Arunabh Majumdar is on another ride which will make you sit up and take notice. The last time he rode all the way from Bangalore to Bangkok on a humble 100cc commuter motorcycle. Showing a lot of heart and truly living the adage ‘that it is not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog’.
On this occasion, the braveheart is going around India, Nepal and Bhutan on a Honda Navi, an automatic 100cc scooter, not something that most people will look forward to when traversing the rough and sometimes brutal terrain of the Himalayas. If you think that is impressive, then you should read WHY he is doing it! Without wasting any more time, we let the man speak!
Why the ride? And the cause behind it?
We live in a country where farmer suicides are the norm. We share the misery of people dying, feeling content assuming we have done our part. The farmer suicide issue in India has been raging on a for a while now and the Tamil Nadu drought has been the worst in the last 160 years.
What prompted me to action was the fact that not enough people were aware that there was a problem to begin with. During the Chennai floods, the people worked as one and help poured in from all sides. A large part of the seamless coordination was due to social media. With regular updates from various help groups, the Chennai floods are a prime example that a difference can be made if we want to.
A particular photo of a farmer holding up the skulls of his dead relatives during the 100-day protest of the farmers at New Delhi made me realise that the main reason the farmer issue was largely being neglected was awareness. Not enough people knew that there was an ongoing issue. It was one of those also-ran news blips which we all are too familiar with.
The TVS Bangalore-Bangkok Moto Run 2015 was my first foray into the understanding of how social media can make apparently simple things go “viral”.
A nation wide ride has been done to death by too many people. Nothing new about that. The primary reason the Bangalore-Bangkok ride gained traction was the fact that it was on a 100cc commuter motorcycle.
That’s when the idea of a tri-nation ride came up. But not just any tri-nation ride. Across the toughest off-roading sections of the Himalayas in India, Nepal and Bhutan. And to make it more difficult, to do this on a 100cc gearless scooter. The main agenda was to turn heads.
If the ride has to go viral or atleast gain a fair amount of attention it has to be something unique, something which has a high probability of failure. No one wants to see stuff which they know is going to succeed. The ride is designed to be hard by default. Infact, the odds of finishing the ride are pretty slim.
The ride attempts to create a viral sensation. A 100cc scooter in the himalayas isn’t something you hear everyday. That’s clickbait! Why is the scooter in the Himalayas? The cause follows. That’s the thought. If our news feed can be filled with debates if peacocks are celibates and if peacock tears can improve fertility, I personally feel this has a higher chance of cluttering people’s walls.
Happy to say have finally finished Bhutan’s Chelela Pass and the infamous Muktinath circuit.
Here’s the donation link: http://bit.ly/2fdGkuq
