Le Grand finale

After five days driving around the Indian state of Tamil Nadu all the rickshaw teams met up and drove in a convoy to a school where the Mexican ambassador and the President of Round Table India, an organization that raises money to support and develop the Indian schools, meet up together with a bunch of journalists.The Mexican ambassador is a great rickshaw fan and she has a consulate rickshaw with a personal chauffeur and formal CD (corps diplomatique) license plates.

We felt honored and a little famous when we arrived at the school. All students at the school were in place and had prepared an absolutely fantastic welcome ceremony. We started by walking along a road lined with students who played music, sang and clapped their hands.

There was singing, dancing and speeches and everything was very nicely organized.

Prizes were given to the teams who won in different categories. The Rainbow Warriors, three guys from Australia, won the award for having collected most money to The Round table, “2 broke girls”, two girls from Ireland / United States got a prize for always being in a great mood and amusing all of us with funny signs and ideas. The main award was won by Team “Neruppu Da”, two happy guys from the US who had achieved most bonus points in the challenges we had taken part in throughout the week. Their rickshaw is named after an famous Indian Bollywood star and this made them immensely popular on the roads.

They have also had the most exciting experience of us all as they were arrested by the police. On the exterior of their rickshaw they had mounted fake guns and on the floor inside the rickshaw they had a bunch of stones which they had used earlier in the day to scare off inquisitive monkeys when they had to stop along the road because of some motor problems. The police decided that there was a risk that these young men, with such dangerous weapons, could have prepared some kind of terrorist attack or riot and they brought them to the police station. They were eventually released, somewhat shaken, but they had to leave their confiscated rickshaw at the police station. Princley, the organizer of the race, spent the rest of that afternoon in the police station and he finally convinced the police to let the rickshaw “out of custody”.