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An auto rickshaw at the side of the road at sunrise.

What is the Rickshaw Run?

Take on the world in a marginally glorified lawnmower.

A 3,500km pan-Indian adventure in a 7 horsepower glorified lawnmower. The Rickshaw Run is easily the least sensible thing to do with two weeks.

At each end of the Run is a party of earth-shattering proportions but what is between them is all down to you. And luck – good or bad.

No set route, no back-up, no way of knowing if you’re going to make it. The only certainty is that you will get lost, you will get stuck and you will break down.

Three rickshaw runners, one atop a green rickshaw, eagerly pointing west with a stretch of a road behind them.

Pointing in the same direction is half the success.

It’s just you and your mates in a wholly unsuitable vehicle, traversing the subcontinent enduring whatever shit the road throws at you.

If God had made machines he probably wouldn’t have bothered with a Rickshaw. But as with so many other things he would have been wrong. Essentially, it’s not a very good idea. It’s not very fast, it smells, it falls over when you go round corners, it breaks downs more often than an emo teenager and a day’s driving feels like you’ve been kicked up the arse by an elephant. But somehow all this makes them better.

And so they are, unquestionably, the greatest vehicle on the planet. To prove it the Adventurists surveyed some of the people at their HQ and 100% agree. They are the only way to try and cross the Subcontinent, and if you do make it across, you’ll never want to drive anything as pedestrian as a car for the rest of your life.

Tell me more.

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