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| Members of the North East Bikers Association strike a pose at Sarusajai sports complex on Friday |
Jan. 18: A six-member team of North East Bikers Association will set out for a bike rally from here to Kanyakumari on Sunday. For adventurers Pranoy Bordoloi and co. it will be a test of character and fitness after their successful negotiation of the Himalayan terrain in the past.
Flagged off by state tourism minister Chandan Brahma from the Sarusajai sports complex today, the six bikers will ride through an arduous route of 3,510km in 11 days to reach the southernmost tip of India on January 31.
“We are setting out on the rally with the theme of ‘safe drive, save lives’ and it will be challenging for us because we will have to travel a long distance on plain roads where tendency to overspeed creeps in to every mind. We will have to struggle against that tendency as well as our own fitness,” said one of the riders, Dhiraj Dutta (Sr).
“We have earlier ridden on hilly terrain where one cannot speed beyond a safe limit. However, in the plains, things are different,” Dutta added.
“Apart from our motto of spreading awareness against rash riding, our objective is to encourage and promote adventure sport among the younger generation,” 48-year-old Bordoloi, who is the oldest in the team, said.
Flagging off the rally, Brahma hoped the team would succeed in its mission to spread awareness about safe driving and also promote adventure sport.
“I admire the spirit of the riders and wish them success,” he said.
The other members of the team include Hemanta Kumar Sarma, Suranjit Phukan, Jayanta Das and Dhiraj Dutta (Jr). The team will use four Royal Enfield Bullets, a Hero Honda Hunk and a Yamaha FZ, and will take the route via Jalpaiguri, Malda, Howrah, Bhubaneswar, Srikakulam, Rajahmundry, Angol, Chennai, Bangalore and Karur. The team will return by train.
“We are organising the rally all by ourselves, except for some financial assistance from a few of our well-wishers,” Bordoloi said.
Bordoloi and several members of the team had earlier been part of four such long-distance bike expeditions, one of the longest being from Delhi to Khardungla in Ladakh, besides going to the Himalayas in Bhutan and Nepal, to Nameri in Assam and to the Indo-Bangla border in Meghalaya via Cherapunjee.
“Our passion for adventure inspires us to undertake these expeditions,” Bordoloi, who made an unsuccessful attempt to scale Mt Everest last year, said.
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