Just had to mention this month’s edition of Loaded Magazine, I’m flattered to be the subject of such an article.

I thought I would point out a few oversights the proof readers may not have noticed and a couple of facts that seem to have been overlooked by Jeff ‘Monster’ Maysh the writer…

Firstly the finish line was not Panaji, as the map shows in the article but in fact Darjeeling and as mentioned in the editorial, yes Darjeeling is 3,200kms away – but Goa is only about 600kms from Cochin –so really only 1/6th of the distance was covered by the softies at Loaded compared to most other runners.

On the evening before the race started, me and the crew were getting pissed in this bar when these neatly groomed airline stewards walked in – I asked my crew “is it gay night here tonight??” – then we realised its the GSR’s and Team Loaded, my co-driver (or “guide” as he’s referred to in the article) asked me if Loaded is a gay mag back in the UK – he is in fact a like minded petrol head with more balls than most – and useless at communicating with fellow Indians as there are over 800 languages with even more dialects..

We turned up to collect our rickshaw at the school yard as instructed on the morning of the race, and saw that the “hyper organised” Team Loaded and GSR’s had already spent time painting their rides!! – Then they show up still dressed like airline stewards with a sack full of gadgets and gizmos including walkie-talkies, giving it “roger buy all the batteries in town ” – to power their I-pod shuffle and docking station, whilst we got to work firing up our 200watt amp and speakers.

We had no problems at all getting hold of cold crisp beers in any part of India unlike the softies, and in fact on day one in the south still, we had a crate of Kingfisher and a bottle of Jack on board switching duties from driver to barman to DJ we had a wail of a time heading for the east coast …bass lines a pumping! We only stopped at about 4am to sleep on the forecourt of a petrol station as we had run out of booze!

The article mentions that I said in the blog before we left– Goa is full of English holidaymakers – Fish and chips and full English breakfasts, turns out I was right - not really much of an adventure travelling up the newly tarmaced roads of the west coast and sleeping in Luxury hotels and beach resorts – but each to their own I suppose, Most of the runners did feel that Loaded let the run down pussying out at such an early stage very “Monster” I must say! – even the Germans – riding 4-up with one guy the size of Peter Crouch made it to Goa and were half way across the country before Team Loaded!

I have actually worked for IPC magazines on such lavish titles as “Horse and Hound” and “Cage And Aviary Birds Monthly” so I can appreciate the rat race in Kingsreach tower and therefore understand that drivel has to be published if advertising is not sold – but may I suggest that next time the faggotts from Loaded and the GSR’s just get themselves a package holiday from Thompson and leave the adventures to real adventurists. And possibly send the article into Womans Wekly where it will be appreciated a little more alongside the knitting patterns!

Yours putting the record straight…
Capt. Chaos
Ov The Calamity Grew

We passed loads of unbeleivable sights out there on the road, not just the usual two blokes on a motorbike with a goat in-between them,or a cycle rickshaw with a flatbed back with 2 cows lying down???(surely you get the cows to pull the bike while you lay down?)
but some of the loaded trucks were un-imaginable

this one i overtook and just for fun drove alongside it for a few minutes just to give Willi a scare!

Rickshaw wallahs run this country, the way i see it - the trucks and trains are the arteries of India and the wallahs are the veins,when we were stuck we would always find the nearest rickshaw stand or the nearest chai wallah where they hang out.

they were our most reliable source of information, whether were looking for hotel or bar a mechanic, a puncture repair man, a lightbulb, or even some after hours beers, they always had the town wired.
They are not just used as tourist taxis either, we passed some doing the school run - with an unimaginable amount of kids stuffed in the back

Notice in this pic the roof of the rickshaw seems to be sagging…
Thats because there is so much weight in that rickshaw the chassis is bending in the middle!!

We thought we had won it…
I made a call to Dan one of the rickshaw run organisers, shortly after we arrived in Darjeeling - we had done the obligatory lap of honour around town, then found our good friend Jordon, manager of the Wagdi Inn announcing oursleves as winners of the rickshaw run as we unpacked our stuff into his penthouse suite…
I explained to Dan -”as were first here lets make our lodge the finish line and send all teams here to meet us - the winners”
Dans exact words were “I hate to burst your bubble lads …but the Rajasthan Raiders arrived in town last night”
Bloody yankers I thought - they must have driven bloody hard to get there the night before!!
I looked at Willi and he knew what I was hearing, his face expressed the feeling of a boy who has just had his favourite toy broken, or had just kicked his ball over the fence….
We decided to wait for The Dosa Boys to arrive - we knew they were only hours behind and then head to Joey’s Bar where we knew they would be…
I will never forget the look of Nick - the Kiwi in the Dosa’s team when he walked in the room - wrapped in a poncho and unshaven - he looked like Clint Eastwood, he threw his poncho to the ground revealing the dirtiest, greasiest, smelliest shirt - transforming from Clint to Bruce Willis
I said “Welcome to the party pal” and off we went to Joey’s….

Suprisingly they were a great pair of Yankers - we hit it off immediatly, they were great sports - took all the banter we gave them - and gave as hard as they got…
one of their lines was “second place is the first looser”
We spent most of the week in their company waiting for the final parade and we grew to love them like brothers.
They did reveal that the driving force behind their win was the banter I had given in the forum before the race-calling them Yankers.
Bloody Yankers! - gotta love em!

We checked out of the hotel 9am and found the road that led to Darjeeling - 77km, we expected the worse however, if the last 2 days roads were anything to go by we were in for a tough climb.

The road was lovely in fact - it took us around 4 hours to climb - ears popping all the way up the views were beautiful, this was the best drive of the whole trip, we followed a railway track that takes tourists on a winding mountain climb to Darjeeling.

I almost had a tear in my eye the views were so beautiful and i thought of my wife, i missed her and realy wanted to share the experience with her as i knew it was something she would appreciate.
We passed Ghum one of the the highest railway stations in the world

Then 5k later we reached it!!!
Darjeeling
We made it!!!

we asked a few people in town if they had seen any rickshaws and none had - in fact as far as we knew no one had ever seen a rickshaw in Darjeeling ever!!

When we woke at around 6 in the morning the fog was still thick

Another round of ommlettes and a cup of chai, and we settled the bill, 67 rupees. (thats 9 ommlettes 9 cups of tea and 3 beds for the night for less than a pound!!!)
The road was still the moon and we must have travelled about 30k in around 4 hours and Britney was shaking apart - the whole front end was almost hanging off - you could see the bearings in the steering column and loud cracking noises meant there were shot bearings in there - poor girl but we still thrashed it!
We had to stop often beacause our bones were rattled apart.
Progress was slow the road was the worst so far and night fell soon.

we pushed it so hard that night in thick fog we had intended on reaching Darjeeling - on paper it was more than possible but on them roads it was unreachable, we made it to Siligury and the first hotel was full, we explained to the man we were going to Darjeeling in the morning, he was shocked and said no way - only strong 4×4 jeep can make it up there - i offered him my petrol smelling oil stained hand and said “do you wanna bet? - 500 rupees? and if you want you can come too!”- he still was not having it.
We found a hotel with a chef who was still awake, we were convinced no other team could have made that stretch of road at night and could not have overtaken us and we had a bit of a pre Darjeeling party.

Woke at 9.30 Willi and I pop out of a tent in broad day light with a very posh “Good morning” to the locals sitting around the chai stall.We finally make it to Calcutta and stop at “Pete Cats” the checkpoint.

we were worried most would bypass Calcutta and head straight up to Siliguri so we didnt stay long, Willi insisted on some Kentucky Fried Chicken which ended up making him sick! - after all the rotten food we had eaten it was the KFC that makes him sick!
It wasnt long before Britney attracted the local kids and they were all asking for money and food..

we gave one little boy a Lufthansa T-Shirt and it made his whole year,one cheeky beggar asked will for some money and he gave her 10rupees - only for her to turn around and say is that all give me 50! - cheek of them!
we changed up some cash and picked up some supplies and left around noon for the uphill drive towards Darjeeling, we thought we would make it in one day, but the roads yet again prooved us wrong.
by sunset we had still only covered 150k of the 660k target.

As we constantly climbed and our ears popped we could feel the weather getting colder and colder, The Doc wrapped my leather jacket around his legs and we continued, as we progressed you could see the locals were wearing more and more clothes - even the goats had jumpers on.

as night fell a thick fog dropped and visibility was poor, the road was a concrete mass of craters and the fog and night made this stretch resemble the moon - and from this point on all teams now refered to it as “the moon”, we had been communicating with The Shrimpers and The Dosa Boys and knew they were behind us so we warned them of “The Moon”- we tried two techniques to cross the moon - weaving crater to crater - and my favourite - throttle back and rattle it over….eventually around midnight progress was so slow we had to stop and found ourselves a truck stop with beds - the usual round of omlettes and chai and we decided to stop for the night,as it was cold there were no mozzies so we wrapped up in our sleeping bags and made use of their al-fresco beds.

Woke this morning around 9.30, our security guard (an old geeza with insomnia and a whistle) tells us a rickshaw passed at around 7.30-we packed our tent in seconds - willi had a wash with the locals

fired up Britney with no brakes and sped off in hot persuit, we had to stop to get the brakes sorted as it was getting worse and extremly dangerous.
we found an old geeza who lived in a workshop, he bled our brake system for 30 rupees and we gave him the ceremonial wings.

we found our way back onto the NH5 and continued the chase but yet again the highway ran out and we were forced to take another off road detour, at least we could see where we were going this time and after negotiating onother dirt track we were back on the NH5 with only a few hours to Calcutta.

we stopped for a few ommlettes at around 10pm.


and allthough the locals wanted us to stay the night we were determined to reach Calcutta that night and continued.
we were 30k from calcutta at around 3am and stopped in a truck park for a few hours sleep - the locals were amazed to see us pitching a tent at such a strange location.

With the doc at the helm we drove through the night


we stoped for a quick re-fuel and the petrol pump attendant asked Willis for his autograph(i think he thought Willis was Justin Timberlake-how ironic we called our rickshaw Britney)

Willi and I fell asleep soon after the jack daniels ran out

and woke to a beautiful day we stopped at around 5/6am for breakfast the usual staple diet of ommlettes and chai at a truck stop.
As we had hit the 1000km mark we needed to give Britney an oil change and service, we had been given the service manual and inside were coupons for free services at any Bajaj service centre, however being New Years Day we found it hard to find a shop with a mechanic, eventually we came across one and the boy did a good job for us.

It took around 2 hours and while we were waiting this dude walked by carrying his mum and all his worldy possesions on his back.

and we thought we had it hard in Britney.
No rest for the wicked we hit the road the moment the service was complete - Oil change,Air filter clean,greased axels,brakes serviced,and a few nuts and bolts tightened up.As per usual we gave the boy his wings and gave the garage owner 150 rupees for the oil and a further 100rupees for a tip.

we hit the road and drove on through the night,making good progress up a nice clear flat national highway 5,We stopped for petrol with the intention of driving through the night, we asked the attendant if he had seen any rickshaws pass by,he said two white guys in a black rickshaw passed by 20mins ago filled up and continued but then he saw them going the other way,this confused us - was it the Shrimpers? had they done some serious driving to catch up and overtake? why did they turn around - our maop clearly showed we were not far from Calcutta and this was the right road.Willi and The Doc in the back seat trying to get 40 winks I carried on along the NH5 towards Calcutta.
Cruising at 60kmph with the two asleep in the back seat I thought, this is great we will make up the 20mins easy - and what a lovely clear open flat road, how wrong I was…
I sped past an unmanned toll gate that looked like it was still under construction then all of a sudden still doing 60 the road ended- we actually took off and landed in a field i heard a massive bang as we hit the end of the road and all of a sudden my off road driving skills kicked in - Willi and the Doc nearly broke their necks and woke up to see me off roading past an old man squatting in the field, I explained the road just ended, this is nothing unusual here and we thought the road may start again soon, I carried on for about 200meters before finaly realising there was no road ahead, we turned around and realised why the rickshaw in front was seen going back on itself.
We saw some trucks coming out of the bushes and saw what seemed to be a dirt track through the woods/jungle. Rather than go back on the NH5 to the last turning we decided Britney could handle the dirt track.
This was the hardest road so far at one point we put the Doc at the helm and Willi and I had to carry Britney over a stretch of track that even the toughest Land Rover would have had problems overcoming.
After few hours of negotiating this terrain we hit a border patrol - the faces on the guys manning the border was a sight to see - they were gobsmacked especially when they saw two white boys in the back “Happy new year” we said,
he asked “do you have new years present for me?- scotch”
we offered him a bottle of warm kingfisher - he looked at it gave it back and waived us on.
Something had happened to our brakes on this stretch of the road, i think all the jumping and off roading had somehow let air into the system and we had to pump the brakes at least 3 times before they would take effect, so in the middle of the night we started looking for a mechanics - The Doc was knocking at peoples doors at 3am asking if they were mechanics - Willi said “if someone knocked at your door at 3am and asked you to fix their PC what would you say?”
the best bet was to find somewhere to sleep - we found a tyre wallah open and he said we could camp behind his shack and that a village was about 5k down the road - so we called it a day there.

So here we are camped out at a petrol station and at around 7am (thats 4 hours sleep) who should come by - THE DOSA BOYS!!! - and stupidly they decide to wake us….
Well me and willy had that tent down and packed in seconds - we did not want them to get any edge over us,
they asked “do you guys drive at night?”
“only after 6 beers and half a bottle of Jack Daniels” was the reply
heres an extract from their blog
And hell there are some HARDCORE teams out there!

Friggin heck they’re hardcore! respect!
we drove and drove that night only stopping for petrol and the odd tea

we made our way to Vijawada and intended on driving through the night until we saw a rickshaw parked at a hotel - now we should have done some sabbotage there but decided to meet this team and share a beer and some stories - how wrong we were these guys The Shrimpers should not have been underestimated…we had a team talk and i suggested we stay the night at this hotel - the beer was cold they had showers and a TV - we had spent last night on a petrol station floor so with help from the Shrimpers i talked the team into staying the night - we got some food and had a few beers and slept at around 2am.