IANS/Kathmandu
Nepal’s peace and democracy icon Pushkar Shah will embark on an adventurous and inspiring mission - cycling The Great Himalayan Trail for rural development.
Cyclist Shah, 43, who hails from Nepal’s Dolakha district, had on November 29, 1998 set out from Nepal to travel the world on his bicycle to spread the message of peace. Eleven years later, on May 17, 2010 the final day of his successful accomplishment of world tour - Shah was on the top of the Mount Everest with colourful flags of 192 countries.
After two-and-half years of physical and mental rest from his world cycling expedition for peace, which covered an extraordinary 150 countries and 390,000km, in a press conference in Kathmandu, freedom fighter Shah, who was once shot during the country’s first People’s Movement in 1990, revealed his next mission with an aim to promote The Great Himalayan Trail - a 1,700km-long network of existing treks and trails of Nepal stretching from east to west and winding beneath the world’s highest peaks.
According to Nepali trekkers, it takes 120 days for a person to walk through the trial, which includes a couple of high passes with altitude above 5,000m.
Shah and his six-member team, including a mechanic and a photographer, will cycle for 45 days starting on April 5 this year from Western district of Darchula to Eastern Taplejung district.
This is the first time the Great Himalayan Trail is being tried from west to east, which is considered more difficult than that of east to west attempt. “One life is not enough to visit all the place of the world,” Shah said in the
programme on Thursday.
“After travelling the world I realised that there are lots of places in Nepal yet to be visited and lots of issues yet to be addressed. This mission of ours is aimed at promoting the Great Himalayan Trail among national and international potential tourists discovering a cycling route so as to eventually improve livelihoods of poor villages along the trial, which would eventually bring sustainable market-led development opportunities to rural communities, reduce poverty and thus build resilience,” he added.
With the mission, Shah and his team expect to create awareness about the Great Himalayan Trail and bring about changes in the lives of hundreds of rural remote communities along the trail waiting for a glimpse of development.
