Adventures on cycle

Kiwi diaries

A New Zealand man has cycled 6,000 km around India in a record 23 days and 20 hours. Tim Chittock, 25, started his journey around the Indian Golden Quadrilateral in New Delhi on February 21 and finished on March 22 in a bid to bust a Guiness World Record.

A law and economics university student, Tim is no stranger to sweaty adventures. Last year, he cycled across Australia and the year before he cycled the length of New Zealand.

He says trying to do India in a record time was just the next step. “I just love cycling and wanted to go to the next level just to make it fun,” adds Tim who was in Bengaluru
recently.

He has also travelled to Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Kanpur, Pune, Surat, Guntur, Vijayawada, and Visakhapatnam. Tim says he was unprepared for this great adventure but he got more help than he ever expected from locals. He arrived to do the journey alone but he soon met a man named Eeshat Tiwary who offered to drop everything and be his navigator. Eeshat drove alongside Chittock, helped him keep direction and hurled insults at him at the end of the day to motivate his cycling. He said ‘I’ll do everything for you, all you need to do is wake up, cycle, eat and sleep’.”

Tim cycled 16 hours every day from 4 am to 10 pm with about 2 hours of breaks at a time. The first day he knocked out 310 km easily. But the next week he suffered food poisoning and was only able to cycle 220 km a day.

Tim was hardly able to eat anything and felt very weak. He considered quitting but
his mum told him he’d regret it if he did. He finished the trip by cycling continuously for the last 48 hours, covering 600 km.  “I can’t believe it’s over. When we were doing it it was like it was never going to end.” For the record to be official Tim needed to keep a log book of the people he meets, meet a policeman in each city, get a photo of himself and a landmark, track the route with a GPS and take at least 10 minutes of video footage a day. But on the trip, his GPS and video camera broke, and the phone with lots of photos on it got lost so not all of that information could be recorded.

Tim says they will send all the information they have to the Guiness World Records and he will find out if the record is official in the next three months.  He adds that he can’t find anyone who has done the route faster and doesn’t mind if the Guiness World Records don’t make it official. “I don’t really care about the record. The fact we did it and had a great time means more. The Indian people are the most kind people, just lovely. I had the best experience.” Every 15 to 20 minutes a cyclist would get in front of him then slow down so he had to overtake them. Then they would sit behind Tim to watch his legs and how the bike worked. Tim didn’t mind except continuously overtaking was dangerous with big trucks zooming past.

“I came within 2 feet of being taken out. Even though a lot of people drive down the wrong side of the road here, I have felt more danger in New Zealand with our windy roads. They’re mad drivers here but they’re good at being mad.”