It’s official.

In January 2008, Andy and I are going to be taking the risk of our lives.

We’ll be driving across the length of India right to the mountains in Nepal, in the lamest, most fragile and most breakdown-prone piece of engineering ever made here — the great Indian auto-rickshaw. And this is all for a noble cause — charity.

We need to raise at least a £1000 for the world famous charity org Mercy Corps before this 15-day-long odyssey. We’ll be trying to avoid cutting ourselves open, breaking our heads or crashing into oncoming trucks or a tree or a dog because dogs are nice. We might even have to slay pythons, manoeuvre our way around a mud slide, hang from a cliff until help comes by and all that jazz — all while driving on not so particularly nice Indian roads.

The least you can do is help by donating towards this cause. You may do so by clicking on the widget on the side or here. You can pay as little or as much as you like. We’d be more than thankful. In exchange if you’d like us to stick a picture or spray paint your name or a message for a loved one on our auto or anything crazy, we’d love to do that. We are open to ideas.

Here’s what the awe-inspiring auto-rickshaw and our team logo look like.

Yeah, we’re calling ourselves Stevie Wonder’s Driving School. Some people think it’s clever.

Starting from Kochi in south India, we’ll be driving up north, right through the central Indian plateau area and all the way up to the mountains until we cross into Nepal. Since all the teams taking part in this charity race organised by the TheAdventurists.com are free to take any route that they desire, the approximate distance that we are looking at covering within a span of 15 days is at least 4,500 km.

The tentative routes that a lot of people are planning to take are:

If you’d like to get more information on this wicked race and our charity ambitions before you finally click on the ‘PAY’ button, you may directly contact us here: controlwee@gmail.com

Rickshaw Run, Sport, Life, Travel, India | No Comments »

Since being in India I have been lazy. In the last 8 months I have only learnt a few words and phrases in Hindi. This is pathetic considering I face a constant struggle communicating with shopkeepers and locals every day. Parts of Delhi have a high proportion of competent English speakers, but Laxmi Nagar is certainly not one of them. So there is no doubt that a knowledge of the language would be particularly beneficial in my current situation. But what do I do instead? I chat to people on messenger; I answer stupid quizzes on Facebook; I download music and re-name my audio files; I watch old episodes of Lost. In fact I do anything which involves not acquiring a new skill.

Similarly, this apathetic attitude has been present in my lack of physical activity. There are no sports facilities near where I live. However, I know that I could easily jump in an auto-rickshaw and be at a decent gym or sports centre within 20 minutes.

So it was that after 6 months of sitting on my arse, entertaining myself in my bedroom, I took some action. I added myself to the Delhi Street Football group on a certain ‘social networking’ website. To my surprise, within a few weeks, someone had invited me to join their team and play in a 7-a-side tournament.

Joining an Internet-based group that involved talk of legging it around a field after a pig’s bladder had been a big step for me, so actually leaving my flat and doing it was a massive mental and physical leap. Somehow I managed to talk myself into the idea and found myself stood outside Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at 3.30 last Saturday afternoon. Amazingly, my contact was there before me with a couple of his friends and the ‘coach’.

It is rare that anyone native to India arrives before me to any kind of social meeting, so I immediately became optimistic that this would be a well run, efficiently organised team. The training session began and an hour later the 5 of us were still stood in a circle passing the ball to one another, with no sign of anyone else turning up. When I suggested that we might want to vary things a bit by using a goal they all seemed surprised, but went along with this strange idea. Throughout this training session ‘coach’ had been sat on a chair under an umbrella to shield himself from the sun, while sipping cold drinks and chatting to the people around him. He was too far away to see what we were doing and made no attempt to communicate with us at all.

A little while later a couple more people turned up, which gave us a team of 7. Suddenly someone realised that we wouldn’t be able to have a game of 7 a-side football with just one team. It was then that they decided to take the ‘initiative’ and ask some other guys hanging around if they would form a team to play against us. So, almost 2 hours after we were supposed to start playing, a game finally got underway.

A few minutes after kick off ‘coach’ decided to amble over and sit himself comfortably somewhere near the sidelines. But he still didn’t feel motivated to say a word to any of the players for the duration of, or after, the match. His laidback approach tended to mirror the organisation of the team on the pitch. As anyone who is mildly interested in football will know, if everyone on your team chases after the ball, as well as being extremely tiring, it is not tactically effective. All the players on my team loved to run forwards and attack, but as soon as the opposition won the ball from them it was amazing how quickly their energy drained away. Thus leaving muggings here to try and prevent 4 marauding attackers from penetrating our leaky defences.

Now and again, on their sweeping runs forward, the other team actually missed the target instead of scoring, and gave us a goal kick. But what use is having the ball if you are going to just kick it as hard as possible without any direction every time!? I screamed and I shouted, but still the goalkeeper booted it with all his might, as if he was trying to show off, instead of passing it to one of his own players; and still my team mates continued to gambol forward enthusiastically and limp back lackadaisically.

I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed this game of footy – my first for many months. The blokes on both teams were nice guys and I look forward to next time. After all, what is football if you can’t shout at your team mates, run around like a headless chicken and generally let off steam?

Sport, India | 1 Comment »