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by IANS |
Jaipur, April 24 (IANS) This is the story of environment activist Narpat Singh Rajpurohit, a resident of Rajasthan's Barmer district, who travelled a distance of 30,120 km on his cycle, across 26 states, to spread awareness on the need to protect the environment.
Starting his journey from Kashmir on January 27, 2019, he cycled for 1,179 days and completed his tour at Amar Jawan Jyoti on April 20, 2022 which is the longest cycling tour of its kind in the world.
During this journey, he passed through 26 Indian states and 467 districts and planted a total of 94,100 saplings .
In fact, he interacted with people from place to place and taught them to plant trees for environmental protection and to conserve them.
Among those who congratulated Narpat are former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, MP P.P. Choudhary, Diya Kumari, Jaskaur Meena and former deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot among others.
Narpat Singh earlier had created the Golden Book of World Records by completing the 18,202 km journey on cycle. After this, he started cycling continuously to make the world record and on April 20, he completed his mission having logged a 30,120 km cycle journey that ended in Jaipur.
These 1,179 days of his cycling tour were full of adventures, he says.
During the commencement of his journey in Jammu and Kashmir, he did not get permission due to heavy snowfall. However, his persistence prevailed and he was later given permission.
Later, he encountered many wild animals during the journey in the hilly areas. Many times, he went without food. Despite this, he made the local people pledge to plant four to five saplings during his daily journey.
Rajpurohit has been devoted to plantation and protection of wildlife right from his student life.
During the marriage of his own sister Meena, he presented 251 saplings to guests who came in the processions and took a pledge to protect them. Recently, at the wedding of his niece Hansa Kanwar, 151 saplings were presented to the guests. Along with this, he has campaigned for the protection of wildlife in Barmer.
He has preserved and treated 169 chinkaras and more than 25 other extinct wild animals so far. Along with this, he arranges drinking water for wildlife in summers by bringing in water tankers. Also he makes people aware of the environment by running campaigns like Save Birds, Plant Birds, Plastic Liberation, etc.
Surprisingly, Narpat has a 10 per cent disability in the foot. Despite this challenge, he faced rain, winters, summers and adverse conditions, to complete his cycle journey which passed through 26 states.
"I have donated more than 90,000 saplings during this journey and will distribute more," he said.
On April 20, he confirmed that he has completed a 30,121.6 km cycling tour.
On his Twitter, he wrote, "30,121.6 km cycling tour concludes. The world's longest cycling tour for environmental protection ended in Jaipur at Amar Jawan Jyoti. Total time taken is 3 years 2 months 24 days, overall 1179 days, 20 states, 6 union territories in 467 districts."
The congratulatory messages pouring in on his Twitter handle assures him that his journey has been a success and at the same time is inspiring him to do more to script another success story.
