The Rickshaw Run

For most people, just the trip to India would be adventure enough. In a country where crazy is the norm, simply wandering around on foot can provide a full day’s worth of diversions and interactions more than entertaining enough to blog home about. But Anton Lynch is not most people.

Anton is our go-to man in both South America and India. A true Brit, he appears refined on the exterior, but there is a travel eccentric just beneath the surface bursting to get out. And get out he did over the last two weeks in India. Anton has just completed a feat that would have the proper British elite smashing their teacups in fear; The Rickshaw Run, a race covering the Indian subcontinent from top to bottom, which its website refers to as “the least sensible thing to do with two weeks”.

The beginning of this trip was like an Indian edition of “Pimp My Ride”. Anton’s double-decker-bus-themed motorized rickshaw was adorned with all manner of flowers and garlands to get the local look just right. Then off he and his partner-in-driving Sara went, on a 14 day journey through all the weird, wacky, wonders of India. Even a traffic accident that necessitated stitches didn’t slow these two down, and they crossed the finish line in Kerala just yesterday. We’re sure Anton will soon have plenty of tales to share with you, so for now we simply congratulate him on surviving in one piece. Jolly good news indeed.

Amy Smithers barely survived her own Indian adventure in October, and she never even got behind the wheel in the first place. She salutes the far tougher and braver Mr. Lynch.