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04.08.2023 - 17:51 / theguardian.com / Lake Como
It’s hard to know if Milan’s fashionistas are bemused more by my driving or by my vehicle as I stall, splutter and crunch the gears while double-parking the tuk-tuk on Via Monte Napoleone, the city’s swankiest street. Both it and I look comically out of place on a thoroughfare dripping with designer shops and high-end motors. I’ve just seen a Hermès shirt with a €10,500 price tag and spotted the Argentina World Cup winner and Inter Milan star Lautaro Martínez laden with Gucci shopping bags, and bouncing into a blacked-out Hummer with his girlfriend and minder.
Not that I’m here to shop. Our mission this morning is to take a photo of the three-wheeled contraption parked alongside a Ferrari or Lamborghini – which causes a mini traffic jam, much horn beeping and bewilderment as to why a ramshackle tuk-tuk is cluttering up the street.
Snapping a Lambo – which is harder than you might think, even in Milan – is the first challenge on the Italian Tuk-Tuk Adventure, a whirlwind one-week trip across northern Italy in this novel means of transport, spiced up with wacky challenges.
The trip is run by Large Minority, which began life organising similar adventures in Sri Lanka in 2009, and expanded to other Asian countries before setting up in Italy just before lockdown. Its small fleet of tuk-tuks was imported from India in kit form and assembled in Italy (with additional Italian components) by Piaggio. Large Minority takes care of all the logistics (luggage transfer, a backup vehicle with a spare tuk-tuk, and bookings in very nice small hotels and excellent restaurants), leaving us free to bomb about like big kids on our new toys. Weekend adventures and independent hire are also available.
After leaving Milan, our loose caravan of six tuk-tuks will make its way up to the Italian Lakes (via the Monza Formula One race circuit), then through Barolo wine country and down to the Mediterranean near Genoa, riding either alone or in convoy. The rules are fairly relaxed: the teams of two can take whichever route they fancy, there’s only a rough ETA, and even the challenge element is optional. It’s not a race, but it can get very competitive. Most teams are couples but I’m with my mate Dave, and we share the driving.
Our first destination is Bellagio, on Lake Como, an 80km journey north from Milan that takes us over verdant hills, along sparkling waterfronts and, for five terrifying minutes after I take a wrong turn, the middle lane of a highway sandwiched between two massive lorries.
Travelling through stunning countryside in such a small, slow (200cc) vehicle makes the short journey feel like an epic road trip and lasts nearly all day. It was my first time to the Lakes – for some reason I’d imagined them to be a bit
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