After the most eventful Rickshaw Run since the three-wheeled adventure began its fight to make the world less boring, the team prizes were a tricky one to call.
They were dished out at the Official Arrival Party, held on the beach in Pondicherry at a spectacular venue called the Dune Eco Resort.
An internationally trained chef served up a 12-course feast, live Indian music and dancers entertained the Runners and then the Rickshaw Run award ceremony crowned the evening.
Then organiser Lamorna was chucked into the pool by team Mid-Life Crisis complete with mobile phone, her wallet and one member of the team…
The categories for the much coveted awards are:
Most Dosh for Charity Award
Rickshaw Run Legend Award
Best Blog
Best Team Name
Best Paintjob
The Legend Award
Winner: Annett Ihlow – No Dharma No Karma
No contest really on this one: Team No Dharma No Karma – which consisted solely of Annett Ihlow.
She drove her rickshaw on her own all the way from Kathmandu to Pondicherry – via Mumbai for a job interview - clocking up over 4500kms… Respect indeed.
Most dosh for charity award
Winner: Hurry Krishna - £12,500!!!!!
Here’s what organiser Lamorna had to say on the evening:
“By far the most important award is the Most Dosh for Charity Award.
This adventure has raised the bar for future teams fundraising efforts, so a slap on the back is due to all of you – collectively you have raised well over £100,000 for Mercy Corps and Frank Water Projects. To give you an idea of just what difference that will make; the 50% alone that Frank Water Projects will receive will entirely fund 7 complete projects enabling over 42,000 people to have access to clean water for the first time. A number of these projects are likely to be in the Andra Pradesh area, where 85% of all hospital admissions are due to water related diseases.
There is one team though who snorted in the face of the £1000 target and through their fundraising efforts has set the record for the most amount of money raised for charity via any of our events. Their current total of £12,500 is frankly brilliant, and through their fundraising alone, Frank Water Projects will be able to almost complete an entire clean water project. That’s over 6000 people who will benefit directly from all your hard work.
The award for Most Dosh for Charity goes to the Hurry Krishna boys!”
Best Blog
Winner: Team Midlife Crisis.
Here’s a highlight of Lamorna’s presentation of the Best Blog award:
There have been many highly amusing texts and blogs from the road, so special mention goes to:
Team Darjeeling Fling for their text gems including:
“we finally choose a name for our rickshaw. . . She is called lucky. We then promptly broke down for two hours on a mountain pass”
Team Just Touring also put some awesome blogs together too.
However, the outright winner in terms of quantity of blogs and quality goes to the following team who submitted these beauties:
“Launching ourselves at the foothills of the Himalaya’s, we soon found out what was meant by ” fuel shortage” as we saw mile after mile of queues for what little petrol was available. Of course we totally ignored all the signs and giggled all the way to the top of every hill we could find.”
“Having never seen elephants in a petrol station before it came as some surprise to see three just sat waiting for us to scream to a halt and jump out the tuc tuc and climb on board. A fleeting race around the forecourt and we were back on route.
“The Delhi belly ranking system.
Mike Hemingway = Day 1…. total wimp, fun to watch though.
Mike Gibson = Day 6 - he fell far from the finish post and then milked the whole sympathy thing for 4 days solid.. or not so solid if you know what i mean !!
Matt Ramsden = Put in a good show for 9 days, but after a confident fart realised all was not well “down there”. One quick underpants change later (back to those used on days 1-4 without yet having washed them) Matt ends his winning reign.
The Best Blog award goes to Team Midlife Crisis.
Best Team Name
Winner: Raiders of the Last Chapati’
Special mention goes to ‘Bombay Backphire', 'Days of Chunder', ‘Pirates of the Currybean’ and 'Sari we're Late’.
Best Paintjob
Winner: Bombay Backphire!
Special mention goes to both the Midlife Crisis and We Took a Tuk Tuk teams.