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The route is a route in the loosest sense of the word. Riders are encouraged to take whatever way they choose with only a handful of meeting points to drop into along the way. Starting and finishing lines vary, but in general the race begins and ends in either Goa, Southern India, or Pokhara in Nepal. In between, the rolling tea hills of Ghats and the scorching deserts of Rajhastian are just some of the multitude of landscapes riders traverse. Once undertaken, there is absolutely no support provided by the organizers and drivers are expected to use their wits and cunning to get themselves out of the many scrapes and mishaps encountered along the way. Team numbers are unlimited but in general, three to four people ride a rickshaw. An unlikely 14 is the record. Participants can choose to sleep wherever they like and the run is usually done in 2 weeks, though digressions are encouraged with the emphasis on the fact that the Rickshaw Run is not a race but an adventure. A website keeps friends, family, and sponsors informed of each team’s progress and the event begins and ends with a round of cricket and gin and tonics.

The Rickshaw Run raises lots of money for a variety of charities.

First started in 2006, the Rickshaw Run is put together by a Bristol-based collective called The Adventurists in the U.K. The entrance fee is $1,400 per team and this gets you a rickshaw that must be returned in working order at the end of the escapade. Participants are also compelled to donate at least $1,600 to charity, and teams often raise much more for a vast array of worthy causes. In fact, charity fundraising is one of the main motives behind the venture, as well as the desire to encourage people to get off the beaten track and throw caution to the wind. “Tropical stupidity in slightly powered tin cans” is how the Adventurists themselves describe it. Just make sure to pack a can opener. —CO’M

www.rickshawrun.theadventurists.com.

When to Go: Jan, Apr, and Sept. Check website for exact dates.

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The Death Race

The Pits

Pittsfield, Vermont, U.S.A.

Contestants arrive at a wet and muddy farm in the Vermont Hills at 8pm. They register and weigh in at 11pm and have little chance to sleep before the race starts at 3am. They set off with a bike frame on their backs and rucksacks filled with hatchets, shovels, handsaws, duct tape, and pruners. They will need every one of these as they negotiate an obstacle course designed to test mind, body, and spirit. The first test is to dig up a well buried tree stump and drag it a mile upriver. Then they must push a bucket through a water-filled culvert and haul a sack of sand under a pit of barbed wire. There is a 2,000-foot (600m) climb to a mountain peak, where contestants must memorize a list of American presidents before descending and repeating the list to a steward. Then there is a pile of logs to be split before crawling through a mud tunnel, at the end of which is a Lego cube that must be noted and reconstructed again at the bottom of the trail. Fail to get the colored blocks exactly right and the runners must crawl up the mud tunnel again, all the while carrying an egg that must be cooked on a fire ignited in the rain. Then each participant must haul 20% of their body weight in rocks up another mountain. Then a wheel barrow is supplied to push cement across a sloping field. They then arrive at a river where their bicycle chains are thrown into a deep pond and must be retrieved.

Sleep deprivation, mind games, physical torture, and freezing cold are just par for the course at the Death Race in Pittsfield, 150 miles (242km) south of Burlington. The 10-mile (6.2km) race usually has 40 participants who must complete the circuit in 24 hours. Only 20% do so as they dig, dive, run, and crawl through obstacles designed by a sadist. It is the most absurd form of abuse thought up by two running veterans who grew bored with marathons. The New York Times described it as “Survivor meets Jackass” as the mud covered entrants pit their wits against the most devious of obstacles