One country that seems to be rather glaringly missing from the above writeups on rickshaws is
India. An obvious reason would be that our domestic variants have never quite been as popular or garnered as much media attention as the oriental variants or the ones now seen in most European / North-American countries. The latter ones I spotted recently on a
travel show hosted by an American who just couldn't stop gushing over such an
eco-friendly means of public transport.
Environmental thoughts aside, the rickshaw here is considered to be a cheap and quick means of getting around especially when browsing local markets or old neighborhoods besotted by a maze of criss-crossing lanes which even the most
hardened traveler would be wary of. Try visiting the famed
Chandni Chowk market in the Old Delhi area to get a feel of what I am hinting at.
Rickshaws (and I am talking about the human-powered ones here) come in two-basic variants. In most parts of the country you will come across the basic 3-wheeler where the driver sits in front of you and pedals, much akin to a bicycle. Unlike the drive mechanism the seating varies from state to state(at times, you may find differences in different neighborhoods of a city). The
conventional form has a single seat to accommodate 2 passengers with a back-rest and a foldable cover to protect you from the sun / rain as the case may be. Often the back-rest is removed and an additional seat is added so that 2 more passengers may sit with their backs against the other passengers, facing the oncoming traffic. This form of rickshaws is more popular in small towns in North India and is generally used to ferry children to/from school. One of the more
exotic variants is a 3-seater which involves an inclined back rest so that 2 passengers may sit on the incline whilst the third adjusts him/herself between the two on the erstwhile seat.
Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal is the only(as far as I know) place in the country where you will find the hand-pulled rickshaws often seen in Chinese movies. These though have been on a steady decline due to pressure from the
law enforcement agencies and public transport departments in an effort to clear up the streets.
Most of the rickshaw-pullers that I have encountered all over the country are
migrants from distant villages who came looking for jobs in the "big city" but never managed to quite make it beyond daily-wage jobs. The next time you get on a rickshaw and start heckling and arguing on the fare, remember that the man seated in front of you is probably the only working person in his family and has four, if not more, hungry mouths to feed back home. The Rs.5 or Rs.10(approx 25c) you save probably won't make much of a difference to you but will mean a whole lot more to him.
On a lighter note, growing up in this part of the world the rickshaw is a component of my everyday life and so ubiquitous that it is taken for granted that I will find one
wherever my fancies may take me. It was not until I read a visitor's post on
Lonely Planet of how a ride on a rickshaw down the main street of Chandni Chowk with her hands spread eagled made her feel like Rose in Titanic did I actually start to appreciate these contraptions and the people driving them. Every ride since then has been a memorable one with subtle effects reflected in my outlook of the world and how it shapes me and me,
it.