Vedangi Kulkarni is 20, the youngest woman to bicycle around the world, and the fastest Asian to do it. In a journey across 15 countries, 29,000 km and 159 days, she says she is now in post-expedition mode, where the physical and mental intensity are slowly registering. “Now that it’s over, and I’m not riding anywhere, I wake up and say, ‘Where do I go today?’”
The spark
Vedangi, who is a second-year student at Bournemouth University, UK, where she’s studying sports management, said it was little things that egged her on to make the trip: reading about Juliana Buhring, the fastest woman in the world to do it, contemplating about her research topic, and the desire to have done something unique before graduating.
“I once set out to do 400 km in a day, and that turned into a 21-day ride across the UK,” she says. This gave her the confidence of riding ultra distances. “I’d moved to another country, I’d done something pretty big alone, and I felt I didn’t need someone with me all the time.” Most of her journey was done alone, except for some stretches that had her roommate Callum Howard ride along. “It was about exploring the world on my bike.”
The build-up
Her father reached out to sponsors, and bore a lot of the expense, along with being her strongest support. In addition, she had a solid team that gave her all the emotional support she needed: her friend Callum; her mentor, Sumit Patil; and her professors who helped her with diet, training, full-body conditioning, building mental strength.
“Something that stayed with me when I was at my lowest was that the sports psychologist had told me that no matter what the situation, always look at the good in it.” The advice stood her in good stead when she was mugged in Spain, and thrown headfirst into a ditch, leaving her with a concussion. “The people who saved my life were more important than those who nearly killed me,” she says.
The journey
She partitioned off the ride into 1,600-km ‘brackets’, beginning from Australia-New Zealand, going on to Canada, Europe, Russia and India, ending the ride in Australia. Her performance suffered terribly, after the attack, but she decided to continue — her bike was fine, and she took that as a sign. “There were days I would ride slower than I could walk.” She’d sometimes take 10 hours to finish the same distance she’d have done in 4 or 5 hours, but said to herself, “I will keep going.”
Her pattern was to ride 4 hours, rest 25 minutes, then ride another 4 hours, and rest for 4 or 5 hours, either pitching a tent or even in trucks, if she felt they were safe. “Russia was a surprise. There’s a false notion that the Russians are cold.” On the contrary, they offered her a spot in their car just to use the heater, or would sip tea with her, or feed her cottage-cheese pancakes.
With 30-35 kg on her cycle, no fixed nutrition plan (“I’d eat at gas stations: bacon rashers, meat jerky, peanut butter, tortilla wraps — anything for the calories, anything that was cheap.”), Vedangi Kulkarni arrived home in India, on Christmas eve. She soon plans to start an adventure scholarship for those who’d like to marry endurance athletics with adventure. As for her research study, she’ll probably do it on the link between trauma and performance.
