Pedal Pusher Last week, on December 29, Ajay Lalwani returned from a 45-day, 7500-km long 'Blind Cycling Expedition' from Mumbai to Kashmir to Kanyakumari, along with an 18-member crew comprising a cook, a massager, drivers, photographers and a navigator. Sponsored mostly by an electric lighting company, partly by a crowdfunding campaign and "ten per cent by me", the trip saw the "100 per cent blind" Lalwani, a telephone operator at BMC's disaster management cell, pedalling through rainy bits of Rajasthan and steep Western ghats with the help of a navigation co-ordinator who screamed directions into his walkie-talkie throughout the journey. "At times, the cook replaced the navigation coordinator as it's a tiring job," says Lalwani, who had lugged 400kgs of groceries along, adding that the crew took turns cooking through the trip that saw them camping at various locations. Except for the nervous-making, steep ascents at the ghats between Udhampur and Pathankot marked by relentless honking, Lalwani says the ride was smooth. "I didn't suffer from cramps or dehydration at any point," says the 25-year[1]old who had undertaken two long-distance expeditions in the preceding years. While his room in Worli's BMC colony chews up more than half his salary every month, Lalwani spends the hours he would have lost commuting from his family home in Ulhasnagar to his workplace at Fort, pedalling towards a dream: "I want to summit Everest. "
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