Hot Car Rallies To Warm Up Your Winter

Have you been yearning for a Mauritania passport stamp for years? Do you love getting vaccinations for exotic diseases? Have you got an unhealthy obsession with driving knackered cars across some of the world’s most challenging terrain? Perfect.

The team at CT love nothing more than a good road trip. Except maybe an even more random road trip in an even more inappropriate set of wheels. Peugeot 106 to Ouagadougou? F*ck yeah. I’ll get my passport...

Sod the Gumball Rally and the platinum plated poseurs who ‘race’ sticker-strewn Lambos across hundreds of miles of arrow straight, super-smooth tarmac – what you need is a real gearhead's rally. Plus we can’t afford the Gumball’s £15,000 per person entry fee.

Thankfully the bonkers dudes who created the Mongol Rally might be able to help. These misfits are always busy concocting ever more mental road trips and the Rickshaw Run is one of their crazier creations.

Frankly we can’t think of many more exciting ways to spend two weeks in December than revving the tits off a 145.45cc rickshaw which kicks out a total of seven maimed Shetland ponypowers and crossing the enormous trough of madness that is India. Abuse the throttle and these babies can hit up to 35mph. Downhill. With a Sandy-grade tailwind. Probably.

Even better, the organisers will slap a sh*t hot paintjob on your chariot for you. Sketch an awesome design (see that art AS level did come in handy after all) and voilà – epic rickshaw pimpage is yours. You might just want to stop short of these guys’ attempts though. Full marks for effort, but tiger print onesies? Er, not so much...

And the cost of spending two weeks crammed inside a smoke-spewing spluttering sh*tbox of a tuk tuk discovering just how bumpy Indian back roads can be? Complete with a custom paintjobbed rick’, flights, travel insurance, petrol, repairs, food and accommodation, expect to budget two grand and get several hundred squids worth of change. Teams are also asked to raise £1,000 for professional tree hugging charity Cool Earth.

The next Rickshaw Run sets off on the 29th December, so keep an eye out for tweets from @TheAdventurists and if you like what you see, get yourself booked for the September 2013 run and start saving up some pennies.

If you prefer your vehicles with four wheels, the Banjul Challenge will give you the perfect excuse to explore several exotic countries you’ve never heard of while everyone at home is being relentlessly drizzled on. Hint: Banjul’s in The Gambia – a vagina-shaped country plunging into Senegal.

The Banjul Challenge is the self-proclaimed world’s first banger rally which hits the 10-year-old mark this year. This three week, 3,700 mile schlep cuts across Europe and heads south into Africa, passing through Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal spending two days crossing the Sahara on the way before eventually arriving in Banjul. The health and safety muppets at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against all travel to Mauritania, so you know this one’s gonna be exciting.

Helping to keep things challenging, teams need a left hand drive car for this one (try the Netherlands for this and check out their lovely cafes while you’re there) but happily for your wallet, the cheaper your wheels are, the better. In the past teams had to find a car for under 150 euros and even Gumtree would struggle to help on that kind of budget.

Entry fees for the Banjul Challenge stack up to £375 per car with around £200 of ferry costs and £300 for a return flight, plus petrol, food and accommodation bills. The next event starts on January 14, but you’ll have to wait until December 2013 if you haven’t already got a place.

Or for a properly cheap rally, you can’t beat the Staples to Naples Rally – “the banger rally for wage slaves”. And students. Unlike most other rallies, this one packs all the action into just four days spread over a weekend, starting in Calais and ending up just outside Naples – which means you don’t have to think of an imaginative reason for why you missed an entire month of Uni...

Crossing through France, Switzerland and Italy you still get to enjoy some ridiculously exciting roads including the Stelvio Pass, branded by Top Gear as the best driving road in the world. Who cares if you’re driving a 1994 diesel Mondeo?

There is also the chance of winning up to £1,000 in cash for different challenges along the way - which involve lots of fancy dress and water fight action- and entry fees weigh in at £200 for a team of three with extra members adding £25 to the total. Do it right and you might even end up making money on this one – score!