3 Cooked Chooks in a Tuk, racing across India

We’re 3 kiwi blokes on a mission to finish the Rickshaw Run, driving from one end of India to the other in a shitbox on wheels, otherwise known as a tuk-tuk. We start in the upper North of India in Jaisalmer, and finish in the lower South of India in Cochin, covering around 2,500km, and with a top speed of 50km/hour, is expected to take close to 3 weeks, assuming we finish…

Along with this stupid idea, we’re doing something good and productive and are raising a bit of coin for two pretty epic charities.

The first, Cool Earth, is an environmental charity who work in partnership with indigenous/local communities. They protect rainforest that, if nothing was done, would be destroyed within the next 18 months. India is home to a third of the world’s poorest people, and climate change is hitting them hard. There are unprecedented heat waves, cyclones and floods which are displacing thousands of families. And it's getting worse. If you’re one of those people that only listen to Sir David Attenborough – this is what he thinks of the charity – “Helping Cool Earth to halt tropical deforestation makes a real difference. Perhaps the biggest difference we will make in our whole lives.” All of this should hopefully offset some of the bad stuff that 2 of our team, a dairy farmer and a fridgy, put out into the ozone on a daily basis through their lines of work.

The second is a charity which each of our team are lucky enough not to have had visit, but one which thousands of kiwi kids (as well kids from all over the South Pacific) each year are truly grateful for - Starship Hospital. Although these guys get government funding, it’s still not enough, so the funds that they receive from the public help provide the full range of services that you’d hope you would receive if you or any of your family/friends came under their service – which also includes funding of the Starship National Air Ambulance Service.

We’re also being supported by My Treehut, an early child hood centre in Taupo who are a significant sponsor for us, and have been tasked with drawing some sweet designs for our tuk-tuk. Along with this, we’ll also be bringing their mascot, Edmund for a free trip over India, hopefully bringing him home at the end of it all in one piece with an epic trip to tell the kids about back in Taupo!

So please, donate away! Whatever funds we raise we’ll be splitting evenly between the two charities too. And if you’d like to follow us on our trip, we’ll post updates when we can onto a blog that’ll be set up in a couple of weeks so check back here. Cheers!