Here’s a short video of the trip (15 mins) - right click the link and select ’save target as’ to download and then watch. Its a couple of hundred megabytes so will take a while!!!
http://www.curried-away.co.uk/gallery/movie.wmv
Team Curried Away celebrated the receipt of more sponsorship this week. Chris’s fundraising efforts involved getting hold of two Virgin Atlantic flights, from anywhere-to-anywhere which have subsequently been auctioned off at Rolls-Royce for the princely sum of £1200 - 0r £1300 (I can’t remember which). So this puts us up in the region of £6k total raised for Mercy Corps now.
Our adopted team mate Liam has been putting together some of his movie footage and has released this cool trailer for the Rickshaw Run movie he’s producing.
http://www.curried-away.co.uk/gallery/Promo2.AVI
It’ll take a while to get started or download, as the file is 20 mb.
For more about Liam’s work, visit http://www.magnifyproductions.co.uk/
Enjoy
I’m glad to be able to provide a charity update. Mercy Corps sent me a letter this week, thanking Team Curried Away for the £4040 raised so far (plus over £900 in gift aid). Sadly our Justgiving page has expired and disappeared now, but any further contributions can be made via team members or direct to Mercy Corps. We know there’s significant sums still to come - and we expect to finish with at least £5000 plus the gift aid.
With the letter from Mercy Corps came an update about the projects the Rickshaw Run is supporting. It was great to hear about how the monies and rickshaws have been used. See this pdf file to read all about it.
The final distance covered was more than anticipated, a grand total of 3,748km, in a rickshaw, in 2 weeks!
The final charity total is as yet unknown, but we’ve already shattered our target of £2,500 - amassing £4,044 + £900 in gift aid. There are still some significant contributions to come.
Thanks to all of our sponsors for their support.
Team Curried Away started the adventure with two matching rickshaws, yet finished with a third one. Its worth mentioning the story behind this.
On the morning of the 2nd January, in Nellore in Tamil Nadu - we bumped into the teary faces of Susan and Dave. Their adventure had been cut short by family bereavement, and they had to make their way back to the States. On the back of their rickshaw, they painted the words “Dedicated to Warren D Taylor”…before handing over the keys to Team Curried Away. We vowed to take their rickshaw to its rightful destination….Darjeeling.
This turn of events served to strengthen our resolve, we now had a responsibility not just to ourselves and our sponsors, but also to Susan and Dave’s. On the flipside, we kind of gave ourselves a better chance by having three rickshaws instead of just two. Even in the event of a double breakdown, we knew we’d still have wheels to go find help!
And so we took on the red rickshaw, and far from being a burden, it was a lot of fun. It became a project…the rickshaw we could experiment with and modify the most. Gradually the roof came off it - to maximise our sunbathing opportunuities. Susan & Dave’s rickshaw became ‘Covert-o-rick’.
Only after having taken the canvass roof off did we discover that the rest of the rickshaw was seemingly held together by said roof! Slowly but surely in the days that followed, the metal frame rattled itself loose, finally giving up the ghost and falling off completely, just after we’d crossed the Ganges river. It was actually rather embarrassing as we’d just had a bit of a police incident, which had involved them ripping film out of cameras. We tried to ’storm off’ but our stomp was cut short by the whole frame of the rickshaw falling off!
As we proceeded further and further north, the nights grew colder and colder, and the lure of driving and being a passenger in Convert-o-rick waned in the dark hours, requiring full hat and fleece to withstand the wind chill…but it was still enormous fun, rather like driving a skateboard.
For all the goofing around, we never lost sight of the fact that the red rickshaw was only on loan, and as we approached Darjeeling, we remembered to get some photographic evidence of its arrival in the region, so that Susan & Dave can be proud that their rickshaw made it to the end. We were just passengers.
So, to Susan & Dave and their resiliant rickshaw. Well done to you all. To find out more about the red rickshaw’s earlier life, see Susan & Dave’s website at www.tobesorted.blogspot.com
We made it! Last night we rocked up to Darjeeling at around 5pm, just as the sun was setting. We’d left ourselves a monster drive to complete the trip, getting up at 4:30am to cover the kilometers.
The roads were generally forgiving for the first part and we’d got to the ‘bottom of the hill’ by noon. One final round of repairs was done - a welding job on the exhaust of one rickshaw, and lots of tightening of nuts and bolts (to stop the seats sliding off the chasis completely) - and we were ready for the final climb.
The Himalayas sprung out of nowhere, suddenly emerging from the Indian dusty haze in a daunting fashion.
Then began 4-5 hours of exhilarating mountain driving, twists and turns a plenty, and hairpin turns beside drops of hundreds and hundreds of metres.
We bumped into Tom & Jenny, Mat & Claire on the way up - obviously having caught up loads of ground with our early start.
So in a frantic procession, we scaled the mountains, to an unbelievable reception from the locals. The narrow, pretty streets were lined with people, for a stretch of around 35km. They were laughing clapping and waving, shouting hello and good luck - it was actually really emotional and touching to see such a response. The local press had covered the story, so people were actually on the lookout, expecting us!
So we arrived and parked up for the last time, checking into a hotel with amazing views and hitting the bar quite hard. Sore head aside, we’re feeling great about the whole trip, fantastic fun, a real adventure, and massive relief to complete it in one piece.
Keep a look out on the website, as I’ll be sorting out a load of photos and will write up the diary I’ve been keeping. I’ll also post some information about the final charity total raised, and pictures from the ‘marching band rickshaw procession’ that is taking place through the town tomorrow!
There’ll also be a TV show about the challenge, on satellite, and a DVD available to buy in due course, keep watching this page for info.
Job done. They rolled into Darjeeling as the sun set today with (one spare litre of fuel)…… and they are (very deservedly) hitting the beers. Well done to all.
Distance so far 3264 kms. More breakdowns and exhaust dramas.
Slow progress but the rickshaws are somehow soldiering on.
450 kms or so to go to Darjeeling - but all up hill and on bad roads.
The last few days have been really crazy. Alternating good and bad days, as sometimes we make cracking progress and then have a mare. After destroying our rickshaws in a combination of petrol station and bumpy road incidents yesterday morning, we recovered dramatically in the evening and night…and then things went even better today after lots of hoping and praying and a bit of tightening of nuts and bolts.
We’re now into the centre of West Bengal, probably only 600km or so from the finish in the mountains. The last couple of days have seen us cover great distance over varied roads. We did a night drive yesterday that was incredible, driving through streams of lorries in the murky night, on a road with pot holes that you could get lost in.
Steadily though, we got through it all and have been further rewarded by a breakdown free day today and good progress.
There’s still a way to go, and the final stretch is the section that has been declared “impassable by rickshaw”, but I’m more than confident that it will be fine.
In the past couple of days we’ve had two minor ‘road accidents’. Ben reversed one rickshaw into another of our own in a moment of ineptness, knocking the front light out. We’ve since repaired that, but another of our rickshaws (the one with no battery) now loses its headlight beam when you apply the brakes or use the horn…which is fun!]
No time for more…and the next news will hopefully be of our arrival in Darjeeling…