Will you be uncomfortable? Probably.
Will you get lost? Absolutely.
Will you have an unforgettable experience in the process? Definitely.

Less than three hours into navigating Rajasthan in our blue, bear-branded Tuk Tuks, and I can confidently say that all of the above have been confirmed.

On our first full day in India, we attended an introductory briefing where we got the lay of the land for racing Tuk Tuks across Rajasthan. And to be clear, “racing” is a generous term as none of us know what we’re doing. It’s less about who arrives first and more about what happens along the way (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

They say the journey is the destination, right?

To kick things off, we were taken to an abandoned road about 30 minutes from our hotel under the premise that we would learn how to drive these vehicles, get a little practice, and then complete our first “mini challenge.” The task? Drive to a local petrol station, fill the Tuk Tuk with the correct oil-and-petrol mixture, and find our way back to the hotel.

Easy. Right?

The catch: no maps, no technology, and absolutely no clue how we were going to pull this off.

Some shared thoughts before leaving the training area:

“Oh, we’ll just follow each other.”
“The people at the petrol station will know exactly what we need.”
“We definitely know how to drive this Tuk Tuk in Jaipur traffic after one solid hour of practice.”

All of which…were incorrect.

We were separated almost immediately. It took three petrol station attempts before we found what we needed. And our Tuk Tuk stalled multiple times like it was teaching us a lesson in perseverance.

And while some teams wisely tracked their arrival route, my partner and I chose to go in blind. Mostly because we had been chatting in the back of an Uber on the way to training, completely ignoring the landmarks we should have been mentally bookmarking.

What followed was a series of wrong turns too numerous to count. At one point, we found ourselves in what I can only describe as someone’s front yard in a residential neighborhood, asking a very kind man, “Which direction is the mountain,” our only reference point back to the hotel.

To his credit, he genuinely tried to help. But between his limited English and my deeply questionable charades performance of “mountain,” we eventually nodded confidently and drove off…none the wiser.

Somehow, we made it back to the hotel, second to last, only ahead of Pierre and Sabrina, who ran out of gas on the side of the road. But we still made it and a nice cold beer on the rooftop bar was our reward. Mini-challenge complete.

And the core idea behind the challenge, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, had already begun to settle in.

After a lovely dinner and a well-earned drink, I had a moment to reflect. Here’s what I learned:

Road lanes are merely suggestions.
Honking is a communication style.
Patience is non-negotiable.
And kindness is contagious.

Even after just a few hours behind the wheel, it was clear: this is going to be the adventure of a lifetime.

Check back in for what’s next because at this point, your guess is as good as ours.