Riding a rickshaw is hair-raising. Driving your own is surely asking for trouble. But Melissa Bell can't resist the chance to explore India and Nepal on three wheels
We're in southern Nepal; we're not quite sure where as we lost the main highway about 30 minutes earlier in a desperate search for a petrol station. We didn't find one in time. I'm barefoot and covered in dirt, straining to push our auto-rickshaw down a two-lane highway, as my boyfriend steers and tries to pump the clutch into action. My only pair of shoes fell out of the doorless vehicle earlier in the day as we ricocheted over a dirt path to avoid a crowd of Maoist demonstrators. The sun is setting and we're in a race with a looming black monsoon cloud. The political unrest has caused a fuel shortage and our only hope is that the gas station one kilometre down the road will sell us grey-market petrol out of plastic water bottles. Sullen men loiter on the side of the highway. Images of the burnt-out lorries from the strike that day flit across my mind. Part of me grins at the utter absurdity of my life at the moment. Part of me curses the day my boyfriend and I decided it would be a lark to drive this flimsy piece of tin across India and Nepal. What were we thinking?