It’s taken Aaftab Faridi, a 23-year-old from Delhi, 93 days across 12 states to cover 8,975 km on his bicycle. He has to do another 10,000 km to reach his goal, that of the Guinness record for the longest journey by bicycle in a single country held at the moment by Benjamin Woods of Australia.
Faridi, a political science student at Delhi University, is skipping his final-year exams to break the record and highlight his message of ‘Respect for Soldiers’. His family lives in East Delhi’s Shahdra locality and runs a garments factory.
“My family had dreams of me having a job and earning good money. But jobs are so less and people don’t get any scope to dream. I am skipping this year because I am attempting a world record,” says the cyclist who worked at a Decathalon sports store till he started his journey this August.
Faridi has tried his hand at various sports from 100 meters dash to 400 meters sprint, before he was suggested by his friends to take up cycling. “I was a state medalist within three months and qualified for the nationals in six months,” he says.
That’s when the reality of cycling hit him. “The cost of cycles range from between Rs 75,000 and Rs 8 lakh,” he says, pointing to his bicycle which costs Rs 1.2 lakh and was donated by Gaurav Wadhwa, a senior cyclist who runs a sports shop in East Delhi. ”There was no contract deal, no sponsorship. He just gave me a cycle and told me to ride,” says Faridi. He also managed to raise Rs 15,000 as donations via PayTm which helped him buy a sleeping bag, mattress and winter garments. He’s also secured a GPS device to keep track of his progress.
Till a few months back Faridi was content with this job, that of a T2 certified technician at Decathalon. But his dreams started taking flight when he met a woman who had cycled across all 29 states of India and was planning to cycle across the globe. Over the next two sleepless nights, Faridi says, he struggled between the choice of a college degree, a job and new his dream to cycle across India.
While initially he was gunning for the Santosh Holi’s record of 15,200 km solo on cycle, he now wants to cross the 30,000 mark in nine months of continuous cycling. “I want to travel not just for the love of cycling but to spread the message of courage and discipline in the youth of our country,” he says.