Andy Wilson (Inset), sales director at Oxford-based online solutions provider Ebbon-Dacs, is giving up his usual company car in favour of a tuk-tuk – a motorised rickshaw – as he travels 2,500 miles around India in just two weeks to raise money for charity in the now annual “Rickshaw Run”.
In April, Wilson, along with co-driver Martin Liversage, a business manager with BT, will set off from Kochi in the south west Kerala province and terminate (hopefully) in Shillong, a hilltop village in the far north east of India, more than 2,500 miles later.
The pair will be travelling in a 145cc, two stroke, seven horsepower, three wheeled motorised rickshaw, known the world over as a “tuk-tuk”, as they attempt to complete the arduous journey over mountain and desert, and everything in between, in just two weeks.
‘We estimate that we’ll be driving the tuk-tuk for 12-14 hours a day. It has no doors, an engine which only produces only 7hp, a top speed of 55kph and is prone to breaking down all the time,’ said Andy Wilson.
‘It is completely useless at protecting you from the elements and possibly the least suitable vehicle on the planet for covering the entire Indian subcontinent in a fortnight,’ added Wilson, who, in his day job, is responsible, amongst others, for Ebbon-Dacs’ Leaselink e-procurement platform which is used by the majority of the UK’s major leasing companies to source, order and track delivery of more than 100,000 new fleet vehicles a year.
3 Wheeled Cheese 