The people of India have long grown accustomed to witnessing strange and colourful sights on their streets. But few can have been as bizarre as the first Indian Autorickshaw Challenge, in which 16 teams raced their brightly decorated vehicles 620 miles (998km) from Chennai to Kanyakumari, the southern-most tip of the country … just for fun.
The challenge was the idea of Aravind Kumar who had taken part in the 2005 Budapest-Bamako Rally, a gruelling adventure road race. He decided to come up with a race in which participants would be ‘making their way through monsoon rains, crowds, variable road conditions, and other typically Indian obstacles’. Instead of cars, he alighted upon the autorickshaw, India’s ‘national vehicle’. He explained: ‘There are Indians who own many Mercedes cars. There are Indians who do not even have a bicycle. But every Indian would have travelled in an autorickshaw at least once in his or her lifetime.’ However, only three of the teams were actually Indian; the rest, from as far afield as Britain, the United States, Hungary, Armenia and Russia, had never even seen, let alone driven, an autorickshaw before. Helpfully the organisers arranged a crash course – although some drivers took the invitation literally.
For the uninitiated, an autorickshaw seats three people, has three wheels, a single cylinder, two-stroke engine, five gears, an average cruising speed of 35mph (56.3km/h) and a top speed of 50mph (80.5km/h). It is kick started. In western terms, it is not dissimilar to a souped-up milk float, although one competitor likened it to a motorised eggshell.
Each team paid €1,500 to enter the race, in return for which they were provided with an autorickshaw and an escort throughout the event to undertake any repairs and help them if they became hopelessly lost. At the end the vehicles were sold and the proceeds donated to charity.
Hundreds of locals turned out to watch as the teams – with names like Curry in a Hurry, Tamil Devils and Riska Miska – set off from the beach in Chennai on the morning of 21 August. Some vehicles were decorated with go faster stripes and flags but Team Armageddon from Russia outdid everyone by equipping theirs with a surround sound system and refrigerator. As early as day two, Tamil Devils and Riska Miska collided but were able to continue after hasty repairs. Autorickshaws may be relatively easy to repair but they are not built to withstand major collisions. As one competitor put it: ‘The only thing you can risk hitting in a rickshaw is a goat or a chicken and even then the odds are it will take off and roll over.’
There were regular fuel stops en route, which often required the services of four attendants – one to pour the fuel in, one to measure out the oil (the rickshaws don’t have oil pumps), one to count out the money and one to ask the driver to take his photo. If the oil wasn’t mixed properly, the vehicle tended to splutter to a halt half a mile (0.8km) down the road. Eventually the teams learned that the trick during refuelling was to rock the rickshaws violently from side to side, thereby mixing the fuel. They had also been warned of the danger of ‘jumpers’ – villagers who throw themselves in front of tourist vehicles in the hope that they will be sufficiently injured to earn sympathy money … but not so badly that their family will need to pay for a funeral.
Finally after seven days, various crashes, calamities and engine changes, the competitors reached their destination of Kanyakumari. Despite breaking down on the opening day, team Pukka Tuk Tuk – piloted by Ian and Rachel Bayles, a British couple from Goa – were declared the world’s first autorickshaw champions. There was no prize, just the satisfaction of having taken part in a glorious adventure that harks back to the very birth of motor sport.