Durga Charan Mishra and wife Jyotshna Mishra show their Guinness record. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, May 5: Retired people usually prefer the shade of home and a quiet, cosy life. Not Durga Charan Mishra of Puri.

Durga Charan, 62, along with wife Jyotshna, has created a Guinness world record for the longest journey by car in a single country. The certificate from the UK reached the couple on Saturday.

Durga Charan has to his credit many solo and couple bike expeditions with many of them making national records and one a world record. This time, he and his 53-year-old wife chose a Maruti WagonR for their adventure.

“The journey began from Puri on February 23 and we covered almost all parts of India following the guidelines set by the Guinness World Records. From Puri, we went to Ranchi, Guwahati, Nagaland, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Madurai, Kanyakumari, Bangalore, Pune, Aurangabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Jhansi, Amritsar, Delhi and Varanasi. A vehicle GPS tracker system was fitted on our car and a logbook that asked us to get an entry from several police stations on our way every day,” said Durga Charan.

The duo broke the existing Guinness record of 15,793km (9,813.3) miles and reached Puri on April 1 after driving for 38 days and covering 18,458km (11,469 miles). The previous record was achieved by Gennadij Paramonov (Russia) and Rainer Zietlow (Germany), who drove three Volkswagen Amaroks from Moscow to Petropavlovsk in 2013.

The couple recalls that the journey, though exciting, wasn’t easy.

“As we went ahead on our car we encountered a number of hard challenges. Travelling and going up a mountain on a car in India is not only extremely tiring, but the ultimate test of physical stamina and willpower that made our experience much more challenging and thrilling. Heavy rain, differences in temperature, rapid change in weather, different types of roads, roadblocks and breakdowns made the expedition thrilling,” said Jyotshna.

“We feel more youths should come forward and take up the challenge. It is an expression of freedom and the spirit of exploring the world around us,” said Durga Charan, a retired central government employee.

Their son Anupam is a film director in Mumbai and daughter Anusha lives in California.

“Apart from our own determination, what helps us aim higher every time is the support from our children who track us through GPS,” said Durga Charan.