffice to say, John opted merely for the 50 rupee shave!
But something didn't seem quite right. Their pronunciation of Jaiselmer seemed way off the mark for people who appeared well traveled in India: through Delhi, Rajashtan, Goa and now Kerala. Something was missing. Then the picture became clear. Will and John had only been in India three weeks, 14 days of which they had spent in a Rikshaw racing from Jaiselmer to Kochi!
"Rikshaw Run", which puts me in mind of those great 70s classics - the Gumball Rally and Cannonball Run- happens three times a year across different parts of India. Contestants pay rental of their Rikshaw, which they are welcome to "Pimp", and then set off as fast as their little Piaggio Scooter engines will carry them. The rules are simple - first one across the finishing line wins. (Not surprisingly, the genesis of Will and John's participation was hatched quite late one night...in the pub.)
But what fascinated me was for someone fairly familiar with Indian roads as myself - after what is now collectively my 5th month in India - the idea seems like suicide. For two India virgins such as Will and John, the baptism must have been one of furious fire. "Yeah we realized we could only really travel during the day once we got run off the road by a lorry one night," said John, with some nonchalance. Apparently an on-coming truck with headlights on full beam had fully run them off the road and into the trees on a bend. Will - who was driving - said he was relieved to find that the red liquid swilling around john's feet in the back was not blood but break liquid (not that that isn't a problem!)
The rules of the Indian road, as I've described before, take some studying. They won't be in any formal manuals. It's survival of the boldest. Everyone seeks to drive down the middle of the road, overtaking everyone else. That isn't always possible of course and so you demur to the larger or bolder vehicles - essentially a game of chicken. This is great If you're a 4 wheel drive with ample torque. However, if you're a flimsy Rikshaw with very little horsepower, and in a race to Kerala, this presents considerable challenges; particularly if you've never really traveled in one of India's most iconic vehicles, let alone driven one!
But as this blog post bares witness, the two of them arrived safe and sound and when we met them in a salubrious late night bar they were on day 4 of their celebratory bender. Apart from a few days in Jaiselmer, a strange half-way party with Russian Lingerie models in Goa and these few days in Kerala, they hadn't really had much time to enjoy India. But I'd wager they had seen far more of it than we had in our two month journey. They had broken down several times and enjoyed the charitable help of several local villages on each occasion. In India, everyone knows someone that knows how to fix a Rikshaw!
(Photo Credit: Courtesy of TheAdventurists.com)
Along the way they had raised money for charity - an organization that brings clean way to the poorest villages - and had made many new friends. The other characters in the race sounded like perfect material for the film, like the ménage a tois of one man and two women that split angrily down gender lines as the race went on; or the four portly American gentlemen who struggled to fit themselves into the Rikshaw, let alone their luggage!
We were left feeling quite envious of their adventure and while we cannot begin to complain about the wonderful journey we've experienced, there is something quite legendary about an experience such as their's. I could listen for hours to anecdotes like that and so eagerly encourage someone to shoot the yet-to-be-written film script so a few years hence I can enjoy the story some more. Danny Boyle...I'm talking to you!