Kapil and Niroo Asrani

The Indian juggernaut in Amazing Race Asia 3 has been struggling, to put it mildly. The Rai cousins — Neena and Amit — have been eliminated. And the other Indians in the fray, the father-and-son duo of Niroo and Kapil Asrani, have just about survived another episode on the AXN show. But given their never-say-die attitude the Asranis can only go from strength to strength from here.

“We can’t tell you how we eventually fared but it was super fun,” laughs Kapil on the phone. “Where else would we have got to do what we did on Amazing Race? It was an experience of a lifetime and I am sure it will come once this lifetime.”

Billed as “the toughest race ever”, the third season of the Asian counterpart of Amazing Race includes two teams each from India, Thailand and Malaysia and one team each from Singapore, Philippines, Korea and Hong Kong. Teams India haven’t done themselves proud in the previous two seasons with Malaysia and Singapore winning in 2006 and 2007. In the first season, Prashant was one half of the India team and went on to be Jai in Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag.

This year, Niroo and Kapil are running for the $ 100,000 prize money and it’s not going to be easy given that one of the production crew members was hospitalised during the race! “Oh, it was tough, really really tough,” says Kapil, who is an HR executive. “Adventurous yes but easy no. Because at any given point of time you had to take care of so many things. You had to keep an eye on the clock, finish your task, run to the end point… it was madness.”

But one thing Amazing Race does for every pair, and Niroo and Kapil were no exception, it brings them closer to each other. “I joined the race only for my dad because he is heavily into adventure sports and really wanted to take part,” Kapil reveals. “And at no point of time did I feel that a younger partner would have been better. This race was because of him and we just had a great time.”

To find out whether the Asranis had only fun or made some money on the way, watch Amazing Race Asia 3 every Thursday night at 10pm on AXN.