15 Sep 06
The windscreen fills with jungle, and then comes that awful inside-a-washing-machine moment. A week in a rickshaw without crashing? It was never going to happen.
At least this crash, on the evening before the final day, wasn't my fault. I'd hitched a lift with the American team of charity workers up to the waterfall in Courtallam. Coming back on the first downhill stretch of the week, driver Eric Hamm was going too fast. The left-hander wasn't especially tight, but with three in the back the front wheel had no bite and we couldn't make the turn. Eric says the brakes locked. I don't remember that. I do remember the vicious lash of branches on the plastic windscreen, and the sudden silence. We'd somersaulted nose-first into a foliage-choked drainage ditch and were now facing back up the hill. I realised I was crushing Cambel Berk, and Sanjay Sinha under her.
'Everyone okay?' I nervously asked, scrabbling to get off everybody. I just got laughter back. The thrill of cheating death had scrambled our heads and, with no injuries to sober us, we giggled and whooped for the next two hours. Sanjay's leg was trapped under a roof bar, but these machines aren't heavy, and we lifted it up easily enough. Navigating the jungle in my flip-flops was the most scary thing. Don't these places have snakes?
Next we had to get it back on the road. Surely it must be totalled? A dumbfounded passer-by helped the crazed foreigners as we grabbed any bit of bodywork to right it. On all three wheels again, we yanked off the creepers and Eric went to start it. First pull: nothing. Second: ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, success! Unbelievable. Can it actually drive? Again, amazingly, the answer's yes. The windscreen was partly smashed, and eventually came off altogether, but rickshaw number four was back in the rally.
