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Dastardly Drives. Rickshaw rally in
southern India. Report with pics.
February 2008
southern India. Report with pics.
February 2008
Dastardly Drives
(Or, how to cheat death at 35mph)
After seven days of rickshaw driving I
reckoned I was as good as any taxi-wallah,
so my male pride flared red at being
dropped by Team Overland down the tight
hill roads leading away from the
Mundanthurai tiger sanctuary.
As wonderful as the rickshaw proved for
interacting with the infinitely varied Tamil
Nadu culture, tiger spotting to the
accompaniment of an overworked 50cc
engine was never going to be fruitful. The
chase was on.
It didn’t last long. Round the next corner, a
corner carved precariously out of a rock
face, we came on the number 13 rickshaw
jammed into a crevasse between cliff and
crumbing tarmac. Sounds of swearing over-
rode the noise of the still-spinning engine
as Indian journalist Haarman Madon
berated his shaken team-mate. “I told you
were going too ****** fast!”. That now-
familiar Indian crowd – the one that
magically appears from seemingly nowhere
– hefted the stricken rickshaw from its rock
grave and contemplated the damage. Bent
forks. The one thing impossible to repair by
the road side. Just 40-odd miles from the
end, their rally was over.
As we discovered on this pioneering 600-
mile adventure, the structure of the Indian
rickshaw, now in its 50th year, will take
just about any amount of abuse.
Mechanically they’re as delicate as an
Italian supermodel, but that wasn’t a
drawback. The £470 entry price included a
back-up van full of spannermen.
The IndianArc rally is the brainchild of
Aravind Bremanadam, a widely travelled
Tamil Nadu local who got the idea after
joining a similarly optimistic car rally from
Hungary to Mali in Africa. His deft
networking around Chennai – formerly
Madras - produced a media-heavy crowd
and a famous local film producer to flag the
beachfront start for the 17 internationally
drawn teams.
In the uniquely Indian chaos, myself and
team-mate Simon Laidlaw were, frankly,
nervous. It isn’t supposed to be a race as
such, but all the talk of flag-offs and teams
affixed it a competitive edge, an edge it
was plain our rickshaw didn’t have. All the
rickshaws were rented from the same pool
as the local taxi drivers use, but our 1996
model wasn’t shown the option list. No
windscreen wiper, stingily padded seats,
no speedo and, as we discovered over the
next 45 minutes, no gears to speak of
between first and fourth. Next to us, the
Russian trio comprising Team Armageddon
proudly showed a BBC radio reporter their
built-in fridge (not, it has to be said, an
original option).
Whatever Chennai’s charms, one thing it
doesn’t offer is a safe, confidence-building
environment for learner rickshaw drivers.
Kangarooing away from the start, we were
swiftly enveloped into the seething traffic
crush. My left hand developed a throbbing
ache as I failed to master the twist-and-
snatch gear change, allowing more
proficient local drivers to swallow up my
safety gap to the competitors ahead. A
powerful vortex of wind in the cab whipped
away the directions to the first hotel, 47
miles to the south in Mamallapuram.
It was only once on the palmy coast road
that the rickshaw began to made sense as
a holiday vehicle. A top speed of 35mph
and surprisingly powerful brakes meant we
could stop on a whim. Over the next seven
days, we braked for salt-pan workers north
of Pondicherry (Puducherry now), piling
their white pyramids ever higher, and for a
group of orange-clad Catholic pilgrims,
heroically hauling a statue of the Virgin
Mary along more than 200 miles of fume-
choked roads to the ‘Lourdes of the East’ in
Vailankanni.
We braked for breathtaking views over
emerald paddies, for yelling
schoolchildren, for glorious temple tanks,
for savoury vada (deep-fried doughnuts),
for a 2000-year-old temple whose bat
population outnumbered the worshippers.
We braked more often for dithering goats
than the more placid and predictable cows.
We were often last to the hotel each night.
At Mamallapuram – famous for its rock-
hewn temples and chariots, rather more
magisterial than ours – a family of five from
Udaipur were seemingly minus a second
rickshaw. I asked them about it. “We’ve
only got one,” grinned Sunil Ladha, an
architect with an irresistible appreciation
for life’s amusements. Fitting them all in
was easier given that daughter Srivanda
was only four and a half. “She goes to
sleep on the shelf behind the rear seat.”
The next day we broke down just a couple
miles out of town. Overloaded buses,
ungainly Ashok-Leyland trucks and families
three-to-a-bike periodically smashed the
awful silence as we uncertainly poked
around the Vespa-derived engine. Team
Extreme Trifle, two lads from Bath, stopped
to wonder if what had just happened to
them might also be our problem. It was. In
all the first-day mayhem, we’d forgotten to
fill up with fuel. Ah. A siphon later and we
were mobile again.
Over a Bio Beer and tiger prawns that night
in pub-strewn Pondicherry, everyone had a
breakdown story. Rachel and Ian Bales, a
retired couple from Bridlington, were on
their second engine, as were the Team
Overland boys. A bust exhaust meant
Extreme Trifle were driving with protective
toilet paper in their ears. On day four, the
vast Thanjavur temple still fresh in our
minds, our engine also coughed its last,
requiring a roadside transplant by Kabali
and his mechanics.
That was annoying, but not terrifying like
the brake disaster the day before. In a dusty
farming village, Simon had been forced off
the road by a bus (as is allowed by the
‘might is right’ rule), hit the brakes and
found absolutely no resistance. By the
grace of whatever god was in charge that
day, we rolled to a halt without damaging
us or livestock. Cue a brake rebuild from
Kabali and his team while we drank chai
from the tea shop and ate Britannia-brand
biscuits, gently sweating in the 30 degree
heat and feeling a wee bit too colonial for
comfort.
We felt more comfortable playing colonials
in Madurai’s Taj Garden hotel, a hilltop
oasis of verandahs, snooker rooms and
hardwood floors for the bargain, rally
discounted price of £14 a room. An awful
admission here: we forfeited the city’s
universally recommended Sri Meenakshi
temple in favour of waiter-delivered gin
and tonics. It’d been a tough day.
Backpacker-spec the hotels certainly
weren’t – very welcome after the grime and
wind-blast of 80-odd miles of open-sided
driving, but the tourist-class white boxes in
Tuticorin, Pondicherry and Kanyakumari
lacked the soul of the Taj and, even more
so, the hibiscus-shrouded bungalows of
Courtallam, complete with garage for the
rickshaw.
This lush little town in the foothills of the
Nilgiri mountains has a renowned health-
enhancing waterfall to further cleanse what
the pure air can’t. Shame, then, I’ll forever
associate it with near death. Returning from
the waterfall four-up, American charity
worker Eric Hamm missed a bend
somehow and pitched us all into a foilage-
choked ditch, the rickshaw somersaulting
onto its roof. The stunned silence after the
viscious lash of jungle was quickly broken
by laughter. We all survived unscathed
and, dragged upright, that included the
rickshaw. We were certain we had the best
story yet.
We were wrong. The final day took us to
Kanyakumari, India’s land’s end, first
passing southern India’s vast army of wind
farms. Distracted by yet another switch in
scenery, this time to Mexican-spec desert,
we dawdled. That the Team Overland boys
were already at the finish-line hotel was
expected. Totally unexpected was news
that that they’d driven there after the heroic
mechanics achieved the impossible and
resurrected rickshaw number 13 at that
fateful hill-side bend.
It wasn’t a trip for the faint of heart, but then
Indian trips rarely are. Arriving alive felt
like a victory of sorts, and had a victory
speech been required during the party we’d
have began with heartfelt gratitude to
Kabali and his superhuman mechanics.
Ditto to Tamil Nadu residents for following
up their astonishment at our appropriation
of their taxis with genuine hospitality. And
finally to the rickshaw itself: by far the best
touring vehicle I’ve ever driven. Quite
simply, it’s the most fun you can have at
30mph.
(Or, how to cheat death at 35mph)
After seven days of rickshaw driving I
reckoned I was as good as any taxi-wallah,
so my male pride flared red at being
dropped by Team Overland down the tight
hill roads leading away from the
Mundanthurai tiger sanctuary.
As wonderful as the rickshaw proved for
interacting with the infinitely varied Tamil
Nadu culture, tiger spotting to the
accompaniment of an overworked 50cc
engine was never going to be fruitful. The
chase was on.
It didn’t last long. Round the next corner, a
corner carved precariously out of a rock
face, we came on the number 13 rickshaw
jammed into a crevasse between cliff and
crumbing tarmac. Sounds of swearing over-
rode the noise of the still-spinning engine
as Indian journalist Haarman Madon
berated his shaken team-mate. “I told you
were going too ****** fast!”. That now-
familiar Indian crowd – the one that
magically appears from seemingly nowhere
– hefted the stricken rickshaw from its rock
grave and contemplated the damage. Bent
forks. The one thing impossible to repair by
the road side. Just 40-odd miles from the
end, their rally was over.
As we discovered on this pioneering 600-
mile adventure, the structure of the Indian
rickshaw, now in its 50th year, will take
just about any amount of abuse.
Mechanically they’re as delicate as an
Italian supermodel, but that wasn’t a
drawback. The £470 entry price included a
back-up van full of spannermen.
The IndianArc rally is the brainchild of
Aravind Bremanadam, a widely travelled
Tamil Nadu local who got the idea after
joining a similarly optimistic car rally from
Hungary to Mali in Africa. His deft
networking around Chennai – formerly
Madras - produced a media-heavy crowd
and a famous local film producer to flag the
beachfront start for the 17 internationally
drawn teams.
In the uniquely Indian chaos, myself and
team-mate Simon Laidlaw were, frankly,
nervous. It isn’t supposed to be a race as
such, but all the talk of flag-offs and teams
affixed it a competitive edge, an edge it
was plain our rickshaw didn’t have. All the
rickshaws were rented from the same pool
as the local taxi drivers use, but our 1996
model wasn’t shown the option list. No
windscreen wiper, stingily padded seats,
no speedo and, as we discovered over the
next 45 minutes, no gears to speak of
between first and fourth. Next to us, the
Russian trio comprising Team Armageddon
proudly showed a BBC radio reporter their
built-in fridge (not, it has to be said, an
original option).
Whatever Chennai’s charms, one thing it
doesn’t offer is a safe, confidence-building
environment for learner rickshaw drivers.
Kangarooing away from the start, we were
swiftly enveloped into the seething traffic
crush. My left hand developed a throbbing
ache as I failed to master the twist-and-
snatch gear change, allowing more
proficient local drivers to swallow up my
safety gap to the competitors ahead. A
powerful vortex of wind in the cab whipped
away the directions to the first hotel, 47
miles to the south in Mamallapuram.
It was only once on the palmy coast road
that the rickshaw began to made sense as
a holiday vehicle. A top speed of 35mph
and surprisingly powerful brakes meant we
could stop on a whim. Over the next seven
days, we braked for salt-pan workers north
of Pondicherry (Puducherry now), piling
their white pyramids ever higher, and for a
group of orange-clad Catholic pilgrims,
heroically hauling a statue of the Virgin
Mary along more than 200 miles of fume-
choked roads to the ‘Lourdes of the East’ in
Vailankanni.
We braked for breathtaking views over
emerald paddies, for yelling
schoolchildren, for glorious temple tanks,
for savoury vada (deep-fried doughnuts),
for a 2000-year-old temple whose bat
population outnumbered the worshippers.
We braked more often for dithering goats
than the more placid and predictable cows.
We were often last to the hotel each night.
At Mamallapuram – famous for its rock-
hewn temples and chariots, rather more
magisterial than ours – a family of five from
Udaipur were seemingly minus a second
rickshaw. I asked them about it. “We’ve
only got one,” grinned Sunil Ladha, an
architect with an irresistible appreciation
for life’s amusements. Fitting them all in
was easier given that daughter Srivanda
was only four and a half. “She goes to
sleep on the shelf behind the rear seat.”
The next day we broke down just a couple
miles out of town. Overloaded buses,
ungainly Ashok-Leyland trucks and families
three-to-a-bike periodically smashed the
awful silence as we uncertainly poked
around the Vespa-derived engine. Team
Extreme Trifle, two lads from Bath, stopped
to wonder if what had just happened to
them might also be our problem. It was. In
all the first-day mayhem, we’d forgotten to
fill up with fuel. Ah. A siphon later and we
were mobile again.
Over a Bio Beer and tiger prawns that night
in pub-strewn Pondicherry, everyone had a
breakdown story. Rachel and Ian Bales, a
retired couple from Bridlington, were on
their second engine, as were the Team
Overland boys. A bust exhaust meant
Extreme Trifle were driving with protective
toilet paper in their ears. On day four, the
vast Thanjavur temple still fresh in our
minds, our engine also coughed its last,
requiring a roadside transplant by Kabali
and his mechanics.
That was annoying, but not terrifying like
the brake disaster the day before. In a dusty
farming village, Simon had been forced off
the road by a bus (as is allowed by the
‘might is right’ rule), hit the brakes and
found absolutely no resistance. By the
grace of whatever god was in charge that
day, we rolled to a halt without damaging
us or livestock. Cue a brake rebuild from
Kabali and his team while we drank chai
from the tea shop and ate Britannia-brand
biscuits, gently sweating in the 30 degree
heat and feeling a wee bit too colonial for
comfort.
We felt more comfortable playing colonials
in Madurai’s Taj Garden hotel, a hilltop
oasis of verandahs, snooker rooms and
hardwood floors for the bargain, rally
discounted price of £14 a room. An awful
admission here: we forfeited the city’s
universally recommended Sri Meenakshi
temple in favour of waiter-delivered gin
and tonics. It’d been a tough day.
Backpacker-spec the hotels certainly
weren’t – very welcome after the grime and
wind-blast of 80-odd miles of open-sided
driving, but the tourist-class white boxes in
Tuticorin, Pondicherry and Kanyakumari
lacked the soul of the Taj and, even more
so, the hibiscus-shrouded bungalows of
Courtallam, complete with garage for the
rickshaw.
This lush little town in the foothills of the
Nilgiri mountains has a renowned health-
enhancing waterfall to further cleanse what
the pure air can’t. Shame, then, I’ll forever
associate it with near death. Returning from
the waterfall four-up, American charity
worker Eric Hamm missed a bend
somehow and pitched us all into a foilage-
choked ditch, the rickshaw somersaulting
onto its roof. The stunned silence after the
viscious lash of jungle was quickly broken
by laughter. We all survived unscathed
and, dragged upright, that included the
rickshaw. We were certain we had the best
story yet.
We were wrong. The final day took us to
Kanyakumari, India’s land’s end, first
passing southern India’s vast army of wind
farms. Distracted by yet another switch in
scenery, this time to Mexican-spec desert,
we dawdled. That the Team Overland boys
were already at the finish-line hotel was
expected. Totally unexpected was news
that that they’d driven there after the heroic
mechanics achieved the impossible and
resurrected rickshaw number 13 at that
fateful hill-side bend.
It wasn’t a trip for the faint of heart, but then
Indian trips rarely are. Arriving alive felt
like a victory of sorts, and had a victory
speech been required during the party we’d
have began with heartfelt gratitude to
Kabali and his superhuman mechanics.
Ditto to Tamil Nadu residents for following
up their astonishment at our appropriation
of their taxis with genuine hospitality. And
finally to the rickshaw itself: by far the best
touring vehicle I’ve ever driven. Quite
simply, it’s the most fun you can have at
30mph.
