Somen Debnath-man with a mission

Somen Debnath, is an Indian activist who is in midst of a 16-year dream journey to bicycle around the world with a mission to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS. His mission is titled” Around the World on Bicycle Tour for HIV/AIDS Awareness and Seminars on Indian Culture 2004-2020. The journey started on My 27, in 2004 shortly after finishing his Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of Kolkata in India. Somen also holds the ‘Visarad’ degree in Fine Arts which he obtained from University of Sarbabhartiya, Kolkata in west Bengal. He intends to finish his journey by end of this year in December in Kolkata, the place he started it from.

Somen has been cycling without any break since last fifteen years except for a, three days break he had to take to go back to Kolkata when his father passed away in 2007. So far, he has travelled by bicycle through 157 countries (including New Zealand) and has completed around 1,70,000 kilometres on his bike trip. Somen arrived in New Zealand on 11th February and has plan to complete his 1700 kilometres Auckland to Bluff journey by end of March to leave the country on 2nd April. It is still a humongous task to complete for him to bicycle through 34 countries in remaining 10 months before he winds up his mission in Kolkata in December this year.

In all these years, Somen’s journey has been full of adventures and thrills with some very sweet memories and some very bitter experiences. While passing through Afghanistan he was captured by Taliban and held captive for 24 days. He was made to starve and badly beaten as they suspected him to be a spy. He was fortunate to have come back alive after he got befriended with them, cooked some delicious Indian curries for them in a bid to persuade them to release him.

Somen came visiting The Indian News office and said he is very grateful to the Kiwi Indian community of New Zealand for being so generous towards him. He is being invited by various organisations to welcome him and to listen his experiences of his epic mission.

-TIN Bureau