The Classic Run Rickshaw Challenge involved cooking Indian style and partying hard on days 7 and 8!
Day 7 started off easy: The teams visited the factory of VVD Coconut Oil, where they were given a tour and some information on how coconut oil is produced. As special cherry on top, everybody could also take a sample of the fragrant coconut oil home with them.
Cooking Challenge: Traditional Food, Traditional Dress!
Each team had to cook pongal, a sweet south Indian rice dish, traditionally cooked during the Pongal harvest celebrations in January. But if you think we made it easy and gave them a kitchen, you couldn’t be more wrong! First, for cooking traditional dish, you have to be dressed traditionally, right? So all the guys had to put on a lungi, a Tamil type of sarong and all the girls were given a sari and the help of many local woman to put this complicated piece of cloth on.
Then they started cooking – in a pot over open fire, which they first had to build. It was a rather smoky business, this we can tell you. Without further cooking instructions, the teams were rather left to their own creativity and many turned to some local ladies for help, who, in many cases, kicked them out of the “kitchen” and overtook the whole project. In the end, our tough judges were waiting for the teams, giving points not only for taste, but also for presentation. In the latter category the teams outdid themselves – we’ve never seen such levels of pongal pimping! In the end, team 3, the Legenda Trio, won the competition and could earn the valuable extra points.
A Great Excuse for a Party: Ten Years of the Travel Scientists
The hard competition was followed by a wild party at Bremajothi Farms near Tuticorin. Usually we don’t need a reason to celebrate ourselves, but this time we actually had one: The Travel Scientists have turned 10 years old and this edition of the Rickshaw Challenge Classic Run is the 10th one. There was a DJ, a rock band, a dance group, hundreds of guests and more food than it was health to eat. Oh, and of course there was also a bar.
After this exhausting day, the teams were invited the next morning to just relax and chill out in the tropical paradise of the Bremajothi Farms, before taking on today’s destination Thanjavur, just about an hour away.
