Taking the roads less traveled - for charity

Days 1-14: Cross mountains marked by precipitous passes.

Venture into forests full of tigers, bears, cobras, and other unknown beasts.

Pass through cities choked with people, animals, vendors, rabid dogs, and unyielding bus drivers not afraid to play chicken.

Follow chalky roads with potholes big enough to fall into.

Trip extras: Sleep in the bush; avoid bandits and malaria; bribe the occasional border guard.

Miles: 3,000.

Transportation: Perhaps one of the most rickety and rambling vehicles on earth - a motorized rickshaw.

Not exactly your idea of a vacation?

It’s how Freddy Gonzales and Valerie McDyer chose to spend theirs.

On New Year’s Day, the Somerville husband and wife set out in a convoy of roughly 70 teams traversing India in a hot, dusty, sweaty, perilous, two-week charity race known as the Rickshaw Run.

“It’s dangerous, unusual. It’s also the sense of adventure,’’ Gonzales, 62, said from his seat in a Boston bar a couple weeks before queuing up at the South Asian starting line. “What better way to see a country?’’

For this couple, charity isn’t pulling out a checkbook, donating blood, or attending a swanky party. It’s jumping out of airplanes, scaling the world’s tallest mountains, or - as they did this month - driving thousands of miles across harsh terrain in a ridiculously inadequate vehicle.

Manning a cramped, three-wheeled, door-less, 7-horsepower rickshaw, McDyer and Gonzales set off from Jaisalmer in the country’s northwest region Jan. 1 along with 66 other teams, and, 12 days later, ended 3,000 miles southeast in Cochin. All the while, they raised money for the British-based charity Frank Water, which manages hydro improvement projects across India.

Unusual as it may sound, though, the cross-country race is a frequent enterprise: It’s put on three times a year by the British company The Adventurists, which organizes similarly daredevilish expeditions across Mongolia and Africa.

As for the logistics, the company provides the rickshaw (which it describes on its website as “loud, uncomfortable, prone to breaking down a lot and completely useless at protecting you from the elements’’) and nothing more. Teams must barter for roadside repairs, find food, and occasionally deal with bandits and wild animals.

Given that, the organizers don’t dilly-dally around the inherent dangerousness of the event. As they caution on their website, people who have taken part in their past races have been “permanently disfigured, seriously disabled,’’ and have even died.

“You really are on your own, and you really are putting both your health and life at risk,’’ the website reads.

So leading up to the race, were McDyer and Gonzales even just a little bit scared?

“No,’’ shrugged the light-haired, fair-skinned, Irish-born McDyer, who, when she isn’t endangering her life, works as a program manager at DST Systems in Boston. “More excited. We’ll deal with the situations as they happen.’’

Her bearded, bespectacled and salt-and-pepper haired husband, director of corporate and community education at Roxbury Community College, wasn’t quite so bold. “She says ‘no,’ ’’ he said with a laugh. “I say ‘yes.’ ’’

Fitting with the hazardous and irreverent nature of the trek, the couple dubbed their team the “Delhi Bellies,’’ a playful name for the not-so-playful gastrointestinal issues that afflict some tourists, and had their primitive and clunky vehicle painted with the logo of their sponsor, a Vermont-based T-shirt and novelty company.

Stocked with clean water, canned food, spare parts, mosquito nets, survival guides, maps, and duct tape (for makeshift repairs), they traced the western coast of India, passing through deserts, forests, and mountains along the way.

And as they fully expected, things went wrong.

According to updates posted to the couple’s blog, rickshaws flipped over and constantly broke down (theirs had issues with just about everything - wheel bearings, exhaust system, engine mountings, and clutch), and they had to pay fines, were issued police tickets, and dealt with threats to confiscate their licenses.

Then there’s the inherent peril of simply driving in the country, often embodied by the truck and bus drivers who “will come straight at you,’’ McDyer said through a rolling Irish lilt. “You have to get off the road.’’

Still, it wasn’t the couple’s first odyssey in an unfamiliar land. They previously took part in The Adventurists’ Africa Rally, driving through more than a half-dozen countries, from Senegal to Cameroon, in a ’96 Saab in 100-plus-degree heat amid heightened terrorist activity. McDyer has also done multi-day breast cancer walks, organized two skydiving events, and in 2002 hiked for five days in South Africa’s Cederberg Wilderness to raise money for AIDS vaccine research.

“We look for different things to do, put ourselves on the line,’’ said Gonzales.

Together, they figure they’ve raised between $55,000 and $60,000 for charities and causes over the years, including Alzheimer’s research, the Amani Children’s Home in Tanzania, and Send a Cow.

For Frank Water, meanwhile, they have raised about $3,700 so far, according to The Adventurists’ website.

The charity will receive the first $775 raised by each team, said Frank Water founder Katie Alcott, which it will use to tackle biological and chemical water pollution in southern India. (Anything raised above that goes to each team’s cause of choice.)

Money goes much farther in countries like India, said Alcott. “We can do a lot with a small amount’’ of it, she said in a Skype interview.

Which is the case with many of the charities the couple works with. “They don’t raise millions of dollars, but the dollars that they do raise go far and help a lot of people,’’ said Paul Wheeler, president and co-owner of the company that designed Delhi Belly T-shirts. “They’ve got a lot of heart. It’s unique that they find these very unusual ways to help raise awareness.’’

But then, nothing they do is conventional. After meeting at a Boston pub, the two wed in 2005 - on the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. After a 7 1/2-day climb to the 19,340-foot summit, they were married by a friend before frostbite or altitude sickness could sink in.

And when they’re not involved in crazy stunts, they like to travel to Ireland and Puerto Rico and attend boxing events.

“We have fun,’’ McDyer said. “Our attitude is you only have one life, so you have to make the most of it.’’