15 Chennaiites leave for Khardung La from Kanniyakumari to fulfil dreams, support causes

Today, a group of 15 will take off for this ‘K2K Challenge’. They aim to cover 7,000-odd kilometres within 10 days, and will be travelling on five superbikes and two SUVs. Each rider is from a different part of the city, says one of the members, Rohit Karmakar. “I stay in Velachery while the others are in Perambur, Gummidipundi and so on. We met through different biking groups and grew closer thanks to social media,” he said. The riders are all between 23 and 37 years of age.

For Harish Rossi, another member, “This is more a personal challenge for me than just a ride because of my MV Agusta bike — many people, including me, feel it is impossible to take this vehicle all the way to Leh but I’m going try no matter how hard it gets.” A mechanic, cameraman and drone operator will stay with the team through the ride.

But these go-getters aren’t travellers without a purpose. “One of our earlier rides was for a cause to stop violence against women. We covered 16 states and donated around Rs 40,000 to NGOs in these regions, who are also working towards this,” said Rohit.

Similarly, 38-year-old Lalith Kumar, who has been confined to a wheelchair since he was eleven years old, covered the K2K stretch to create awareness about people with disabilities. “I ride to break the taboo that people with disabilities cannot ride a motorcycle,” he told DT Next. The ride was the first of its kind for a disabled person and he decided to call it Disability Education Awareness Ride (DEAR). Apart from cutting across the length of the country on his customised 500 CC bike, he has also travelled to Goa for a bikers’ meetup.

Two of the popular routes that most petroheads take is Kanniyakumari to Bengaluru, Mumbai, Udaipur, Delhi, Amritsar, Srinagar, Sonamarg and finally the Khardung La pass in Leh. “This is slightly different from the route that I took. I started from Coimbatore, rode to Kanniyakumari, then went to Madurai, Hosur, Belgavi, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Jammu, Srinagar, Kargil and Khardung La,” says another biker Sankar S. He added Pangong, Sarchu and Manali to his list.