Rickshaw Run Over

Sorry it's been so long since I rapped at ya, but things have been pretty busy. See, I've been driving an auto-rickshaw from Hyderabad to Darjeeling, which basically means 2,200 km in a glorified and oddly shaped lawnmower. It was unforgettable, unbelievable, and a lot of other superlative adjectives that I'm too stunned to think of right now.

That photo is a triumphant finish-line shot of the Boondogglers with Sally, our noble steed, atop Tiger Hill, just outside of Darjeeling, on the morning after we completed the Rickshaw Run. Rogier, Benji, and I are wearing Nepalese yak-wool sweaters, and if you had been there, you would have seen, in the not-so-far-off distance, the peak of Mt. Kanchenjunga (8586 meters), the third highest mountain in the world, after Everest and K2. From the same lookout point you could see a very-distant tip of Everest on a clear day, but the Rickshaw Runners were mostly too busy drinking chai laced with Old Monk rum and doing fun tricks with our rickshaws, like doing donuts and purposefully flipping them to really take it in.

I will describe the whole trip in detail over the next few days, and you can follow our travels a little bit on the blog, www.boondogglers.wordpress.com. Everyone arrived safely, we partied it up, and now we're back in Bom.

Happy late New Year everyone! Take care!