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part of the event , that many have been waiting for . It ’ s an opportunity to see where some of the entry fees go and although it was the middle of school holidays , many children had come to school dressed in their uniforms to meet the crazy people from afar who where racing across their country . The children , most of whom live amongst the rubbish as their families struggle to survive , see that education is an opportunity to move a step towards a more sustainable life and appreciate what the Rickshaw Challenge does . A beautiful , if but brief , morning that puts our laughter at the absurdity of racing such machines into perspective .
In amongst the traffic of the larger cities is yet another reason to laugh , a truck comes perilously close , we can feel the heat from its underneath as it sends a torrent of water our way , the monsoon is back . We laugh again as another competitor crashes through a boom gated toll booth on a major road , “ fookin ’ ‘ ell ”, surely the expletive coming from the machine driven by the ‘ northerner ’. It again brings many laughs .
It ' s easy to dismiss a Rickshaw Challenge as nothing more than a larrikins way to visit a country in what at times feel a little disrespectful , yet it quickly becomes more as you slip into the Indian way of doing things and find that you are as much
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