200 km by cycle with few supplies and no money.
Wanderlust had been boiling within me for the last three years. Eventually, it became so intense that I quit my stable job in Delhi. With this newfound freedom, however, my days were suddenly reduced to incessantly checking my e-mail. I had to make a move, and it was while at the computer terminal one day in January, that I saw the note about the Udaipur Cycle Yatra: a 200-km cycle journey to be completed in seven days. And there was a twist: the entire trip was to be done without any money or access to electronic equipment. I signed up for the trip and, on 22 February, found myself at the office of the trip organiser, Shikshantar, an organisation that seeks to promote alternative methods of learning.
Upon arrival at the Udaipur Bus Terminal I hop onto an auto-rickshaw to Kharol Colony, where the Shikshantar office is located. Inside, the first person to greet me is Ramavtar Singh, a tall man in khadi. A strict Gandhian, he walks barefoot. Born in Ajmer, he knows the villages of Rajasthan intimately; he is the 'front man' of the group, though he is adamant that there is no leader of the Yatra. In the Shikshantar sitting room are some fellow travellers: Vishwen, a solar-equipment maker from Gujarat; Ankit, an accounting student, also from Gujarat; Katerine, a medical science and Ayurveda researcher from Belgium; Biswas, an NGO employee and amateur poet from Madhya Pradesh; Daksh, a journalist from Indore with a penchant for cracking jokes; and Prince, Daksh's co-worker and constant companion, who always wears a cap. There are altogether 13 participants, many old friends of Shikshantar and a few first-timers, like myself. Our destination is Kumbhalgarh, about 85 km from Udaipur, from where we will take another route back to our starting point.
andOn the following day's sunny morning, our yatra gets underway amidst much excitement, singing and sloganeering. The merriment abates as soon as the terrain of the Aravalli hills, which surround us, begins to demand increasingly hard work on the pedals. Though the landscape is mostly arid, Ramavtar is good at spotting trees that provide edibles: mostly neem, babul and cactuses, as well as the occasional imly, amla and sugarcane. After cycling for about four hours, covering around 25 km, we reach the village of Kumaoto ka Guda, our resting place for the night – and where we hope to find food and shelter, as well as a bit of work to 'pay' for these. But the reality here is stark. There is no work in the village. An extended drought in the area has destroyed cultivation, the main form of employment; most of the men have migrated to the cities in search of work, or are absorbed in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. After a half-hour of fruitless search, we reconvene at the village square to consider the options. It is already late afternoon, and only six of us have found work and food.