T Srinivasa Rao and R Gnanasekaran have, for the past 16 years been embarking on such tours as part of their campaign: "Mission save earth", the objective of which is to spread world peace and environment protection.
They commenced on their present world tour on a Maruti gypsy from here on Wednesday.
The journey by the two environmental crusaders, which was flagged off by Mr Jagdish Khattar, Managing Director, Maruti Udyog Limited, will conclude at the UN headquarters in New York in December 2003.
It was 16 years ago, in 1986, that the youngsters from Pondicherry decided to combine their love for adventure with their concern for the earth and its environment. They began by travelling the world on a bicycle in 1986. Three years later, they had covered 65,000 km across 38 countries.
The second such endeavour was during 1990-93 when they covered 1.6 lakh kms across 70 countries in a Maruti gypsy.
This was followed by another tour, covering 55,000 kms on a car during 1996-98.
During their most recent tour, the fourth one, which concluded recently, the duo travelled 50,000 kms on a gypsy.
In all, they have travelled 3.5 lakh kms across 100 countries.
During their world tours, Rao and Gnanasekaran have interacted with a whole range of people, from world leaders and policy makers to students and youth organisations.
Among the prominent personalities that they had an opportunity to meet have been former UN Secretaries General Javier Perez De Cueller and Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali and incumbent Kofi Annan.
They also interacted with prominent personalities like Mahatir Bin Mohammad in Malaysia, Mr Malcom Fraser, Mr Bob Hawke and Mr Paul Keating in Australia, Mr Ingwar Carlson in Sweden and Mr Brian Mulroney in Canada. Similarly, they have met leaders of several African countries during their tours. During their tours, the two youngsters have also addressed thousands of students world-wide and motivated them to set up forums for environment protection.
"Environmental destruction in the past was small in scale with limited area of impact. With globalisation and spread of the consumer culture, the threat to the environment has increased manifold, thus increasing the role and importance of people-based initiatives like ours,"the duo say.
"Daunting as the task is, we believe that individual actions and campaigns can make a difference and save the earth," they said.
According to them, the motivation for all these trips has come from a desire to make a difference in human lives.
"Too many people believe that they are not capable of achieving much. We wanted to show it can be done," they say.
From encountering venomous snakes in zaire to being stranded for four days in the Sahara, Rao and Gnanasekaran have had a rich fund of experience. They drove through minus 40 degree celsius in Russia and were forced to spend three days in a Chinese prison during their endeavour.
The people in Russia and Mongolia were some of the warmest. They were extremely hospitable after they learnt the duo were Indians.
"The South American part of our journey was the stretch we enjoyed the most,"says Gnanasekaran.
"The people were friendly. There was also the amazonian rain forest, so important for us in terms of the message we were trying to propagate. It’s being denuded at such a rapid rate, we are losing hundreds of species of plant and animal life every month."
The duo travelled through the driest part on earth, the Arica Desert (Attagama Desert) in Chile, crossing the line of tropic of Capricorn, and 5000-metre high track through the Andes Mountains.
The duo has compiled their experiences in a book, mission save earth. (UNI)
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