“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.
Watch:
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.”
Just ask Dave Potts who bought 2 of them last month:
“After hearing that it can take between one month and two years to get a Auto Rickshaw (if you can get one legally on your own!), Aravind Bremanandam got us not one, but two at the drop of a hat. Never have we seen anything in India move so quickly, and we are not talking about the AutoRickshaws! Fast. Efficient. Friendly. Quality service.” David Potts
Fourteen teams of world travelers will kick of the New Year 2009 with an epic 11-day endurance race which will see them making their way across southern India in auto rickshaws.
In what is hailed as “An amazing race for the clinically insane“, the 2009 Classic Run is an endurance motor rally organized by Chennai Event Management Services (CEMS). The rally will see 27 like-minded adventurers from the US, UK, and Ireland form 14 separate teams and work their way across southern India in small, three-wheeled auto rickshaws. The rally will last for 11 days, and the participants will cover over 1000 kilometers of road, starting from Chennai and passing through every imaginable landscape, from modern and bustling cities to rural farmland and costal oases. The finish line is in Kanniyakumari, a city on the southern tip of India.
Autorickshaws are not fast vehicles, and are not designed to travel great distances – this makes the Classic Run- 2009 a race of endurance, not speed. In previous years, teams have worked to customize their rickshaws with everything from new paint jobs and rear spoilers to fancy, multi-speaker sound systems.
Charity has also played a big role in past races, and this year is no exception. The event’s official charity partner is Madras Midtown Round Table – 42 (MMRT-42 ), a Chennai-based group whose major project is “Freedom through Education”. Through the Rickshaw Challenge’s adopt-a-village program, teams will be bringing school supplies, medical supplies, toys, and other basic items to villages throughout the route.
This will be the fifth Rickshaw Challenge in India since CEMS pioneered the event in 2006. Each year the event attracts more and more followers, and this year the public is eagerly awaiting the rally. CEMS is also responsible for similar rallies throughout Europe and Asia, including the Rainbow Rampage, the Caucasian Challenge, and the Bus Number 7 adventure race.
Go on a ride with team Ruby Murray from the 2009 Mumbai Xpress:
