Photo credit: Callum Howard

Vedangi Kulkarni circumnavigated the world on a bike at the age of 19. She rode 29,000km in 160 days around the globe.

An incredible ride, and even more remarkable when you hear what happened along the way - an encounter with a grizzly bear, being held at knifepoint and discovering the kindness of strangers.  

I sat down to chat with Vedangi to hear what inspired her to take on the challenge and how the journey changed her life.

You circumnavigated the world on a bike, finishing the last leg at 20 years old. Can you tell me how the expedition came about?

When I was 18, I moved from India to the UK to study sports management, and then within a few months, I realised I needed to do something to make friends. So I did a bike ride which was meant to be a 400km ride, but ended up being a 1,600km one. I was reading a book at the time, This Road I Ride by Juliana Buhring. She was the first woman to set the record for riding a bike around the world and she did it in the fastest time. I was fascinated by it and that gave me the idea.

I set out to do a 400km ride and managed a 1,600km and I thought maybe we could take this to the next level. Maybe this could be something bigger and that was where the idea came from really. I came back home from John o' Groats and looked at the map and said ‘right, so what's this round the world thing? How many kilometers do I have to ride? How many days do I have to deal with? And what's the record?' What does it take to do something like this?’ That’s where it started.

How do you navigate cycling around the globe?

So the way it works is that you have to arrive at 18,000 miles, so that's around 20,000km. You can fly in between the continents and the idea is to go from one end of the continent to another, and then fly to the next one. You also have to cross two antipodal points, two points that are the exact opposite corners of the earth. So for me, my antipodal points were Wellington in New Zealand and Madrid in Spain. 

I started and finished in Australia and I don't know why I did that because normally people start in Europe, but that's when they know that they're coming back to the UK. I'm pretty sure no one's ever even thought of starting it in Australia because why would you do that if you live in Europe? I did that because it would give me an excuse to go to Australia again!

I didn't realise how logistically hard things would be, I needed a visa for every country that I went to. I hold an Indian passport so everywhere from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Iceland, all the European countries, Russia, I needed a visa for every country I went in, except India. So that meant I had to start somewhere where I would only need an E visa, because that was the easiest way to go about it. 

What do you remember most from the experience?

Overall, the experience was life affirming; I almost died three times. In Sydney, Australia, there was an incident where I was chased by a few people who were stalking me for a long time. Later on, I found out they were armed. But then when I was riding through the outback, it always felt like I was in the middle of nowhere and I absolutely loved it. I cherished every moment of that. 

New Zealand was my first antipodal point and I definitely met some of the kindest people I've ever met. I landed, got my bike bag and I went for some coffee and my card didn't work and the only cash I had was Australian dollars. Then this person was just passing by and very kindly bought me a coffee, he didn't say much, he just bought me a coffee then asked me if I wanted to have any food. I said I just wanted to exchange my Australian dollars and he pointed me in the right direction and helped me with that. It started off with a really good note in New Zealand. 

“I was chased by a grizzly bear in Canada. You write these things in your risk assessment, you forget about it, because you see those things in films, you know that's not going to happen to me.”

There was also an incident where I was chased by a grizzly bear in Canada. You write these things in your risk assessment, you forget about it, because you're like you see those things in films, you know that's not going to happen to me. Every time I talk about this, I have goosebumps as I go back to that moment. I was riding my bike, doing my thing, not bothering anyone, I look to my right and I see a family of Grizzlies. Three of them. One is significantly bigger. The bigger one kind of stood back and I was like oh, no, this is bad. But I was fascinated and thought this is really cool, people don't get to see these things and I'm so lucky to be seeing this.

Before I could actually consider myself lucky though, I saw it was approaching me so I had to go as fast as I could and it was getting closer and closer. I kept looking back and then this massive truck came from the other side of the road! I don't know how it ended up on the wrong side of the road and it was inches away from me.

I was very aware at that point that if it hadn’t been the grizzly bear that killed me, it could have very easily been that truck. 

“Ottawa in Canada was my halfway point, I got there in 55 days. So that was 9,020 miles, which at the time was such a big deal for me because when I started I was 19. My halfway point was on my birthday when I turned 20 and I just could not stop crying when I thought about it, because so much had gone into it.”

Then I looked to the next leg of my journey and I needed a Schengen visa to enter Europe. And that was a whole next level logistical nightmare. When you're in a country on a tourist visa, getting a tourist visa for another country is really hard. I had to go from embassy to embassy and ask for some sort of visa. I had my logbook of where I'd been, how far I'd gone, what I was planning to do.

Eventually the Danish embassy very kindly offered me a Schengen visa but my entry point was in Iceland. So I got to Iceland and there was such a bad storm that I got hit by a minibus when I tried, the weather was so horrible and I couldn't see the vehicles, the vehicles couldn't see me. I think I got whiplash. So I was brought back to Reykjavik and I flew to Portugal that very same evening to continue my ride across mainland Europe.

What happened during the European leg of your journey?

A significant incident in mainland Europe happened in Spain. I was riding into the evening and a couple of people on a motorbike were following me. I didn't think much of it because it had happened to me before. People follow you and then they go their own way but in this case they pushed me off my bike and I got beaten up a bit. I was held at knifepoint whilst the other guy was looking through all my stuff. I was very aware that if I'm not incredibly lucky, I could die now. Eventually, they pushed me from the side of the road into a ditch and I went unconscious.

When I opened my eyes I got my bike and back on the road. I was obviously really traumatised by that incident and I wasn't doing much like riding after sunset after that because every time a car passed, I would really panic, I’d think that it was them again. 

I always say that Spain was also the best country I've ridden through though. There were some really, really kind people who helped me out of that situation, took me to hospital, made sure I was okay, made sure I was able to ride my bike but they really didn't want me to after a concussion. Every time I passed through a village, the people would invite me to sit with them and eat a frittata and invite me to have coffee. It was really cool because I didn't speak Spanish but I got to interact with so many people and that really changed the whole experience of Spain for me. 

So after Spain, I rode through France, Belgium, a little bit of the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. I went across Finland, and stopped in Helsinki to get my Russian visa because I had to ride across Russia before I could finish in Australia. 

“Every time I passed through a village, the people would invite me to have coffee. I didn't speak Spanish but I got to interact with so many people and that really changed the whole experience of Spain for me.”

So the plan was to go across Russia, into Mongolia, into China and then fly to my start line, which would be my finish line. It was November by then and I wondered what I was going to do in Helsinki for some time. So I met some really amazing people who taught me how to basically survive in the snow because I'm not very used to it and I didn't know what I'm doing. They taught me how to make shelter and bushcraft skills, basically.

I got my visa and rode up across the rest of Finland, into Russia, cycled across Russia in winter. I entered from the Finnish/Russian border across St. Petersburg and across Moscow, and then in the city of Samira, a five star hotel let me stay because I'd called them desperately and told them what I was doing. It was mid winter, I hadn’t showered or slept indoors for many, many days. They gave me the grandest of welcomes! Then I was back on the road and rode to where the European part of Russia ends and Siberia begins.

From there, I flew to India and did my final few 1000 kilometers there and I flew back to Australia. I finished in Australia on Christmas Eve 2018 and there was not much to celebrate because everything was closed! When I woke up the next day, the only thing open was the bar in the hotel we were staying in so essentially, me and my dad drank cocktails all day and that was the end of my journey around the world.

What did you discover about yourself on the journey?

What I think I really discovered about myself was that I'm probably braver than I give myself credit for. I've definitely struggled with self esteem and self belief growing up. Doing this, it really occurred to me that I am much braver than I think I am. I'm actually capable of doing more and it was something that really gave me more confidence about myself, I think.

I learnt a lot about self talk, because that changed the way I saw myself and the way I spoke to myself. In Australia, it wasn't the same way as it was, say, in Russia towards the end. I was definitely kinder to myself, because I knew that that's the only way I was going to get through. I was always looking after myself more. It really changed me in so many ways.

If you would like to read more about Vedangi's adventures you can follow her on Instagram or read about more of her expeditions on her website.