He started at the base camp of Mount Everest and pedalling his bicycle, Narendra Singh is headed for Kanyakumari. And with the arduous trek through the cities, towns and through wilderness at times, Mr. Singh has a mission on hand — spread awareness on environment. The 31-year-old who earlier scaled Mount Everest and was there for an hour without oxygen, reached the city on Tuesday having already traversed around 10,300 km. On his final lap towards reaching Kanyakumari, Mr. Singh hardly shows any sign of fatigue and looks charged for the mission.
An employee of 19 Degree North, an adventure park at Aamby Valley City, Mr. Singh underscores the importance of recycling to save the environmental degradation. In fact his cycling expedition is called ‘Cycle to Recycle'.
“We need to recycle and manufacturers should come out with products that can be recycled. Else, we are heading for a crisis,” he says.
His commitment for environment has been such that after conquering Mount Everest, on his climb down, he cleared about 500 kg of garbage that was dumped by other mountaineers and lay strewn around there. “In those atmospheric conditions, it does not degrade and the garbage was lying there. I cleared what all I could,” he says. For the cycling expedition, he has been pedalling around 200 km each day and with favourable conditions, even managing another 20 km to 30 km. “I started on September 28 and am working towards covering the 12,000 km-plus distance in two months' time.” In the endeavour, he is accompanied and helped by Ajay Bhola, a former air force pilot.
Of the two, climbing Mount Everest or cycling through cities, which happens to be more tiring? Narendra Singh smiles and without much hesitation adds, “Negotiating the traffic in cities is more cumbersome than the climb of Everest”.
