World Bicycle March for Peace
Donation protected
Dnyan Yewatkar is on a mission. A Seventy-thousand km, 75 country mission to spread the Mahatma Gandhi's message of peace throughout the world carrying a message of hope on two wheels, literally around-the-globe. It's an awesome undertaking that began on the steps of the Taj Mahal in Dnyan's native India in November of 2016 and will culminate when Dnyan returns after circumnavigating the globe sharing his message of Peace and Friendship on October 2, 2019, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth. Dnyan survives on very little, and just as Gandhi did, shares with the less fortunate that he encounters on his travels.
Excerpt from Shanghai Daily:
"In 2008, at the age of 16, Yeotkar walked across India without a dime in his pocket. He was roughed up and left for dead on the banks of a river on the assumption that he was a thief, taken as a beggar elsewhere and lived among the rat-eating tribal community in north India. For a devout vegetarian, that was a shocker but he survived by eating leaves.
He returned home in 2010, much wizened, and completed his studies. Not surprisingly, he ventured into social service — virtually a non-paying job. His NGO, Maitri Sadhana, roughly translated into “friendship, dedication,” involved 15 college students as volunteers. The two characters are Sanskrit words that also reflect his spiritual bent of mind. It was during this period of activism that he realized that the helpless and the children needed the real friendship of the community. He saw his work more as a duty and responsibility rather than charity.
A chance reading of a book, “No Destination: Autobiography of a Pilgrim,” gave a new purpose in his life. The book details the travelogue of two Indians who walked nearly 13,000km across the world at the height of Cold War in the 1970s."- Xu Qin
I met Dnyan when I was on a solo bicycle touring trip in Myanmar early in 2017. We got off a train together with our bicycles and we traveled together for several days and explored the mountaintop temple Zwegabin together. At that time, Dnyan said he would be in the states in the late summer of 2018 and he's now arrived--Landing in San Francisco with his bike and currently working his way up the California coast eventually to Seattle where he will turn east. We look forward to hosting him in Bloomington, Indiana, where I live. Jeff Mease (jm@bloomington.com)
I've set up this fund to help him with incidentals and food and lodging during his several month leg in the US. If you'd like to kick a few dollars his way to ease his journey, and those of others along his way. I know it will be appreciated.
Here are some press links from his travels.
https://thewire.in/culture/indian-cycles-gandhis-message
https://archive.shine.cn/archive/feature/people/All-the-world-is-a-road-for-man-on-a-mission/shdaily.shtml
http://indiansinchina.com/indian-cycling-world-alone-spread-message-peace-friendship/
Organizer
Jeff Mease
Organizer
Bloomington, IN
