78,000 km and going, 23-year-old Bengaluru biker breaks Guinness record

Bengaluru: For 23-year-old Gaurav Siddharth travelling solo is an addiction. He began his motorcycle odyssey in September 2015 and reached Bengaluru on Independence Day after traversing 78,250 kilometres, through 14 states. Though he is around half way through his journey, he has already broken the existing Guinness Record of the longest motorcycle journey in a single country, earlier set by Danell Lynn, an American biker.

Riding a Hero Impulse bike, he has already used 2,000 litres of petrol and intends to cover all the 29 states and finish his odyssey by April next year. He would be covering a whopping distance of 1.2 lakh kilometres, nearly three times the earth’s circumference (40,075 km).

He said his passion for such expeditions began when he first undertook a bicycle journey from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. He travelled 4.750 kilometres in 42 days.

“The transition happened because there’s only so much you can travel on a bicycle. I wanted to go the extra mile. Like they say once a tiger tastes human flesh, he wants more. Travelling is the exact addiction,” he said. He is positive about his countrywide odyssey.

As for his current ride he said it was a crazy one, but also a good learning experience. He said, “I’m learning so much as I have had the privilege to see these obscure villages and their cultures, which otherwise I hadn’t even heard of.”

Narrating his journey he said he came across a village called Wadiya in Gujarat, where prostitution was a tradition and also visited an environment conscious Piplantri village in Rajasthan, where hundred and eleven trees are planted each time a girl child is born.