It’s hard to tell if the news has always been a bastion of suffering, misery and propaganda-esque reminders that everything outside your bedroom window is dangerous, or whether it’s just that we’re descending into a particularly feisty pit of chaos. Either way, it seems to us that there’s never been a more important time to put on your adventure pants and remind yourself of humanity’s diminutive stature in the universe.

Such were the achievements of this January’s adventures, as another gaggle of Adventurists thundered forth into 2026, persuading their tiny adventure machines across some giant slabs of Morocco, Sri Lanka and India.

Morocco: Sand, Snow and Tiny Wheels of Mirth

January’s monkey runners faced 7 days of breakdowns, blizzards and bafflingly important life choices as they pootled across 700 kilometers of Morocco. It seems not to have mattered how stuck or cold this gaggle of Adventurists got. Nothing dampened their determination to cross the finish line alive.

Breakdowns.

We’re often asked if the bikes break down. They do. Hopefully, riders get at least a bit stuck, and if possible, quite lost, both being essential to proper adventure. This January’s Run lived up to our exacting standards splendidly, providing both mechanical and emotional breakdowns at adequately frequent intervals.

“One dead engine and mud you can’t push.” One of “The Daft Piglets” ticking multiple boxes in the stuck, lost and broken down category. Monkey Run Morocco January 2026.

The mechanical ones…

…are easy to spot and often easy to resolve. You might find a withered looking monkey runner tapping their engine ineffectually with the only stick they could find in the middle of nowhere. They’re usually rescued by a fellow Runner or kindly passerby. In the worst case, the bikes are tiny enough to hitchhike to the next mechanic.

The emotional ones…

…are sneakier. They creep up on you, often coinciding with the realisation you are still 500 kilometers from the finish line, it’s raining, your bike is broken, you’re a bit lost, your hands, face and kidneys hurt and you have nothing to eat except the spare adventure pants you packed. Don’t worry – they all bounce back stronger. We generally surmise that if no such crisis is apparent, something has gone very wrong.

Losing the will to live is a common but temporary symptom of partaking in the Monkey Run…

Blizzards 

We like an extra dollop of jeopardy on our adventures and this January the adventure gods answered the call by dumping a substantial amount of snow on our riders as they tried to cross the Atlas mountains. As can be expected of any cohort of Monkey Runners, they took to it with aplomb. Some invented new sports, like monkey skiing, whilst others made weird snow effigies of their fellow riders…ingenious on both counts.

Some runners were just happy to have survived, having ridden belligerently through the snowstorm. Others hunkered down for the night in a sheep pen, with only the soft buttocks of their fellow riders to stay warm.

Bafflingly important life choices.

Apart from the obvious daily decisions about how to stay alive, there were other exceedingly important life choices that arose on January’s Monkey Run, like which tattoo to get, or whether to get married or not. Dylan, team The Moor the Merrier and Daniel, team Chaos Unit decided upon a “unique” depiction of the monkey run. Meanwhile, Chris of the Monkey Wrench Gang opted for a true to life image of his actual bike, number 8.

An equally firm nod must go to Holden Stearns, who popped that anxiety inducing question at the Start Line. Luckily, Nicole said yes, or it could have been an awkward 700 kilometers…

“She said yes (thank god)” – Holden Stearns on the Monkey Run Morocco January 2026.

Photo of the Day Winners.

Warm beers of questionable origin are awarded to the winners of photo of the day, a competition we run on every adventure to ensure we are witness to as much of the gory detail as possible. Here are the winners from the Monkey Run Morocco January 2026. We think they sum it all up nicely.

Sri Lanka: Back Roads, No Roads and Disco Balls

If adventuring on two wheels doesn’t do it for you, then let our tales of 3-wheeled buffoonery beguile you instead. The Rickshaw Run Sri Lanka is 7 days of islandy adventure, rammed with off-road tracks, mountain roads, jungles, elephants, beaches, remote national parks, amazing food and some of the nicest people on Earth.  It’s like the jungly disco of Adventurists’ adventures, perfect for sweating off half your body weight whilst you try and circumnavigate a country.

The Rickshaw Bobby’s encouraging some sensible adventure preparation. Rickshaw Run Sri Lanka January 2026, Launch Party.

Backroads and Noroads

Sri Lanka’s backroads are ideal for the delicate constitution of the rickshaw. It’s almost like they were designed for 3-wheeled vehicles and January’s Runners proved to be adept at utilising them for optimum adventure amplification. They pootled far and wide in search of Sri Lanka’s best bumpy bits, and we’re pleased to report they found them in abundance.

Some excellent adventure pootling on a backroad of Sri Lanka – Rickshaw Run Sri Lanka January 2026.

There’s also ample opportunity not to use any road at all, which is worthwhile if you’re a fan of digging rickshaws out of the mud or cliff-edge finales to your planned un-route.

“Had to put it in reverse.” Team Tuk it, Let’s Do It! arriving at the dramatic end of their un-route. Rickshaw Run Sri Lanka January 2026.

The Payback

Adventuring into the wilds of a place on a three-wheeled lawnmower does carry risk of course. The likelihood of your trusty steed mutinying against your well intentioned plans is quite high even on the smooth veneer of asphalt. So when the Runners put their 3-wheel-non-drive machines to the test, varying degrees of breakdown and peril usually ensue. We commend such foolery of course, as well as the persuasive meditative techniques applied here by Team What tuk you so long? Rickshaws respond famously well to positive energetic vibrations.

“Who’s going to fix it first? Using all our skills to get there,” Team What Tuk You So Long? using both mechanical and spiritual approaches to make it to the Finish Line.

Apart from the risk of exertion-induced breakdowns there’s also the lesser acknowledged risk of hijack by local wildlife, some more daunting than others…

Blessings and Disco Balls…

As if the fact of being in a 3-wheeled wonder machine, badly navigating your way around Sri Lanka isn’t in itself a blessing, this January’s teams seemed determined that hovering around temples in their shaws would help them on their way. Maybe. We like to think it’s more about the superior engineering quality of the auto-rickshaw, along with the adventure-honed wits of our teams.

Mysteriously on this year’s January Run, a select number of teams received the gift of a disco ball. We don’t know if this was some act of the adventure gods, or whether some kind of disco ball bandit was marking their next victims. As all the teams arrived at the finish line unscathed, we assume it was the former.  The spirit of the disco runs strong in Rickshaw Runners of the Sri Lanka variety after all…

“Had a little gift after coming down from the Dambulla caves,” Team Tuk it, Let’s Do It! receiving the high blessing of a disco ball on the Rickshaw Run Sri Lanka January 2026.

Whether it was the blessings or not, our crew were delighted to welcome a full cohort of entirely intact Runners across the finish line.

The Rickshaw Run Sri Lanka January 2026 teams looking rightly cavalier having successfully circumnavigated Sri Lanka in a 3-wheeled cake tin.

Charity and Cyclone Ditwah

Just before the January Run, Sri Lanka suffered one of its worst humanitarian crises for years due to the impact of Cyclone Ditwah. It’s estimated that around 2.2 million people have been adversely affected and the situation continues to be difficult for many of the areas that were severely impacted.

Though our official charity partner is Cool Earth, teams have flexibility on who they fundraise for. Therefore, many of the January teams made the decision to donate their charity funds to the disaster relief fund in Sri Lanka, having seen first hand how the people and authorities of the country are working tirelessly to restore normalcy for the lives of so many.

If you’re reading this and you want to know more, have a look at the official government site for the disaster relief efforts here. You can also donate money there if you’re so inclined.

India: Cows, Camels and Convoys

It’s a long way up the left side of India, which is why we make the Rickshaw Runners do it. When they sign up to the Rickshaw Run All India, they commit to getting their rickshaw to the finish line, however unwilling their steed. That 3000 kilometers can be gruelling at times. India’s roads are notoriously chaotic, which makes taking the humble rickshaw on the major highways somewhere between silly and suicidal. Autorickshaws rank somewhere just below almost everything else including livestock in the hierarchy of motor traffic in India…

The teams have 2 weeks to make it to the finish line. Enough time to avoid the chaos of the highway and focus on chaos-making of their own. The January 2026 teams took up the gauntlet magnificently. They set off from the start line in Fort Kochi after a healthy bout of New Year’s revelry and arrived thousands of kilometers, several breakdowns and a much increased appreciation of being alive later at the Palace of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.

The teams of the Rickshaw Run All India January 2026, just before thundering forth on their 3-wheeled steeds.

Knowing Your Place

Surviving the Rickshaw Run is partly luck and partly the team’s skill at understanding where they sit in the grand hierarchy of the road. “Roads” can take various forms when you’re crossing such a huge slab of India, but the important thing for teams to remember is that they are always close to the bottom of the traffic pile.

One way to counter such a perilous position, is to travel in convoy, much like a herd of rickshaws which makes you look slightly more obvious amidst the chaos of everything else more important than you. January’s teams became masters of such convoy making, demonstrating some excellent synchronised rickshaw driving as captured below by Team Caution: Mildly Competent. If you find yourself convoy-less, another option is to join a caravan of camels or other livestock if you can find any, like The Muttley Crew can be seen doing below.

Attempting to avoid the highways does bring the risk of getting lost or ending up somewhere entirely unintended, like underneath said highways, or on a railway track like teams The Edmund Fitzgerald and Big Quoc Energy here.

Equally, it brings the desirable upside of finding back roads, forests and dirt tracks, all perfectly aligned with the off-roading capabilities of the rolling cake tin.

Rickshaw Repairs

Finding India’s back roads whilst wobbling your way across dirt tracks and through tropical forests does mean your trusty steed gets a pounding. Being already unsuited to such an adventure, the auto-rickshaw sometimes protests. Bits start to fall off, the dust clogs everything up or the rickshaw just gives up the will to carry on. In India, even if this happens in the most remote place you could get yourself to, there are generally crowds who emerge from seemingly nowhere to help. Unless it’s a Sunday apparently, and then, as the Jungle Queens found out, no one at all comes to your rescue.

If you do find yourself alone, in the dark, with no real idea of what you’re doing, one tried and tested approach is to flip your rickshaw over and scrabble around with a head torch trying to fix it.  Failing that, get it to a garage and leave it to the experts.

Pimp jobs and posing.

Teams on the Rickshaw Run All India have the option to pimp their ‘shaw. These get hand painted by our most excellent rickshaw artists in India. January’s teams designed a splendid array of rickshaw pimps, demonstrating a firm understanding of the delicate contours of a rickshaw. Here’s some fine examples of pimp jobs from January, set off marvellously against bits of India.

Posing is generally a good skill to develop. It’s particularly important when upon an adventure, so that your friends and family, and later your descendants, can see how incredibly suave you looked. Some cohorts of Adventurists are better than others at immortalising themselves in such a heroic manner. This January’s Runners were adept at it.

As a final word on pimps, don’t forget that you can incorporate snacks, sleeping quarters or apparently fireworks to good effect. All of which highlights the extraordinary versatility of the rickshaw as kitchen, home and party venue.

Photo of the Day Winners

Finally, a round up of the photo of the day winners from India. Some corkers here, chosen for their excellence in capturing the buffoonery of the Rickshaw Run All India.

The Don McLester Adventuring Stupidity Scholarship.

If you feel like all of the above is your wet dream but you don’t have the money to make it happen, we suggest you peruse The Don McLester Adventuring Stupidity Scholarship, also known as the ‘Don Memorial Asshat Award (except he won’t fucking die.)’

The winner of the 2025 award was Douglas Garcia, from Brasil. Here he is pictured on a rock, looking extremely happy to have $5000 USD to get himself to the Monkey Run Peru in April and monkey across the Andes.

Douglas Garcia, winner of the 2025 Asshat Award.  He’ll be joining the Monkey Run Peru in April 2026 using his scholarship money.

To get yourself on the list of applicants for 2026, visit our Scholarship page here and apply. Deadline is the end of February 2026 to join an adventure in 2026.