‘Tour de Manipal’ for a ‘Green and Healthy India Mission
Mangaluru: You’ve probably noticed that green is everywhere these days–in the news, politics, fashion, and even technology. You can hardly escape it on the Internet, and on many sources of media. That’s all great as far as we’re concerned. While it’s easy to get overwhelmed, it’s also simple to begin making a positive impact. There are many reasons behind why we should go green. The truth is that everything single thing we do every day has an impact on the planet — good or bad. The good news is that as an individual you have the power to control most of your choices and, therefore, the impact you create: from where you live to what you buy, eat, and use to light your home etc- you can have global impact. But embracing a greener lifestyle isn’t just about helping to preserve equatorial rain forests, it can also mean improving your health, improve the environment in the community, ultimately, improving your overall quality of life. Why wouldn’t anyone want to go green?
Keeping this in mind, “Tour de Manipal” is a Campus connect cycling initiative by Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal University aiming for Green-and-Healthy India Mission. Through this, student-alumni-staff of MIT will cycle 3000+ kms in 25 days to connect all campuses of Manipal University at Manipal, Mangaluru, Bengaluru, and Jaipur; and also connect them with other Institutes on the way. Besides interacting with students and general public they are also tying up with local cycling clubs to spread the message.
With full possible support by the Institute and University; the highly talented cyclists team of Manipal has already successfully covered the phase-1, Manipal-Mangalore-Manipal 150 km on Oct-2,2016, in which 12 Manipal cyclists took part. This was followed by phase-2, Manipal-Bangalore 430 km during Oct 6-8, 2016; accomplished by 6 Manipal cyclists. Next aim is phase-3, Manipal-Jaipur, a total of 2,400 km in 18 days during the winter vacation of dec-2016.
This 2,400 km Manipal-Jaipur ride, will not be an easy task at all; which needs a lot of training and preparations. And keeping that in mind, Prof SSS Shameem of MIT, Manipal who is coordinating the enitre Tour is making sure that the entire team is ready for the upcoming challenges. The team for phase-3, comprising of SSS Shameem (alumni-staff), Arvind KY (alumni-staff), Sagar K (student), Mayank K (student), and Animish (student) are pedalling hard everyday to get in perfect shape for the tour. Also, they are using their weekends, and other holiday breaks to practice harder. Very positively, none of them are compromising with any of their accedemic commitments for this sake.
In the last one month time, the team has covered almost all the major routes around this region on cycle. They have cycled Manipal-Mangalore-Manipal (150 km), Manipal-Hassan-Bangalore-Mysuru-Madikeri-Manipal (1,000 kms), Manipal-Murudeswar (220 km), and Manipal-Agumbe-Kundadri-Manipal (180 km) in just last one month time, all during the Sundays or holidays. Latest of all being, Sunday (23-Oct) Manipal-Kudremukh-Manipal training session (185 kms), where 3 cyclists of the team SSS Shameem, Arvind KY and Sagar K started from Manipal at 5 am, and reached Kudremukh by 1 pm, by climbing the monstrous mountain range. Then they descent down and reached Manipal back by 7pm. Many more of such training rides are planned, and will be executed with perfection soon. These training rides are conducted by keeping all safety measure into consideration, and avoiding any risk factors; hence the team doesn’t strain much on minimizing time with adding speed, since that can be sometimes risky in our public-roads of this region.
Such attempts are well recognized by other students of Manipal; and a healthy culture of cycling is rising high among the student community here. The talent, initiative, dedication and commitment shown by the team is highly appreciated by entire of Manipal University. And general public is also getting attached to this herculean task with a very noble cause. For more details email to : shameem.u4@gmail.com
Inputs by Shameem Shaikh
Congratulations! Well done for a good cause.
Our Minister In-Charge for Udupi, Fisheries, and Youth and
Sports should follow such an example, and start repairing the
roads in Manipal, Maple, and all over Udupi – they are full
of large holes and not just pot holes!