Riding Along with the Malabar Rampage – Getting Out of Kerala

Another Rickshaw Challenge has come and gone in the blink of an eye. Seventeen teams set off on Monday out of Trivandrum with Goa as their destination, and while five days cruising along the Malabar Coastline by auto rickshaw might seem like a smooth dream when compared to some of our more hardcore runs, this year’s teams on the Rickshaw Challenge Malabar Rampage had quite a few challenges – both planned and unplanned – en route.

Kerala is a state that might look relaxed and laid back in the travel brochures, but there is so much more going on that just lying on a houseboat drifting through the famous backwaters. Just a couple of days before our teams arrived in India, Kerala put its foot down on the sale of alcohol, where only five star hotels are licensed to carry a fully stocked bar. With a group of Aussies, Brits and other heavy drinking nationalities (excuse the stereotype), we had to do our homework to find places where people can go for a drink. Fortuately, it turned out beer and wine parlours could still operate, so not everything was lost.

After a day of training and some warm up challenges to get the ball rolling, our teams kicked off their three-wheeled adventure and sped up towards Alleppey, dubbed as the Venice of the East for its canals that link into the backwaters. Our teams had to learn how to make chai from roadside stalls and find a houseboat on the way, among other tasks. The first day went relatively smoothy, but the next day was not so easy.

Even though the first team headed out of Alleppey to Calicut at 7:30am, everyone, including our trip manager Princely, who got to the official hotel at 8:25, arrived late. The last team got in at 10pm. The long journey was broken up with a stop in Kochi, to visit the famous Chinese nets and the spice shops in Mattanchery.

However, despite the late arrival in Calicut, the teams were unable to just chill out since the state-wide strike in Kerala the next day, along with an impending road block meant the teams needed not to only fuel up with plenty to spare before heading off to Mangalore, but also meant getting up to leave at 6:30am, just incase there were any problems on the way. Find out more late about our team and how they fared getting to Mangalore only on the Rickshaw Challenge blog!
To find out how the teams fared with the challenges so far, check out the score on our sponsor’s page GamingZion Events!