We have finished the Rickshaw Run in grand style! 3,000km (1,800 miles in all) on Hillary, our trusty auto-rickshaw.

Due to a lot of rain in the forecast for Saturday, we made a long day of Thursday to get from Madhya Maharidat to Guwahati in the hope of making Shillong before the rain set in.  The Thursday drive was scenic and comfortable, but a bit long at about 360km and were ready for a drink and some sleep at the Radisson Blu, an absolute surprise of a world-class hotel in this part of the world.  Thus, the lack of an update.

With only 99km to go — and knowing that the finish line wouldn’t open until noon — we had a leisurely breakfast Friday morning and headed up toward Shillong about 9am.  Shillong was an old hill station (i.e., a place to escape the summer hear) back in the time of the British, so it is a winding, uphill climb all the way.  The scenery is more like Thailand than most of India that we’ve seen, so we were happy to make several stops along the way to admire the view and to let Hillary’s engine cool down.

Without incident, though, we arrived at the finish line at about 1:30pm.  We were actually the 11th of the 70 teams to arrive.  Unfortunately, we know that not all of the teams are going to finish as a fun all-girl team that we met in Jaisalmer had a crash along the way that totaled their rickshaw and landed two of the girls in the hospital.  In a way it is good that we didn’t have that reality check earlier.

After spending an hour or so at the finish line, hoping to cheer on some more finishers, we gave up waiting and caught a car back to Guwahati.  We already knew that staying for the finish party Saturday night was going to be impractical due to an early Sunday flight out of Guwahati, so we decided that spending Saturday as a rest/spa/day-drinking day was a better plan than spending a lot of time in Shillong.

We actually encountered six teams here at the Radisson Friday night, some of which were behind schedule due to a LOT of mechanical problems.  We saw them off to Shillong this morning — some were driving, one was loading on a truck as their rickshaw was dead beyond repair.  We felt sorry for those who were driving as the forecast was correct and it rained in torrents for most of the day.  We could hear it from the spa!

Thanks again to all who donated to our Cool Earth campaign… remember it is never too late to donate!  There will likely be one more post to the blog… our final thoughts once we have digested the experience a bit, and a link to a video we will edit together of the journey.

Cheers,
Brian and Jason