We’re in southern Nepal; we’re not quite sure where as we lost the main highway about 30 minutes earlier in a desperate search for a petrol station. We didn’t find one in time.
I’m barefoot and covered in dirt, straining to push our auto-rickshaw down a two-lane highway, as my boyfriend steers and tries to pump the clutch into action. My only pair of shoes fell out of the vehicle earlier in the day as we ricocheted over a dirt path to avoid a crowd of Maoist demonstrators.
The sun is setting and we’re in a race with a looming black monsoon cloud. The political unrest has caused a fuel shortage and our only hope is that the gas station 1km down the road will sell us grey-market petrol out of plastic water bottles.
Part of me grins at the utter absurdity of my life at the moment. Part of me curses the day my boyfriend and I decided it would be a lark to drive this flimsy piece of tin across India and Nepal. A week earlier it seemed like a good idea. We had been working in Delhi and seen a lot of India: Mumbai’s Bollywood nightlife, Rajasthan’s crumbling old forts, Kashmir’s empty houseboats. But we hadn’t explored the back roads of India, life outside the guidebooks. The rickshaw could take us into a different India — across roads inaccessible by train and bus, away from the crowds, the traffic and the tourists we found everywhere else. We were enchanted by the idea and so we signed up for the 2007 Rickshaw Run.
We arrived in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), bright-eyed and eager, with 21 other teams, a total of 46 people, lured by a hair-brained, yet simple, idea: to drive a rickshaw across India. The mad Pied Piper who led us there was Tom Morgan (28), a former art student from Bristol who is on a mission to change the way people travel.
Six years ago he and a friend left Prague in dilapidated cars and headed east for Mongolia. They never made it (visa troubles in Iran forced them to turn back), but Morgan tried again the next year and succeeded, prompting him to launch a company called The League of Adventurists (http://league.theadventurists.com/). “I want to get people’s noses out of the crack of Lonely Planet,” says Morgan.
Morgan decided the three-wheel, open-sided vehicle would be the most challenging way to get off the beaten track. He bought 21 rickshaws in Kolkata and linked up with Mercy Corps, a charity that supports health and education projects. At the end of the trip, in Manali, Mercy Corps would donate the rickshaws to NGO programmes.
We had 14 days to get to Manali, but how we got there was up to us. The rules are simple: if you have to abandon the rickshaw, you can call the Adventurists. Otherwise, you’re on your own. Some teams chose to drive in convoy, others — like us — headed out alone.
We traced a loop north from Kolkata, entering Nepal just south of Darjeeling at a town called Kakarbhitta. We planned to drive through the Terai region of Nepal, avoiding the tourist sites of Everest base camp and Kathmandu. We would re-enter India at Nepalganj, cut down southeast through Delhi, then head straight north to Manali. We figured we had to average 250km a day to make it on time.
I have lived in India long enough to know that the rickshaw is somewhere near the bottom of the road food chain — above the bicycle, but below the cow. It has a bulb the strength of a weak torch for a headlamp, which gives an added frisson of danger to driving at night. It can’t go much faster than 45kph. As an added challenge ours came with a manufacturing defect, which meant that about once a day our petrol line would stop sending fuel to the carburetor. We got to meet a lot of mechanics.
At La Martiniere Boys School in Kolkata we were given a five-minute driving lesson, before the chief of police led all 21 rickshaws through the congested city streets. For about 45 minutes we raced alongside the other teams. At the intersection of two highways, the police waved us on. We took a right; everyone else headed straight on.
In what would become a regular occurrence a crowd of motorcyclists pulled over as soon as we stopped to look at the map, happy to volunteer their help to the crazy foreigners driving the gaudily decorated rickshaw. We got back on the road and followed a portly man down narrow back alleys. After 20 minutes of zig-zagging the man motioned us onwards and suddenly we were out of the cramped city and on a peaceful country road with miles of green flat land spread out before us.
We travelled at harvest time. Women in brilliant yellow saris dotted rice fields, wielding sickles. Villagers fished on ponds holding brightly coloured umbrellas to block the sun. In villages children rushed to examine our pink-and-black rickshaw; the rest of the village would soon follow, questioning us in broken English.
During the day not knowing what lay ahead was exciting. At night it was terrifying. With no tour guide and no guidebook, we were often at a loss to explain or understand our surroundings. Why was every bridge in Nepal named and its length carefully labelled when there were apparently no other road signs? What was the enormous spiked fruit for sale at every stand in West Bengal? What were you supposed to do with the small pieces of wood served after breakfast on a silver tray? Thankfully people were happy to answer our questions.
And more. When we ran out of gas, we were offered a backseat on a motorbike to the nearest petrol station. When we stopped for chai during a monsoon downpour, boys moved a bench under tin roofs for our protection.
Rickshaws are used as taxis in India, so we were often flagged down for a ride. We picked up an elderly lady in Nepal and drove her from a small mud-hut village in the foothills of the Himalayas to another village further up the hill. She sat silently for the 20-minute ride, seemingly uninterested in her odd chauffeurs.
We were amazed at the beauty of West Bengal. Stunning skies swept over lagoons surrounded by huts, perfect rows of tea plantations and paddy fields. As we drove further west, the land became parched and rivers turned a muddy grey. The crops turned from tropical fruit to corn and wheat. We stopped at the Chitwan national forest to bathe with elephants in the muddy waters of the Rapti River. This once popular tourist destination had become a ghost town of cabana-style hotels.
Years of political strife kept tourists away from southern Nepal and the tension was palpable. On our first day in the country demonstrations halted traffic on the highway. Lorries burned, boys and young men threw rocks at passing cars, soldiers patrolled the streets and UN convoys sped down the road. But at each roadblock the strikers would wave us past.
On the last leg of the trip we started climbing the Himalayas. The roads followed rivers, swollen with melted snow. Ahead of us mountains climbed ever higher, while behind India spread out yellow and flat below. Pine and palm trees stood side by side and waterfalls sliced through the rocks.
When we finally arrived in Manali, we checked into a plush hotel, the Banon Resort, took a hot shower and toasted our success with Indian whisky. I was warm, comfortable and relaxed for the first time in two weeks. But I knew that come morning, I would be raring to go — and sad when I remembered that, for us, this was the end of the road. — Â