NRI couple on ‘Ride over land’

Wednesday, 13/02/2013

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When Nick and Kanchen married four years ago, what they had in their mind was not to begin with a family. But, set out on a world tour, before getting busy with filial duty.

Now, it has been 16 months, the couple embarked on a gruelling journey. According to their itinerary, still 15 months are left to call it off. 

What makes it further interesting for the adventure buffs, the couple on their tour on a modified mobike.On Tuesday, the couple were in the city and Deccan Herald spotted them when they were repairing their mobike at a friend’s place in Saraswatipuram.

The US based Indian couple - Nick, aged 34 and Kanchen Sarao, 30 were working at oil company and pharmacy respectively. They entered  Karnataka from Maharashtra side two days ago and reached Mysore via Bangalore. They left for Kerala in the evening.

The tour named; ‘Ride Over Land’ began from India on October 2011. After having shipped their mobike from USA to Patiala, Punjab, they began travelling around Kashmir-Ladakh-Nepal-North East India-Kolkata.

Then they shipped the two-wheeler to Thailand to travel around South East Asian nations-Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam-Malaysia-Singapore-Indonesia and others smaller nations.

Their bike was again shipped (‘as one cannot ride their bike in both water and snow’) to Australia, where they rode the Australian outback to reach Melbourne. Their ride was shipped to Africa where they rode the ‘Dark Continent’. Yet with more than 70,000 kilometres across three continents, they have completed only ‘about half’ of their planned tour.

Imagine the African continent. In the course of their journey they were passing from Kenya to Ethiopia, in a 400 kilometre stretch of, “well, not road, just stones.”

“The pass, the only road to Ethiopia from Kenya is notorious for bandits. Two dacoits, belonging to the local tribe were chasing and shooting spears at us,” recalls Nick.

Kanchen, sitting behind Nick in an exuberant BMW-R1200 GS Adventure, had screamed at the top of her voice, asking Nick to accelerate.

“Two spears were shot, which fortunately did not hit. Then, the dacoits took aim at us with stones,” she detailed. They were lucky as they soon hit a short stretch of clean road, giving enough time for them to evade tribals.Later, they armed ourselves with stones too. Just in case.

Motorbike
Forgot to tell about the mobike. It is priced at Rs 24 lakh, yet Nick thought it to be according to his taste. For modifying the motorbike alone, he spent another few lakhs.

From Kerala, they will travel back north to enter Pakistan-Iran and towards Morocco. They plan to brave the chilly roads of Russia and Europe, followed by the tour across South America. The tour will end with North America