The Great Kathmandu-Dhaka Volkswagen Beetle Spinal Injury Fundraising Drive
When the idea hit us, it did so in our bellies. A massive whump planted itself in the solar plexus, and we knew we had to take it up, beat the challenge and take this ride. It is 1200 km from Kathmandu, where the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (SIRC) is, to Dhaka, where its experienced older cousin, the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed, is based. The newly started SIRC desperately needed 12 lakh Nepali Rupees for sheer survival and to invest in much needed physiotherapy equipment. The numbers fit together so beautifully, the poetry of it could not be ignored. And thus it was decided that The Great Kathmandu-Dhaka Volkswagen Beetle Spinal Injury Fundraising Drive would be done. We would yet find support from all over to sponsor the ride at the rate of 1000 Nepali rupees or a rupee a kilometre, raising (we hoped) NPR 12 lakh in the process.
When the idea hit us, it did so in our bellies. A massive whump planted itself in the solar plexus, and we knew we had to take it up, beat the challenge and take this ride. It is 1200 km from Kathmandu, where the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (SIRC) is, to Dhaka, where its experienced older cousin, the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed, is based. The newly started SIRC desperately needed 12 lakh Nepali Rupees for sheer survival and to invest in much needed physiotherapy equipment. The numbers fit together so beautifully, the poetry of it could not be ignored. And thus it was decided that The Great Kathmandu-Dhaka Volkswagen Beetle Spinal Injury Fundraising Drive would be done. We would yet find support from all over to sponsor the ride at the rate of 1000 Nepali rupees or a rupee a kilometre, raising (we hoped) NPR 12 lakh in the process.
Plans finally bore fruit auspiciously on 12 July 2002, with Himali, Miku and me being flagged off with much enthusiasm at the SIRC in Jorpati, with garlands from the patients, tika, khada and Salil, Kathmandu's best (actually only) didgeridoo player, weaving his music and magic into the morning while doing a circumambulation of the 1973 Volkswagen Beetle. We drove out with the best wishes of the patients and a good many friends who had come to see us off. Leaving behind Kathmandu Valley's congestion was going to be great, a point that reinforced itself when we found ourselves right in the slipstream of a truck full of slopping cow dung (where did it come from, where was it headed?), its aromatic contents splattering our path all the way around the Ring Road. But we managed to lose the truck at Kalanki, not a moment too soon too, and made our exit from the valley via Thankot. There were no clouds in the sky, so the fear of encountering landslide blockage on the road receded. The car seemed to dislike inclines, and it was fortunate that our trip was decidedly downhill all the way to the delta!