M Gajendran (right) with the director and employees of a public school near Dehri-on-Sone in Rohtas district on Wednesday. Picture by Sanjay Choudhary

Bihar has changed. Even outsiders have started realising it.

M. Gajendran, who has undertaken a bicycle journey from Kanyakumari to London to curb corruption, found Bihar different from what it is described as after entering the state on Monday. Sixty-year-old Gajendran, a native of Avadi near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, today spent a few hours with students of a public school at a remote village in the Maoist-affected Rohtas district. From there, he left for Uttar Pradesh en route to Delhi, where he would meet home minister P. Chidambaram.

Gajendran told The Telegraph he had not expected such a huge response from the people of the state, which had once become synonymous with crime.

“The people of this state are courteous and I didn’t find anything wrong with them. I moved fearlessly, even in areas known as Maoists’ den,” he said, adding that moving on a bicycle, particularly for outsiders, in Maoist-hit areas like Aurangabad and Rohtas was not considered safe a few years ago.

“The day I entered Bihar from Bengal, some people advised me not to move around after sunset. But I have travelled on the national highways passing through Bihar and reached Rohtas on the border of eastern Uttar Pradesh and found nothing wrong,” he said.

Gajendran launched his journey from Kanyakumari on August 15 last year and has so far crossed 12 states, covering a distance of about 9,000km in about eight months. According to schedule, he would reach London in May 2012 after passing through several countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, Germany and France.

“I will be the first Indian to reach London on a bicycle from Kanyakumari. I will meet Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister David Cameron, who have agreed to release my book, Morutbal Tewt (Naitik Parivarthan),” Gajendran said. The 270-page book, written in Tamil, highlights corruption in India. The book is also being translated into English to attract international readership. The book, titled Need Reforms, would expose corruption by politicians, bureaucrats and police in the country.