A brawl between a cabbie and pedicab driver in NYC.

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We should do a rickshaw race in NYC – WILL BE FUN…

Go on a ride with team Ruby Murray from the 2009 Mumbai Xpress:

“Meeting at a car park near Juhu Juhu beach, we all drove the last 800 meters to the Marriot, our finishing line, together. A very sad last part of the journey as we’d had so much fun that it was a group consensus that no-one was ready to go home yet but it was fun driving in convoy together, with everyone filming everyone else on their camcorders and digital cameras.

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And so it was outside the Marriot in Mumbai, where our 2000 km’s journey ended and where more red bull drinks and media crews met us. We then very sadly handed over the keys to our rickshaws so that they could journey back to Chennai ready for the next set of insane explorers.”

More here

A Different Kind of Rickshaw Rally

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“Racing to the Son”

Cool piece about the 2009 Mumbai Xpress stop in Bangalore.

Thirteen autos arrived yesterday evening to our school to park their autos and were to leave this morning at a flag-off from the school.

Bangalore isn’t the small town it used to be and the traffic, traffic rules and road-conditions make it an extremely ardous affair to navigate through! The rickshaws promptly lost their way in trying to reach the school from the map provided with two of them breaking down enroute!

Anyways, they all made it to the school, parked and made their way to the hotel for the night. Came back (hopefully refreshed) this morning to our school, after an introduction of our school, some speeches, a flag-off from the local MLA Mr. Ramalinga Reddy – they were off to Mysore.

They were directed to find their way to the NICE road and take a smooth exit out to Mysore road. Problem: on reaching there – found the NICE road is too upmarket for them and doesn’t permit autos on its carriageway.

So… all of them now were on their own – having to figure out how to get out of the city. Not easy, if you ask me. 

The great thing about this challenge besides the fun for the participants is that they donate part of the money raised to projects like ours.

Full article here

‘A Different Kind’ of rickshaw race:

Filmed underwater, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s 13-minute video installation portrays the simultaneously mundane but epic struggle of six Vietnamese fishermen pulling cyclos (rickshaws) along the sea floor. 

Meant to signify the harsh, challenging conditions of everyday life for many Vietnamese people, the arduous job of dragging the cyclos through the ocean speaks to the difficult burden of the past in face of modernization. Memorial Project Nha Trang: For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards does not employ actors, using actual fishermen instead, for the grueling task. The film’s sense of absurdity is heightened by the fact that the physical struggles are real; from the splashing and stumbling trek from beach to sea-floor, to the maneuvering around boulders and beds of coral. Each time a man seeks traction in the sand with his toes or pushes to the surface to breathe, he does so out of the necessity to overcome the tangible barriers he faces.

Watch selections from the film here

There’s no escaping the ubiquitous three wheeled auto rickshaw in India. Cheaper than a taxi and more convenient than a bus, their loud buzz can be heard all over the country.

However, your experience of India’s auto rickshaws doesn’t have to be restricted to merely riding in them. It’s possible to take the controls and actually race one! And lets face it, who hasn’t at one point in time, wanted to get into the drivers seat of an “auto”? Better still, you’ll be raising money for charity by doing so. 

The Rickshaw Challenge operates four auto rickshaw races around India. The Mumbai XPress 2009 is about to get underway on July 31, 2009. However, this year there’s also the Tech Raid 2009 (which starts out from Chennai on October 16, 2009), and the Classic Run 2010 (which makes its way through Tamil Nadu, commencing on December 29, 2009). Next year, the Malabar Rampage through Tamil Nadu and Kerala will kick off on April 2, 2010.

Pic of the week is the Sub Aqua Rickshaw

Finding the Sub Aqua Rickshaw may be a future challenge in one of our rickshaw races…