Bengaluru woman cycles across Golden Quadrilateral on a tandem

Meera Velanker logged 6,263km in 41 days and seven hours, battling rains and punctures

While you were chilling over the weekend, Meera Velanker from Bengaluru was sweating it out to complete the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) on a tandem cycle.

The Golden Quadrilateral is a network of national highways connecting Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai in four directions and is 6,263 km long. Velanker managed to accomplish this feat in 41 days and seven hours. Velanker believes she is the first Indian to do so and wants to apply to the Limca Book of Records for certification.

But are you wondering why we are talking about Velanker alone given that tandem cycling involves two riders? One on the front is called the captain and the rider at the back is called the stoker. That’s because her cyclist partner from Bengaluru had to depart mid-way because of unforeseen circumstances.

Velanker, who has a PhD in life sciences and who is also a fitness coach, tells Metrolife how she overcame this hiccup. After the exit of Dinkar Patil, the 44-year-old’s expedition was looking uncertain but things fell back on track when cyclist Utkarsh Verma from Varanasi decided to step in.

He joined her as a stoker in Aurangabad in Bihar and was able to ride the rest of 2,533 km because of his experience. He has cycled the Golden Quadrilateral as well as the Kashmir to Kanyakumari circuit in the past, all solo. “I am happy that my experience was of help to Meera ma’am,” Verma says.

As for Velankar’s experience, she has been cycling for the past 10 years and, most recently, during the first wave of the pandemic, she rode 3,000 km from north to south. “I’ve been participating in unique (cycling) events in the last couple of years. I was looking to perform a challenge that nobody had attempted earlier and that’s when the idea of doing the GQ route on a tandem cycle came to me,” she says.

Being a pro-cyclist that she is, Velanker was able to survive the curveballs that this “brutal” expedition threw at her. Sometimes, heavy rains made cycling impossible, other times, her cycle broke down. But plenty of help and cheers kept coming her way. “Whenever I felt low, some truck owner would come and wish me luck by showing a thumbs up. A street vendor once offered me some food. These small gestures lifted my morale,” she recalls.

Velanker dedicates this feat to her mentor Monish Callapa from the Bangalore Randonneurs cycling club but also to her husband and her two children, aged 13 and 19.

She is hoping her achievement would inspire other women, married or single, to take on challenges, which the society feels are only for men. “If a woman of my age pursues an endurance sport, she has to face questions like ‘Why are you doing this?’. But I urge these women to set their goals and not be bothered by such skepticism,” she signs off.