3rd Year Special Annual Double Issue Vol 4 Issue 1 & 2 Jan - Apr 2 3rd Year Special Annual Double Issue Vol 4 Issue | Page 94

ADVENTURE & WILDLIFE
Achievers Corner
A Tryst with
Saddle Sore Challenge
1600 kms in 24 hours
I
am Shilpa Balakrishnan, residing in Mumbai.
A motorcyclist who loves to travel to new,
unexplored or less explored places. I go on solo
rides most often and with groups at times. I have
covered the length and breadth of India through
all 29 States and 5 Union Territories. It’s 15 years
since I started riding and have managed to cover
nearly 300,000 kms on my motorcycles. Couple
of my rides are on the records whilst most of it
are not. I am sharing below the experience of my
first certified ride which was totally unplanned and
whatever I planned also changed during the ride.
It’s a ride which will forever remain in my mind.
It all started with my mom saying ‘You should
have a certificate for something like this’. She
overheard my discussion with a friend of mine
about some guy attempting the Saddle Sore
Challenge initiated by the Iron Butt Association,
USA. (The details of this can be checked on their
website). I explained to her about it and said they
have different levels of challenges and only few
are approved to be completed in India due to
speed restrictions, etc. It is not as easy as it may
sound. It has its own risks involved and could be a
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dangerous attempt. Nevertheless, she said I could
probably attempt it sometime in the future. Thus,
the seed was sown….
It was early 2015 when we had this discussion
and that was also the time when attempting this
challenge was getting quite famous in India.
I checked online and found that there was only
1 female rider who had attempted this till date.
No, I didn’t plan to do it even then. It didn’t give
me the kind of adrenaline rush to attempt some-
thing like this. From the number of biker friends I
had known, few of them had failed in their earlier
attempts and were going to give it a try again.
One of them got discussing the rules and
regulations to successfully complete it with me.
Another friend had successfully completed and
received the certificate. At that time, it took
roughly about 3 to 6 months for the ride to be
approved and receive the certificates.
Last week of April 2015 - There was a long
weekend approaching; May 01, International
Labour Day and Maharashtra Day was on Friday.
Saturday and Sunday were my weekly off
Vol 4 | Issue 2 |Mar - Apr 2019