I've always loved cars. My mother taught me driving five years ago. When I started learning how to drive, a lot of our relatives thought I'd never be able to do it. “Take him around yourself,” they'd tell my mother. “Don't let him drive alone.” But she didn't listen to them. Neither did I.
My father gifted me this Hyundai i20 in 2015. Once I got an Invalid Carriage license, I had the car modified to suit my disability (Spina Bifida, a genetic condition that leaves a person without sensation below the knees in both legs). The clutch is now a button on the gear-stick. It helps because there is no load on my left leg. I have always had a passion for long, highway drives, but I had never found the time. In July this year, I got a good break in the off-season. So I decided to do a full loop of the Golden Quadrilateral.
I had read that another differently-abled man had completed the journey, driving solo, in 130 hours. I wanted to beat that time. I roped in a childhood friend, Vivek, as a navigator and we set off from Bengaluru. We drove through Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and then back. I completed the trip in 124 hours and 52 minutes, covering a distance of 5,846 km in total.
I drove around 1,100km on average every day, spending 19-20 hours at the wheel. We mostly slept in the car. Only once did we stay in a hotel, somewhere between Delhi and Patna, because I was totally exhausted that day. We'd only stop a couple of times a day, to stretch and freshen up. We skipped a lot of lunches and dinners. We'd go to sleep by 1 a.m. and start again by 4 a.m. to beat the traffic.
There were so many challenges. Every day there was a reason for us to give up. On the first night we parked our car in the slush. When we woke up in the morning, the tyres had sunk into the mud. We needed three hours to get out of there. We thought we'd lost too much time, but somehow we made it up.
Then somewhere near Varanasi there was a bad accident between a car and a truck that caused a major jam. The traffic police arrived and they shut off one side of the road. They then alternated, allowing one-way traffic in each direction every hour. We were a long way from the front. It would have taken us three or four hours to get out. So we went up to the police to explain our situation; we told them we had a timer running. They were very understanding. They kept our side open till we passed, and we saved so much time. We completed the trip in 124 hours and 52 minutes—well within my target. We had covered a distance of 5,846km in total. Sitting in the same position for so long every day was a difficult task. I did not know when my legs would give up. My knees were totally swollen by the end of the trip. My legs were numb. But I did not give up. I never have. Nor should you.
Niranjan Mukundan is a 23-year-old para-swimmer. At the 2016 IWAS Junior World Games he won eight medals; this year, he won five gold medals at the Para National Swimming Championships
(As told to Shreedutta Chidananda)
