Before we left, a lot of people offered their advice (both solicited and unsolicited).

One guy I spoke to simply said, “A friend of mine went to India for two months. He had ‘stomach problems’ for the first three weeks.”

That was it. No lesson learned. No sage advice on how to avoid said unfavorable fate. No guidance. No ‘moral of the story’. He provided me with that simple statement of fact and nothing else.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to say ‘thank you’ or not, so we each went our separate ways in awkward silence.

Through a strange combination of (a) boredom and (b) the realization that this ‘word’ might be a part of my vocabulary through these weeks, I wanted to find some helpful variations. So I went to thesaurus.com and found the following synonyms (no joke): backdoor trots, flux, summer complaint and tourista.

This morning, one of us may (or may not) have been in a state of ‘flux’. I’m not saying who, but his name may (or may not) rhyme with ka-blewy.

When things worked themselves out and we got on the road, we had our first encounter with… the police.

Whoops.

The organizers of the Rickshaw Run (aptly named “The Adventurists”) issued everyone a very “official” plastic laminated “Operator Driver License” which certifies nothing and provides the following useful information for the Indian authorities:

DLN: Auto Rickshaw/Lawnmower

Date of Birth: None of your business

Height: Some

Weight: More

Hair: Maybe

Eyes: Two

Sex: Please

We reached a fork in the road and had to turn right, but there was a serious looking police officer in a tan uniform standing roadside who pulled us and one other car over.

When he approached the other car, he said something about seatbelts.

Seatbelts?!

Oh man. How are we going to get out of this? We don’t have seatbelts. We don’t even have doors. We don’t have even sides!

While one police officer questioned the other car about not wearing seatbelts, I handed both my real license and my “Adventurist Operator License” to our police officer.

He looked at them for about a second, handed them back and asked us what we were doing.

He seemed a bit bemused and confused that we would want to drive a tuk tuk 3,000 kilometers down the entirety of India, but he let us go.

We literally got a few hundred yards down the road before another officer pulled us over!

This time we were prepared.

“Eric, quick. Get the camera. Take a picture while I hand him my “Adventurist Operator Driver License”.

The police officer (dressed in a very clean, formal white uniform) approached the vehicle. Fully ready, I tried to hand him my ‘plastic license’.

He pushed it away (another missed photo).

I tried to give him my real license.

He pushed that one away too.

He refused to see my license. Any license!

He just wanted to take a photograph with us!

Before we knew it, there were five of these white uniformed police officers surrounding our tuk tuk waiting to get a photograph with us.

If you were driving a glorified lawnmower across the Interstate highways of say Texas (or Switzerland or Australia) and a Texas Ranger pulled you over… Wait. Restart.

You wouldn’t make 100 yards.

When the Texas Ranger (complete with aviator sunglasses, big ole cowboy hat, gun and “I’m gonna eat you for breakfast strut”) pulled you over, the last thing that would happen is that he would refuse to see your license and then ask to take a photo with you.

The Toyota sedan (an actual car) next to us at the first officer was pulled over because they weren’t wearing seatbelts. And yet, the police were more interested in talking to us about our 3,000 kilometer journey in a tuk tuk.

This might be one of the only countries in the world where you could have a Rickshaw Run – and it’s amazing.