I’ve been doing a bit of maths for the journey and I can’t help wondering if anyone else has done the same.
You’ll know that a similar rally took place in August – the Indian Autorickshaw Challenge. They covered 590 miles in seven days with a pilot vehicle, a baggage truck, an emergency vehicle and a recovery vehicle. (Lucky buggers. Even when they all missed a fuel stop and ran out of petrol, the back-up vehicle just appeared and topped them up.) They left at breakfast every day and drove till tea-time, covering about 85 miles, or 135k, a day.
Taking into account days for resting, repairs, sickness etc I guess we’d be lucky to get 10 days’ driving on the Rickshaw Run … if the total mileage is 2000, that works out at 200 miles a day. On open roads (which we can’t use), with no traffic (impossible in India) the autorickshaws cruise at 22mph according to Wikipedia. In other words, that’ll mean driving for at least 10 hours a day – not including wee stops, traffic lights, junctions, lunch, sight-seeing etc.
Can that be right?
Even if we drive every day of the fortnight, it’s nearly double the mileage that the other rally teams managed every day, and they really went for it. Of course, the route hasn’t been revealed yet but it looks from the map like we’ll either have to go the short way over the mountains or the longer way by the coast, though there’s not much in it. However, each will add to the hours of driving.
I told you we should cheat!