A daring couple are attempting to travel across India in a flower-power inspired rickshaw.
Liam Day, 37, and wife Janine, 40, travelled the UK in a campervan for two years before heading to India in December 2022 in search of an adventure.
Picking up the hippy rickshaw for £1,100, the former gardeners christened their tuk-tuk Pete’after Liam’s “adventurous” veteran grandfather who passed away a month before in May 2022.
Speaking from Hampi, south India, and estimating it will take a full year to complete the country, Liam said: “It means everything to do this and honour my grandad in this way and keep his name alive.
“I pinch myself every day to be here doing this.
“To travel with your life partner and wife for 15 years and do all these amazing things together and still manage to laugh every day is probably the best thing about it all.”
Liam first fell in love with travelling after his first year of university, after his brother, Matthew, 20, was hit and killed by a street cleaner while walking back from a Christmas party in 2005, when Liam was just 19.
He said: “When my brother died, I went off the rails a little bit and I was going out and getting drunk all the time.
“Travelling completely changed my life and taught me that life’s so short and fragile and I wanted to do more with my life.”
It was in his first year of travelling that Liam met Janine in Thailand at a Full Moon Party after both being separated from their friends - and they have never looked back.
Liam said: “We absolutely love travelling. We went everywhere.
“We travelled around Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Malaysia. We would pick up work on orchards to make money when we could and we did really well."
Heading back to the UK in 2014, the couple - who are both vegans - bought a static caravan for just under £20,000 with the money they made from orchard picking and settled on the coast of Brighton.
They stayed there for the next five years while running their own gardening business and online vegan website.
But when the pandemic hit, the couple craved more.
Liam said: “The lockdowns came and we felt like caged birds.
“You suddenly start thinking about travelling and everything we did and realise that actually - all we wanted to do was that.”
The couple found a transit van for £9,000 and paid £7,000 for it to be converted into a home in three weeks - equipped with a double bed, chairs and mini kitchen.
Setting up a YouTube account to fund their new lifestyle, the couple set off in February 2021, to travel the UK, always staying on the coast.
“We were very impulsive and just knew this was something we had to do,” he said.
“We started off in Glastonbury for a week and it was incredible - we loved it so much.
“Then we went to Scotland to do the North Coast 500 which was a big test with the climates but it was amazing - the highlands were beautiful.
“The van was very minimal compared to what people have these days but it was amazing.
“We used to use public toilets in supermarkets or pay to go to leisure centres or gyms for a shower.”
But after a year and a half of travel, after Liam’s grandfather, Pete, passed away, aged 86, in May 2022, the couple started to have issues with their van.
Facing huge costs to repair the van, Liam had another plan.
He said: “I said to Janine, why don’t we go to India?
“She immediately turned around and said: ‘Yes.' So we did.”
Arriving in India in December last year with nothing but two backpacks - one for their clothes and one for their filming equipment - Liam surprised Janine with the hippy rickshaw they would be embarking their adventure on.
Liam said: “She could not have been more surprised - it couldn’t have been any better.”
After collecting the rickshaw in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, the couple began to head south with the plan to make their way to the top.
Liam said: “We knew we wanted to go south and head north - but the rest, we have made it up as we go along!”
Driving has unsurprisingly been a challenge.
“You get the feeling people are not too concerned about their life driving in India,” he said.
“You’re driving on the other side of the road with oncoming traffic and it can be pretty hair-raising.”
The couple are currently living off their salary from their YouTube channel, called Those Happy Days, which has 82.4K subscribers, which they post carefully crafted videos to a few times a week.
But their daily budget is humble.
“It costs around £7 a night at a home stay and then around a fiver for food for us both and less than a tenner in the rickshaw for a full day of travel,” Liam said.
Above everything - they have made memories they will never forget.
“One of the first places we went to was this rural village where no one spoke English but we just had such warmth and kindness and this temple down the road invited us in and gave us so much food,” he said.
“We went to one festival Mahashivatri which was incredible because they believe it is the darkest day and if you stay awake all night then good things will happen to you.
“There were thousands and thousands of people and it was very intense but it felt ecstatic.
“I shed a tear because it was so beautiful, I just couldn't believe that we were lucky enough to be there at that moment.”
You can follow Janine and Liam’s adventure on their channel youtube.com/@ThoseHappyDays
