UP activist’s 18,000-km ride gets 250 officials cycling to work

Pratapgarh: A 14-month bicycle ride across India by Uttar Pradesh activist Sundaram Tiwari has prompted around 250 forest department officials in the state to switch to cycling for their daily commute under his ‘Cycle to Office’ initiative.

Tiwari, 31, from Pratapgarh, began his journey on April 7, 2022, with no sponsors or support vehicle. He covered nearly 18,000 km through 15 states, including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Ladakh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, ending in June 2023. The ride aimed to start conversations on environmental action. “When you travel slowly, people stop and speak to you.

If I had travelled by car, very few people would have noticed me,” Tiwari says. He survived a robbery and hospitalization during the trip, and documented pollution, deforestation, and weak follow-up on compensatory plantation drives.

“When you cycle, you create neither noise pollution nor air pollution. You move slowly enough to hear the birds, feel the mountains, and genuinely connect with the environment,” he says. Tiwari now wants to shift mindsets around cycling in India. “In many countries, cycling is respected. In India, people often assume that person is poor. That perception needs to change,” he says.