Cometh The Wallah Run
the psychotic cousin of the Rickshaw Run
What’s all this bollocks then?
The Wallah Run is the psychotic cousin of the Rickshaw Run. If you’re after something calm – don’t sign up.
Imagine yourself deep in the wild forests of Assam in North East India, a tiger is chasing you, you’re making a reasonable escape, but then the battery dies and so do you. Adventuring bliss.
This is about to join the pantheon of the dumbest things to do with any form of transport. Slow and fast at the same time, wobbly, uncomfortable, exhausting and prone to falling over. It is hands down the best way to rip across the subcontinent.
Feel’s like we’ve said enough to persuade any sane person to sign up already but if not there are some made up facts below…
The Wallah Bike
The Electro-Wallah is a retro work of art. Based on the old cycle wallahs that ply the streets of India but with 2 electric motors and a massive lithium battery these machines make very little sense at all. And yet they make all the sense.
At 30kmh you can’t really make any fast turns or your face will be eating tarmac and the brakes won’t slow you down that much. So if you spot trouble on the road ahead, you are about to get familiar with it.
These triumphs of human ingenuity have zero suspension. So every bump in the road will be directly translated into a compressed spine. To make sure that’s maximised we’ve found a route that will have a fair amount of off road.
Range anxiety adventure
It’s like an electron based chess game. They have a massive range but you will need to pedal some to achieve it. You can slack off and ride without pedalling but you will pay in range. You can go faster but you will pay in range.
But running out of battery is half the adventure. Currently we’re considering removing any battery indicator from the beast. Then you will just find the machine dies instantly at deeply inopportune moments.
Then you can either suck up the cycling pain or go out and find a way to pour some more electrons into the tank. Which is a most excellent challenge when you least wanted it.
The Un-route
We’re plonking our fabulous Electro Wallahs up in the most remote and wild slab of India. The far north East. Jungles, tigers, dirt tracks and chaos awaits. That way you stand the highest chance of getting lost and in trouble.
You’ll be wanting to fly in and out of Guwahati Airport. And then take another small internal flight at either the start or the finish. It’s a little bit vague at this stage because it will change as testing continues and the Pioneers run vomits its wisdom onto our laps. But silly facts like exactly where are largely irrelevant for adventures anyway. You are coming on the first ever full scale Wallah Run so embrace it.
The Dawn of the Electro Wallah
Behold our first prototype. This triumph of optimism is a fine cocktail of electrical adventuring stupidity. To make such an intoxicating spirit we wafted the essence of shopping trolley through a base of recycled cat food tins and added the sharp tang of an electric chair. The result is rather good.
The pedal ‘shaw is like the great, great auntie who occasionally hits cats with her detachable leg – to the much beloved auto-rickshaw of the Rickshaw Run. These wobbly apparatus of leg torture have plied the streets of India for a 100 odd years. We’ve always admired them, but wanted a teeny bit more power than our weedy pins could muster. So we weaselled one into our secret Skunk Works deep in the corner of Calcutta.