Records are nothing new for Shyni Rajkumar, founder of ‘Dauntless Royal Explorers,’ the first women-only bullet club in the State.
Shyni, a tireless traveller, is always in search of adventure. Come June and this 37-year-old mother of a teenage boy is planning the greatest adventure of her life. She will set out on her ‘Himalayan’ to the interiors of India, to experience the nook and corner of the country. The journey will take at least a year and a half to complete and will probably result in a world record for the distance covered.
“I know it is going to be very tricky for a lone woman to travel in such a manner. I may not even get proper accommodation in many parts of India, especially in the rural areas. But this has been my dream for a long time,” Shyni said. “I had planned this adventure in 2020, but had to postpone for a year due to COVID-19,” she added.
Overcoming challenges
It was in 2016 that Shyni founded Dauntless Royal Explorers in Thiruvananthapuram, which now has six branches across the State. “The very purpose of the club is to encourage women to travel on their own and to help them overcome the challenges in life,” she said. Now the club has around 250 on and off members and around 150 active members who used to go on long rides quite often on their motorbikes before the COVID-19 struck.
Shyni is the first woman in Kerala to buy the ‘Himalayan’ edition of Royal Enfield. In 2017, she did the K2K (Kanyakumari to Kashmir) ride covering 12,000 km in 42 days. Later, she bagged the ‘Iron Butt’ title, a dream of riders in the country, by travelling from Bengaluru to Pune and back in 23 and half hours.
A former athlete, State cricketer, policewoman and now a riding instructor for women, the theme of all of Shyni’s travels is to create awareness of violence against women. This time it is ‘Educate and Empower women to enlighten India.’
