The spirit of adventure

Imagine being kicked so hard by a Bactrian camel that you somersault into the air and actually bounce a couple of times before landing painfully on your shoulder, injuring it. Your entire body hurts, you feel humiliated — and now you’re a little afraid of these irascible, moody beasts you’re supposed to be managing. So what do you do? Well, if you’re Sucheta Kandethankar, you just pick yourself up and continue walking the rest of your 1,636-km trek across the Gobi desert.

Now try recollecting what you were doing at 17 — I can’t exactly remember that far back, but I certainly wasn’t skiing across Greenlandic ice caps in sub-zero temperatures, battling exhaustion and muscle cramps like Deeya Bajaj, becoming the youngest to complete this formidable expedition in May 2011.

Let’s face it, we don’t exactly think of Indians when we think of arduous physical activity or adventure. And to imagine your average Indian women in endurance sports? When they’re holding full-time day jobs? That takes more imagining than you would think.

And yet, there is Anu Vaidyanathan, computer scientist-engineer, entrepreneur-CEO, IIM professor and self-confessed nerd with her wry sense of humour and love for poetry, who finished the 514-km Ultraman Triathlon in Canada at 6th place and repeated herself three weeks later, swimming, biking and running 226 km within 17 hours for the Ironman. Or sweet-faced child-woman, Bajaj, who skied across the world’s largest and coldest island, but still minds her mom and takes her SATs seriously. And soft-spoken, iron-willed Symantec Software IT developer Kandethankar who trekked the Gobi desert in 51 days, the only Indian to do so. Besides these, I’m sure there are several others whose stories haven’t yet been told. It’s about time they were — if for nothing else, then for the sheer inspiration they generate.

For those of us who barely climb the stairs to get to our offices, the mere thought of walking an entire desert or skiing across an island can be completely fatiguing. The psychological strength, confidence, resilience and willpower needed to keep going — despite gangrenous blisters, agonising cramps, icy winds and freak weather — is special.

You have to read Vaidyanathan’s blog to be amazed at the energy and motivation that drives her to juggle between physical training, teaching complex subjects to future engineers and managers, running a successful IP consulting firm and writing for newspapers as well as her blog. She earned her PhD in Electrical Engineering in the shortest time I’ve heard — 26 months — and keeps herself fuelled with an almost fierce optimism. Despite severe panic attacks and anxiety-induced insomnia due to the trauma of being in a earthquake in New Zealand, she never once stopped her high-endurance training.

These are self-motivated women — no one asks them to do this, or even pays them when they do. In fact Kadethankar says she works mainly to support her hobby, and the absurdly well-read Vaidyanathan ends up using her patent law firm’s profits to finance her triathletic passion. But they have a desire to excel, push boundaries, aspire to something bigger than themselves. So the real question is — in a country where cricket eclipses every sport, where are the other corporate sponsors, who should be queueing up to align themselves with these accomplished women?

See, endurance and adventure sport cost money — perhaps even more than others. Vaidyanathan will tell you with her trademark ironic humour how she ran her first big race in — hold your breath — pyjamas, competing with high-value lycra sportswear, because she didn’t have the funds for that necessity. And Kandethankar will tell you — with no rancour in her voice — how she submitted a proposal to finance her Gobi Desert trek to several Pune-based companies, with no takers. If Symantec hadn't stepped in to finance her air ticket, who knows what would have happened?

Now Vaidyanathan is planning to compete at the South Africa Ironman to be held in April 2012. Kandethankar’s dream is to trek the Great Himalayan Trail across Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan. And Bajaj wants to complete the Polar Trilogy. It’s not just important to hold up them up as role models, especially our girl children, but equally important to support them financially. Is anyone listening?

Jyoti Pande Lavakare is a Delhi-based writer