BENGALURU: When other women ask Esha Gupta, who recently rode 32,000 km solo across the country, if she was scared at all, she says, ‘Of what?’
“And they don’t have an answer to that,” says the 36-year-old. She returned from her 110-day ride across 16 states earlier this month.
It bothers the avid backpacker and biker to have India labelled a country unsafe to travel in. So in 2014, she went on her first cross-country biking trip along the Golden Quadrilateral.
“I went with a theme,” says the former corporate employee who quit her job in 2011 to give in to wanderlust. She made stops at 10 major cities along the 7,000 km route, talking to people, addressing the fear that gripped the country post the 2013 Delhi rape case.
“You have one bad experience or hear from someone -- or the news -- that something ghastly happened somewhere, and you decide it is dangerous without seeing for yourself,” she says.
After her 40-day Golden Quadrilateral ride, she wanted to extend her interactions to smaller towns and villages.
So with her biker network’s assistance, she charted a course through Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Fellow bikers cautioned her against breaking her ride on a whim in Bihar, Jarkhand, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
“A couple even wrote to me, saying they had a terrible experience driving though Madhya Pradesh with family. They said they would escort me through that route. A sweet gesture, but...” she leaves off.
Far from being dispirited by these warnings, she took them up as a challenge and was later surprised by the lush forests in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
“People keep their courtyards so clean there, and you hardly see any garbage in towns or villages,” she says.
The greenery in her home state – Esha hails from Uttar Pradesh – and Uttarakhand also came as a surprise, while the sorry state of the drought-hit Maharashtra districts were rather a shock, she adds. But she was amazed by the sights the latter state had to offer a little more west, along the coast in particular.
While in Uttar Pradesh, she stopped in Lucknow for seven days for a friend’s wedding, and in Kerala, she stayed in her mother’s house in Aluva.
She is also delighted to have experienced towns whose existence she was hardly aware of. Chidambaram, Bidar, Malwa, Ratnagiri Okha and the Runn of Kutch make it to this list.
“As I talked to people about Beautiful India, my theme, I also learnt a lot from them,” she says.
As for safety, she says, any traveller, whether biker or backpacker, should blend in with the local culture and listen to their instincts.
Backpacking to Biking
In 2013, when she was on a backpacking trip in Leh-Ladakh, it struck her that a motorbike would make travelling easier.
“So, I came back to Bengaluru, and asked around in my friend circle if anyone would lend me theirs,” she says. “But people are possessive about their bikes. So I decided to buy my own, a Bajaj Avenger.”
She found balancing was not a problem as she had been riding a Honda Activa for a few years. “I took to riding quite naturally,” she says. “And I never tire when I’m on my bike.”
During her recent trip, even during the summer, she felt better riding than waiting for the heat to abate. “I found that the latter was more exhausting, especially on highways with little green cover,” she says.
Guinness Attempt
Esha Gupta, who says she could tirelessly ride hundreds of miles together, set out from Bengaluru this Republic Day to break the Guinness record for the longest bike ride by a woman.
“I needed to complete over 32,000 km for this,” she says. And she did. But while she was zipping along her trail, a new record was made. “Someone in USA rode about 78,000 km. She had applied last year, and got into the record book this year.”
But this didn’t dampen her spirits, she says.