Calcutta: A doctor and her husband are set to embark on a 43,000km journey across 35 countries to tell people how some simple corrections in postures and changes in everyday practices can reduce pain.
The couple, who are taking their four-year-old daughter on their four-month odyssey with a cause, are also looking forward to seeing the northern lights in Norway, catching the Durga Puja celebrations in Moscow and visiting the spot where the Great Wall of China ends at Jia Yu Guan.
Debanjali Ray, an anaesthesiologist who has specialised in pain management, said the route they had chalked out would take them to remote villages, where they would speak to local communities at gatherings that the International Association for the Study of Pain would organise.
Husband Kaushik Roy, a businessman who loves driving, just like her, will take notes on road safety measures in all the countries they will visit. The jottings will help him plan an awareness campaign on road safety once the family is back home.
The couple from Chandernagore will start "The Odyssey - Safe Drive to a Pain Free Life" on August 26, they announced at a press conference at the Automobile Association of Eastern India, of which both are members.
"I have made a list of the different things I will talk about while meeting communities as we go along. We will just attempt to give simple tips that will make life a little more pain-free for the people we will meet," said Ray, who did her MBBS from RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
She did master's in anaesthesiology at Burdwan Medical College and a fellowship in interventional pain management at ESI Institute of Pain Management, Sealdah.
The Ray-Roy journey in their five-year-old Toyota Fortuna is set to take them to Myanmar, Thailand, China, Uzbekistan, Russia, Norway, Sweden and a host of other European countries till they reach Iran, from where they will take a ferry to the UAE before driving on to Saudi Arabia and Oman.
In Oman, they will ship their car to Mumbai before flying down to resume their journey back to Calcutta.
Ray, who had learnt driving in a Maruti 800 she had brought in 2008, said they would meet in Uzbekistan a community of miners who she would tell about the need to have at least four litres of water in an eight-hour shift because of the laborious nature of the job.
She will meet a group of pregnant women in a hospital in the Netherlands and explain to them the methods that reduce pain during a normal delivery.
She will also speak about the precautions to be taken by women who have undergone abdominal surgeries, posture-related problems of IT employees and the types of pain experienced by children.
"The other aspect of the journey is that I and my wife both like driving and this is a dream tour during which we will visit so many countries and observe so many people closely," Roy said.
The couple said they were not worried about how their daughter Deyasinee would cope with such a long journey. "Our daughter, too, loves long drive, so much so that she is the least of my worries," Ray said.
