Esha Gupta is the woman, who left her job in a multinational firm, learnt how to ride a bike and went on a solo ride across the country just to answer one burning question – “Is India a safe country for women.”
37-years-old Esha hails from Lucknow, though her roots also run through Kerala, where her mother hails from. In 2012 she started her journey with one and only her Bajaj Avenger. She earned the tag of ‘Longest journey on motorcycle in a single country by a female motorist’, has gained her a much desired identity. That’s not it. Esha raised the bar when she chose to challenge the stereotypes women travellers and backpackers internalize on how India is an unsafe country for women.
As Esha said her aim was to send a message to all those people who says India is an unsafe country for women, that it’s definitely not so. The criminals are there but we have been so very much surrounded by negativity lately that we have almost forgot the fact that we are majorly surrounded by good and positive people, added Esha.
This journey started on January 26, 2016 from Bengaluru. Esha fought against all the odds for the next 30,000km and returned on May 14, 2016. During this journey, she covered 16 States including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Seemasandra, Telangana, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. She used her love for photography to capture snapshots of her trip around the country. Her journey was supported by Throttle; a community for avid bikers, OSS GPS Tracking Solutions, Indian Oil, BAC (Bajaj Avenger Club) and Flipcarbon.
Esha believes that nothing teaches one more than travelling. Sharing instances from her repository, she recollects how at her pitstop in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, a local family slept on the floor just to make her feel at home since the household had only one bed. In another instance, at Orissa, the State was enjoying the initial showers for the season, and the bike’s speedometer wire got disconnected on the slushy roads. The journey got trickier from there and Esha lost her mobile connectivity and had no access to the routes. She finally stumbled upon a hotel that was closing, but looking at Esha and learning of her journey, the hotel staff took her in and offered her their food.
All through her journey, Esha’s faith in people and their reactions towards a solo traveller had grown stronger with every ride. From welcoming a stranger into their homes to sharing their food and clothing. From applauding you when you make it to the headlines to sympathising when you fail, there are different types of people. The ones that slap and clap at a drop of a hat, but all that has kept Esha going is the initial drive to challenge societal perceptions.
If you have to prove anything wrong, first fight the fear of being proven wrong. Pick your strength and work towards the goal. Fear of failure will never take you anywhere, Esha quips.
The fact that media tends to shine the spotlight primarily on negative instances has diminished its global stature as a safe country for women.
India has seen other women motorists like Roshni Sharma and Veenu Paliwal challenging stereotypes. The former was the first woman rider through Kashmir to Kanyakumari, at a distance of 5,453km, and the latter was on the last lag of her 10,000-km journey, when she met with a fatal accident.
Sourced from Your Story, Featured image courtesy: her.yourstory.com
