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Men with a passion
A little over 11,000 kilometres criss-crossing through 16 Indian States in about 50 days — all for the cause of Peace.
BIKING IS a passion. So strong that it propelled this duo from Nepal to hit the road in India.
Rakesh Prasai and Capt. Sabin Basnyet, two biking enthusiasts, have taken up a long and arduous journey knitting the major cities along the west coast. The Himalayan Enfielders, as they call themselves, started their expedition from Chennai on Tuesday. Riding on their passion, as they would like to call it — a newly acquired 500 cc Royal Enfield.
Himalayan Enfielders, now nearly a year old with about 70 members, is a forum for people who have a passion for biking in Kathmandu. They organise short bike trips and sometimes, long rides across the picturesque countryside.
``In this trip, the message we are carrying is one of peace, brotherhood and friendship. Post Kandahar hijack and after Indo-Pak tension escalated, Nepal's tourism took a dip. This is a very small effort to improve things,'' they say.
While Rakesh, a computer hardware dealer, got his first Enfield in 1990, Capt. Basnyet who flies tourist helicopters in Kathmandu, got his about two years ago. Since then, their romance with the bikes drove them to start Himalayan Enfielders, a club that promotes bike tourism. Another objective of the expedition will be to establish contact with the various Enfield clubs in India to plan out future events, said V.Vikram and J.K. Rajagopal of Royal Enfield. Before this trip, they went through a week-long training on motorcycle repair and maintenance at the Royal Enfield factory in Thiruvottiyur.
The duo will pass through Tiruchi, Kodaikanal, Rameswaram and Kanyakumari before reaching Thiruvananthapuram. From there, they will move on to Kochi, Udhagamandalam, Bangalore, Goa, Pune and Mumbai.
En route, they will have a message of peace for the residents of strife-torn Ahmedabad before moving on to Rajasthan.The last part of their journey will cover Dehradun, Nepalganj, Pokhra and finally reaching Kathmandu by mid-August.
By Saptarshi Bhattacharya
Photo: K. Gajendran
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