Meet the woman cyclist going on a record-breaking ride around the world

In 2019, Vedangi Kulkarni circumnavigated the world on a bicycle. She finished the 29,000km distance on Christmas eve in 159 days. At 19 years, she was the youngest woman to pull off the feat. Yet, she felt that she could have been a lot faster.  

During the ride, she suffered a bout of food poisoning in Australia, a grizzly bear chase in Canada and a mugging incident in Spain that left her concussed. By the time she finished, there was a sense of delight and pride on realising what she had achieved, but she still felt something was missing. So, she simply decided to do it all over again.

Also read: Fitness: How to be the fastest runner in an ultra marathon

“Six years ago, I was just a teenager and my reasons for doing it were very different. My relationship with adventure has grown in a positive way over the last few years. I started having more fun with it. Then again, I don’t think you can ever be ready to do something of this sort. I just felt it was time to have another go,” Kulkarni, 25, says.

On 8 July, she will get her ride underway from Rambha near Chilika Lake in Odisha. She’ll ride up the coast to Siliguri or Guwahati, then fly out to Mongolia and ride across the country, before heading over to Australia and New Zealand. From here, she’ll travel to Peru and onward to Bolivia. Then it’s off to Europe, starting at Portugal and travelling north to Sweden, then turning south-east to travel through Estonia, Latvia and Belarus. After a short ride across Oman, the final leg will bring her to Koteshwar in Kutch from where she’ll go south towards Kanyakumari, and finally back along the east coast to her starting point in Ramba.

“The original route was a lot simpler, but my visa for the US and Canada didn’t happen. So I had to work out a new one, though a lot of decisions will be made during the ride,” she says. 

Since last year, Kulkarni has been participating in a number of endurance efforts that have readied her for the circumnavigation attempt. She’s finished gruelling mountain biking races such as the Strathpuffer, a 24-hour endurance event in the highlands of Scotland in peak winter, and the Megavalanche in France, a 23km downhill enduro race with an elevation loss of 2,600m. She also took on a cross-country skiing expedition of 185km in four days in Sweden and an endurance run that featured distances of 43km and 37km on consecutive days. In June, she set the fastest time for a female rider on the Manali-Leh route that runs across five high passes. 

“The Manali to Leh ride was special. I had worked hard for it over a short period of time. Though I didn’t get the record by a big margin, it made me realise that when I put my heart in it, things do work out,” she says.

Kulkarni, who hails from Pune, has been based out of Inverness in Scotland for the past few years. She’s been working with British coach Jon Fearne and her mentor back home, Sumit Patil. Each day started with meditation and yoga, as she looked to put in around 20-25 hours of training in a week. A lot of her outdoor rides were based on time rather than distance, where she would set off on mixed terrain for 6-8 hours. On the indoor trainer, she specifically focussed on fixing her weaker areas.

“For instance, I love pedalling up long climbs, but I don’t necessarily do it at a very fast pace. So I put in short, hard sessions on the trainer to address it, which at times broke me. It pushed me both physically and mentally, so there was a sense of accomplishment when I finished it well. The data too returned good numbers, so I knew this structured approach was working for me,” she recalls. 

At the gym, she focused on functional upper body workouts, a lot of core sessions and specific work on the quads and glutes to engage them while riding. She says that her neighbours were often left aghast when they found her dragging a tyre behind her for hours, the workout intensified over time with the addition of a weighted backpack to build strength. All along, she monitored her heart rate to ensure that it didn’t cross a certain threshold. 

She made effective use of a fitness band to keep track of her effort and recovery, before planning her training the following day. For recovery and to build resistance against cold, she would simply take a dip in the freezing lakes around home. “Through the last few months, I’ve been running around for fundraising or to attend to other things. But I managed my workouts with whatever I had available around me. So from lifestyle choices like taking the stairs, to waking up in the middle of the night and finishing a core workout, or multiple hill repetitions during a cycling event where I was a spectator, I’ve done it all. And it’s made me realise that there are many ways to achieve your goals, as long as you want to make it happen,” she says. 

The current record for the fastest circumnavigation by a woman is Scotland’s Jenny Graham: 124 days. Kulkarni has 110 days on her mind. Her plan is to ride an average of 270-300km each day, with an early start and end. The clock never stops, which means that her transit time while flying is a cause for concern. But it simply means she’ll have to push harder on certain legs of the tour.

For all those days, she’ll have the company of strangers and their kindness on the road. And her trusted bicycle that carries words of encouragement from her family and friends. The one that resonates most with her reads, “The farther I go, the stronger I get”. It all starts with that first push next week.

Shail Desai is a Mumbai-based freelance writer.

Also read: Anjum Moudgil’s Journey to the Paris Olympics