In the darkness of the coach interior you could just make out the fidgeting silhouettes. Everybody was shattered and aching but sleep was only possible it a fitful state. Every few seconds an impatient horn sounds as a lorry came straight at us with full beam on, lighting up the night.

How ironic to die now in an air-conditioned Volvo of all things when we’ve just spent 2 weeks crossing India in a motorised eggshell. It can only be the Indian Auto Rickshaw Challenge.

It’s “Indian” because it starts and ends in India. It’s “Auto Rickshaw” because it involves driving a 150cc motorised rickshaw and it’s a “Challenge” because, well frankly, where the hell do we start?! Take 16 rickshaws, 50 people, point them South and hope for the worst.

The mission - to cross the entire district of Tamil Nadu - a thousand kilometres through bustling cities, deserted dust tracks and stunning coastline.

On a hot and humid evening in Chennai an unlikely collection of competitors began to gather, most of whom hadn't the faintest idea about what was about to unfold. The local interest in the event was huge – in fact a national story, but strangely very few locals were taking part. Did they know something we didn’t..? 

Then we remembered the headline we'd seen in the Chennai Chronicle “45 die in traffic mishap”. Mishap?!! In the UK the word “disaster” would accompany such a story and be top billing on the national news. This was a column inch story on page 7. Sadly it wasn't long before we saw our first fatal crash...

As it happens, this isn’t the reason for the lack of local participation. The real reason is one of simple cost. Most Indians have higher priorities (like feeding their family) than titting around in a rickshaw. After all this is a district still recovering from the devastating effects of the Tsunami in 2004, not that you would know it from their smiles.

So here we are, a motley collection of Indians, Russians, Americans, Hungarians, Armenians, and Brits. The opening night is being hosted by Roundtable 42 of  Chennai. The beer is free. Not much else can be remembered of the opening night.

To a chorus of birds and the backing track of a really good pounding hangover the competitors drag themselves out of bed the next morning to set to work. Rule no. 1 – if you’re going to risk life and limb in a rickshaw you’ll need to do it in style. With team names like Curry in a Hurry, The Ring of Fire and the Reggae Ambassador, the rickshaws needed a serious makeover.

Out went the standard battered yellow paint job and in came the flames, go faster stripes and flags. Team Armageddon from Russia out pimps everyone by including a 5.1 Surround Sound system, built in fridge and luxury drinks holders. 

And so in a frenzy of TV cameras and curious locals the rally is flagged off from the beach in downtown Chennai – talk about going in at the deep end. Within moments it’s like being in a gigantic pinball machine. From every conceivable angle traffic converges and somehow misses (usually...)

It reminded us of a classic movie chase scene, crates of chickens flapping around, water melon carts and piles of cardboard boxes. In fact the only thing was the sirens, although the Reggae Ambassadors had fitted one to their rickshaw which proved particularly effective at having absolutely no effect.

There were families of five on one moped, people walking through the traffic selling fruit, lorries massively overloaded with straw - and then there were the buses. There were people in the bus, on top of the bus, hanging off the bus, and then there were people hanging off the people who were already hanging off the bus!

In the motorised food chain, buses are sperm whales and everything else is plankton. The only thing you can risk hitting in a rickshaw is a goat or a chicken and even then the odds are it will take off and rollover! The Indians have at least attempted road safety albeit unsuccessfully.

There are speed bumps coming in to villages but they produce less of a jolt than the potholes either side so there is no incentive to slow down. They also use huge metal gates as chicanes which merely .succeed in forcing all the traffic in to the middle of the road or off it completely!

It’s amazing how quickly you acclimatise to the local conditions when your life depends on it. From day 2 onwards as we headed south the landscape became more rugged and the traffic less hectic. On a particular stretch of deserted road along the coast  the one-upmanship began.

First up is the Reggae Ambassadors who cruise past driving from the back seat, not to be outdone Norfolk and Good try a spot of roof surfing before Snick Racing successfully perform a rickshaw to rickshaw leap. During this time Captain Custard and Panic Mechanic have managed to strip completely naked.

In a desperate attempt to regain the crown the Reggae Ambassadors decide to surf on a prayer mat whilst hanging out of their rickshaw however a rogue pothole causes some spectacular overbalancing and our would be surfer goes under the back wheels of his rickshaw.

Although the weather is not hot by some standards (32 degrees) the humidity makes going very tough. Drinking about 8 litres of water a day and having a staple diet of curry and bananas does not do wonders for your insides. It is also not a good idea to get drunk and in a fit of bravado

order the hottest curry in the district, in this case a Chicken Chettinad spiced with black peppers and chillies. About twenty minutes later the bottom fell out of our world as the world fell out of our bottoms. The next morning the rickshaws were running on wind power as much as anything else. Any attempted fart ran the risk of serious bum gravy.

It’s nearly impossible to avoid a stomach upset at some point on a trip like this and eventually you start fantasizing about double quilted toilet paper after you’ve experienced yet another hole in the floor and a bucket of water. This road sign says it all... >>>

The overnight stops came as a welcome respite. Due to some good Indian connections we end up in some of the plushest hotels in the main cities and our evenings are generally hosted by the local rotary clubs and businessmen. Such nights started off very sedately with a round of speeches followed by a performance of local dance and traditions.

Most of use can remember wincing when a tribal elder balanced 8 bottles on his head and then bent down to pick a needle up with his eyeball.  The nature of the festivities changed somewhat once we’d consumed the entire contents of the free bar and plugged our music in to the PA.

The President of Roundtable 14 of Madurai has now discovered the delights of stage diving in to a crowd to AC/DC though we’ll still not sure that they think the “Caterpillar” or the “Back spin” is a good idea. The Indian women by contrast always kept a polite distance and allowed themselves a wry smile. The few times we did get them up to dance they ran off at the first opportunity. Not even a Chesney Hawkes song could clear a room that fast.

From there the party generally headed out to the swimming pool where thanks to a total absence of health and safety requirements, events such as the “naked belly flop” and doggy paddle racing became the norm.

At this point you may rightly be thinking that this trip was nothing more than a debauched stomp across Southern India. Well it was, but there was room for some culture at least. Each day allowed us the opportunity to see some stunning landscapes and Indian heritage.

One moment we're being blessed in an ornate temple and the next bathing in the cool waters of the natural spas and waterfalls. This is where the monkeys had a field day raiding the rickshaws whilst we were gone. We only noticed something was up when we spotted one on the bridge (I kid you not!) reading "Learn Tamil in 30 days" whilst his mate scoffed a packet of biscuits.

In a single visit to a plantation we ate enough fruit to achieve our "5 portions a day" for the next 8 months. There was everything you could think of, coconuts, mangoes, bananas, star fruit, custard apples and all washed down with a palm leaf full of fizzy tree sap which tasted like a cross between cheap sparkling wine and bleach. We made up for this over indulgence by each planting a new tree.

Talking of over indulgence, behold the city of Pondicherry. A magical place where special tax breaks mean an already outrageously cheap bottle of beer is utterly outrageously cheap here. Not only that, there are strip clubs. Well actually they are more like ever-so-slightly-revealing clubs. After 9pm the ladies are allowed to lift their saris to above the knee line! No tits in the face here I’m afraid.

The great thing about these trips is you never know what is coming next. ...

.Sometimes getting lost is the best thing that can happen as you discover some great places by accident. The locals had a curious method for pointing us in the right direction - it was always straight on! We quickly learned this meant they didn't have a clue.

As a result we spent a lot of our time going round in circles, up dead ends, around mud huts until eventually getting dizzy and then driving in to a ditch. You could always rely on your team mates to give you a push in right direction as well. It is considered good manners to swear loudly at your mates

before stuffing them off the side off the road in to the jungle/mud hut/ravine (delete as appropriate). By day two all the rickshaws has swapped paint. The Rickshaws are amazingly sturdy though and apart from the odd engine blowing up or clutch failing we rarely

had any serious stoppages. Anything non-essential like lights, brakes and steering was sacrificed in the need for (almost) speed. Team Curry in a Hurry won the award for artistic impression by performing a triple salco in to the jungle while 4-up and emerging unscathed apart from a missing windscreen.

Although we weren’t in the grips of monsoon season there were still some spectacular downpours. Aquaplaning whilst waggling the hand operated windscreen wiper is particularly entertaining. It takes some furious waggling to keep the screen clear in those conditions. There are more pleasurable ways to get cramp in your wrist that’s for sure.

In the end the best thing is just to pull over for a cup of tea, although not tea as you know it. Instead of water they used hot milk and instead of 1 sugar they used a cane field. Most of the food ordering was done by way of pointing. If menus were available they had some interesting translation such as “Lamb Hot Pout” for dinner and “Banana Filters” for pudding. For some reason the Baywatch Coffee Shoppee offered a “home delivery tickle”. Sounded great but we never had time to try it.

Our journey so far had taken us through frenzied city streets, dusty villages and coastal tracks.As we pushed South we crossed in to the beautiful district of Kerala where the vegetation became lush green and lofty palm trees stood against the backdrop of a hazy mountain landscape. Due to the remoteness of the area it became a lottery finding places to refuel and on many occasions we had to coax a few more miles out of the rickshaws by siphoning the fuel from one to another.

At the fuel stops it seemed at least four attendants were required to perform a fill up. One to pour the fuel in, one to measure out the oil (the rickshaws have no oil pumps), one to count out the money and one to ask you to take his photo. This routine was performed with varying success during the trip and if the oil wasn’t mixed properly the rickshaws would annoyingly splutter to a halt about a mile down the road. The first occasion resulted in a half hour stoppage while we tried all sorts of tinkering to sort the problem. By the end of the trip we could pit quicker than a Formula One crew. The trick was actually to rock the rickshaw violently from side to side to mix the fuel. Crude, but effective.

The last days of the trip were particularly long with upwards of ten hours in the seat and 8am starts to ensure we got to our rest stops in daylight. Headlights in India it seems are entirely optional and you don’t want to be headed down a single track road in the dark with an unlit tractor coming the other way. It sounds punishing but there really is never a dull moment. The camaraderie of all the other teams keeps everyone in high spirits even when you’re on your hands and knees in the midday sun trying to replace an engine.

On the final remote stretch of the journey we were warned about “jumpers”. Not of the woolly long sleeved variety but villagers who apparently jump in front of tourist vehicles in the hope that they’ll get injured enough to earn sympathy money, but not too injured that they get funeral money. Thankfully the “jumping” on this occasion was restricted to cows and chickens just at it had been the rest of the trip.

And so finally, after 4 spare engines,  3 serious crashes, 2,000 bottles of beer, 300 curries and 8km of toilet roll we finally reached Kannyakumari, India's southern most point where the waters of the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal all converge and where despite being north of the equator there is no more land due south until the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

A huge monument marks the southernmost tip. Surprisingly, this was the only place on the whole trip where we experienced any form of begging, and even then it wasn’t threatening although it was persistent. Still it paid off in the end – a pair of genuine fake Ray-Bans was knocked down from 280 Rupees to  70 Rupees in the space of ten minutes (which is about how long the sunglasses lasted until a lens fell out).

And so finally, after 4 spare engines,  3 serious crashes, 2,000 bottles of beer, 300 curries and 8km of toilet roll we finally reached Kannyakumari, India's southern most point where the waters of the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal all converge and where despite being north of the equator there is no more land due south until the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

And so to our final destination, our hotel in Kannyakumari. Despite the fact we arrived in plumes of blue smoke from the failing engines and then all attempted to get the rickshaws on two wheels around the hotel fountain our hosts were full of smiles and each of us in turn was blessed and presented with an ornate necklace of seashells. Sipping cold drinks by the pool was the best feeling in the world.

Later a huge buffet was laid on for us outside in the palm filled gardens under the flickering light of charcoal burners. Naturally we had to have a beer or two to celebrate. Tomorrow we would face a fifteen hour bus journey back to Chennai but until then we would drink tall glasses of cold beer and tell tall tales of our trip. In fact we had the most fantastic closing party with a lavish awards ceremony where each team was presented with their own commemorative plaque and Team Pukka Tuk Tuk were crowned Auto Rickshaw world champions of 2006. And where did we end the night? In the swimming pool of course.

Registration is open now for the 2007 event. Still not sure? Some more pictures to tempt you...

Oh - and of course no Extreme Trifle trip would be complete without a couple of Miss Custards!

That's convinced you! So REGISTER NOW for the 2007 event!

All photographs © Extreme Trifle & Nick Gibbs (www.nickgibbs.net) & Harmaan Madon (www.overdrive.in)