The buy

Before the build...

Well off course before we could even contemplate how to modify a tuktuk

(or auto rickshaw as their known in India)

,we first needed a tuktuk!

This proved to be no where near as easy as it seemed!

See, in India there is no classified section in the newspaper!

Nor are there plentiful car garages selling overpriced vehicles!

And there isnt even the culture to stick a "For Sale"

sign up in the window of your car!

See, here, in India, to buy a vehicle means you have to do nothing less than approach every man, women, and holy cow inside, next to, or in the slight vicinity of a tuktuk and ask them if its for sale!

With my hindi word count barely scraping seven, this was a more than time consuming process!

I fact it took us one month to sieve through the endless misunderstandings, overpricing and timewasting. Asking hundreds of tuktuk drivers. Meetings dozens of tuktuk owners and escaping from the offices of handfuls of brokers. We finally found a tuktuk with the help of a young energic local called Babu. He intreduced himself to me through curiosity and although he had no experience in buying tuktuks he was more than enthusiastic to cart me around all day on the back of his bicycle in between his strict study routine. He spoke near perfect English and would spends hours at a time translating and bargaining for me. Always adorning a huge smile he would turn the most frustrating of days into a fun filled dive deep into Indian culture. For what he lacked in the knowledge of tuktuks he more than made up for in the workings of India. He was a walking, talking library of information. But the thing which made him most special, was, unlike 99 percent of locals, Babu wanted not a penny in return! I could barely buy him a tea or a bottle of water at the end of a long hot day!
All this young, thriving, encyclopedia wanted was more knowledge, more experience, and more fresh ideas and ways of thinking.