Battling landslides, hailstorms, dangerous mountain roads and nonstop exhaustion, a woman Forest Ranger from Maharashtra rode her motorcycle across the length of India and created history. Amrapali Padghan, posted at Bor Tiger Reserve in Wardha, completed the challenging 3,538-kilometre journey from Kanyakumari to Srinagar in just 103 hours and 35 minutes. She earned a place in the India Book of Records for the fastest motorcycle expedition from Kanyakumari to Kashmir by a female rider. Padghan started at 5.19 am on April 2, from Kanyakumari, and reached Kashmir at 12.54 pm on April 6. She named the ride ‘Savitrichi Lek,’ Marathi for ‘Savitri’s Daughter,’ in honour of Savitribai Phule. Padghan reached the Ramban area corridor on NH 44. It is one of the most unstable road stretches in India. It cuts through the Himalayan foothills on a narrow ledge above the Chenab River, cliff face on one side, open gorge on the other. It rained the night before.

 

When the road was buried A landslide had closed both carriageways under deep debris since midnight. The hillside was still shedding material. Soil and rock were rolling down continuously. The Indian Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police were busy in a joint clearance operation. When the joint team opened a thin corridor on the opposite carriageway, she pushed the Ronin through the gap before it could close again. As she travelled, a hailstorm hit and her riding gloves were blown off. The pain in both hands, as she explained, was like needles being driven in continuously. Then she went through road between Ramban and Banihal, which tightens into blind hairpin bends with sheer drops into the Chenab valley below.

 

Taking one such bend at speed, Padghan’s front wheel drifted wide. She estimated the margin: one-and-a-half metres further and the bike would have gone over the edge. She pulled it back and kept riding. Che Guevara’s words came to her at this point. She had read, in ‘Motorcycle Diaries,’ his reflection on having seen graves in a cemetery of people who chose not to begin their revolution out of fear of being killed. Padghan reached Lal Chowk, Srinagar, at 12.54 pm on April 6, completing 3,538 kilometres. Total elapsed time was 103 hours and 35 minutes, or 4 days, 7 hours, and 35 minutes. She stopped her Ronin at the Ghanta Ghar clock tower, the mud of 13 States caked across the bike, and held up the Indian tricolour as she concluded the expedition and itched her name in the record books.