Curried Away

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