Students plan 10,000-mile tea break to bag rickshaw record

The six students will this Friday (February 23rd) launch their bid to spend 160 days on a ten thousand mile route tracing tea's cultural history.

Far from simply jumping in a jeep, however, they plan on making the entire journey in three-wheeled motorised rickshaws with a top speed of 30mph. If successful, they will break the record for the longest distance ever covered in their (somewhat bumpy) chosen form of transport.

Tea is thought to have appeared in Britain in 1657, making this year the 350th anniversary. During the journey, the team will enlist the help of academics and fellow tea enthusiasts in each country they visit to produce a documentary and book about the assortment of cultures that make up some of the great tea-drinking nations of the world.

They are particularly interested to investigate Islamic culture and will be working closely with the Muslim Council of Great Britain to arrange meetings with Islamic scholars and clerics in several Muslim countries on the route.

“The aim is to create a living celebration of cultural diversity and national identity through a drink enjoyed in common,” team leader Ian Ball said. “Tea is hugely popular in almost every country on the trip. Projects like this are extremely rare and we hope that we will be able to produce a unique picture of life in the countries along our route.”

The team will travel from the tea port of Calcutta to London via India, Pakistan, Northwest China, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Europe. They will set off in July 2007 and, all being well, arrive back in the UK in time for Christmas. In total the trip will take them through 18 countries and along some of the toughest roads in the world, making it a gruelling test of team spirit as well as a project of international collaboration.

“Few British people have taken one of these rickshaws further than the next town, so we're expecting it to be quite a challenge,” team mechanic Neil Summers said. “The film crew will be travelling in 4x4s so there will be support if we run into trouble – but we hope we won't need them.”

In addition to Ian and Neil, the team comprises Sophie Ibbotson, a Hindi specialist; history student Andrew Daynes, Michael Pye, a classicist and Chinese-speaker and Anne Romeo, an engineer. The rickshaws – known as “tuk tuks” in the South and East Asian countries where they are commonly used because of the sound made by their engines – can each accommodate one driver and up to three passengers. This means that even if one of the four vehicles breaks down, the team should be able to manage the journey in the remaining three.

The group are trying to raise £43,000 in sponsorship before they set off; offering companies the opportunity to display their logo on the well-travelled rickshaws. The project has already won the approval of the UK Tea Council, the national ambassador for tea in Britain.

“Tea might be seen as quintessentially British but behind it there is a fantastic story of eccentric adventure that goes much further,” Ian added. “It's about people and politics, religion and society and the interactions of strangers and lives lived in different ways. Hopefully we can capture something of that in our expedition.”

A media launch for the expedition will be held outside the Senate Building on Kings Parade, Cambridge, on Friday, February 23rd 2007, at 11am. Members of the team will be available for interview and there will also be opportunities to film them testing out some of the rickshaws that will make the trip.