It was dark in Udaipur, India. Elon University senior Jack Halligan and junior Jordan Nulsen had adjusted to driving rickshaws in the northern part of India, but not here. In Udaipur, a taxi driver had to take the wheel because the roads were too narrow to fit two rickshaws. They’d nearly made it up a huge hill when they saw headlights from the other side. The taxi driver yanked the rickshaw into reverse and let the vehicle fly back down the hill, pressing on the horn as he went.
This portion of Team Elon Tuk Tuk dodged a head-on collision thanks to the generosity of a native. To the taxi driver, instances of road-chaos are utterly normal. To Will Stirn, Ben Donahue, Maria Castine, Halligan and Nulsen, India’s road rules were hard-learned. But that was the point.
The team of five embarked on a trip hosted by The Adventurists — an organization that seeks to “make the world less boring.” They participated in the Rickshaw Run over Winter Break and Winter Term and traveled approximately 1,800 miles on what the Adventurists call “glorified lawnmowers.”
The Rickshaw Run is one of six main “adventures” sponsored by The Adventurists. Its description is:
“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. It’s just you and your mates in a wholly unsuitable vehicle traversing the subcontinent enduring whatever [stuff] the road throws at you.”
Stirn, the team’s architect, said there were a lot of close calls when it came to driving.
“Imagine biking across the quad on the bike paths and trying to go as fast as you can while everyone’s trying to get to class and also going the same pace as you,” he said. “You have no choice but to just go for it.”
Not only were the road rules virtually nonexistant in India, the rickshaws were guaranteed to break down, and vital driving mechanisms like traffic lights, at times, failed to work.
“There were a lot of intersections with traffic lights that weren’t working, and everyone just goes but somehow doesn’t get hit,” Halligan said. “It’s just a game of chicken. You have to maintain speed and direction so people can slow down for you, but if you slow down, it throws off the whole system.”
The “just go” mentality brought the group together in the first place.
“We’re just everyone that said yes to [Stirn],” Halligan said of the assembled team. “I’d like to think I was special, but I was just stupid enough to agree.”
This group of students said yes to a logistics overload in planning, fundraising more than $1,600 for charity and being fully enveloped in another country’s culture on rickshaws for 13 days. Despite this, the five went the full distance, asking questions and taking help when offered to ultimately cross the finish line.
With the trip approaching, the only thing to do was get there. Stirn spent the fall pouring over possible opportunities through Elon for financial aid, Nulsen sought out charities the team could raise money for, and the rest of the team assisted in whatever capacity they could leading up to the trip.
By the end of December, plans were finalized, and it was time to go. The students boarded separate planes to fly a whopping 36 hours to Jaisalmer, India, the starting line location.
They arrived Dec. 28, spent New Year’s Eve on a palace rooftop with adventurers from abroad and approached the starting line Jan. 1 for the start of the Rickshaw Run.
“Don’t die,” an Adventurist representative said in a British accent. “I have no other advice to give you.”
That was it for the checkered-flag speech — they were off. Team Tuk Tuk, divided into two rickshaws painted like Mystery Machines from “Scooby Doo,” began the first leg of the journey.
“We were bottleneck for 20 minutes adjusting to driving them,” Halligan said of the first few miles on rickshaws. “The goal for the first day was just to find somewhere to stay before dark.”
This task, although it seemed simple, proved to be one of the team’s biggest challenges.
“It started to get dark, and we were trying to find a hotel but couldn’t find anywhere that was open,” Halligan said. “We were getting scared because we’d already gone to four hotels and none were open. Me and [Stirn] basically had a standoff with the manager saying we were going to just stay because we had nowhere else to go. He finally caved in and gave us some mats to sleep on, on the floor.”
Struggles like these were uncommon. The team said the people of India were among the most generous they’ve met. However, the hotel search brought up situations unique to the culture that threw the team for a loop.
“That was a sketchy night because Jordan and Jack thought they found a hotel earlier that turned out to be a ‘love hotel’ for younger people,” Stirn said.
Halligan joined in to continue the story.
“They’re like, ‘Are you two married?’ And we said, ‘No, we’re brother and sister.,’” he said. “They just gave us really weird looks and started laughing because they thought we were there to … you know. That was the start of our night.”
They learned from this experience that in that region of India, “Guest Houses” were in fact “Love Hotels,” which are under-the-rug places for teenagers to stay with significant others in order to remain in good standing with traditional Indian families — a lesson learned the hard way.
As the trip went on, the driving became monotonous.
“We just really wanted to be done at a certain point,” Halligan said. “We would wake up at six in the morning, get ready and drive until it was dark and only stop for chai [tea] or food or petrol. It was really weird because we were tourists in India but we weren’t doing anything except driving. At the same time though I think it was the coolest way to see a country. It was also really cheap.”
When the team reached the finish line a day early, it was anti-climactic. There was no celebrating, confetti or spectators — only a free coconut.
“Let’s get our free coconut and go to sleep,” Stirn said, recalling his reaction.
That’s what they did. After completing the Rickshaw Run in one piece, the team finally got to be tourists, celebrate their journey with other Adventurists — Donahue nearly won a beard contest — and explore the country on two feet.