Pandemic puts the brakes on a dream trip to Tokyo

Three cyclists from Kerala end up in Tripura as COVID-19 sends countries into lockdown

08/04/2020, M.P. PRAVEEN,KOCHI

Adventure, interrupted: Cliffin Francis, Dona Jacob and Haseeb Ahsan are driven by a passion to explore.

They took the road less travelled for a once-in-a-lifetime journey but it ended abruptly in Tripura rather than Tokyo.

The three youth from Kerala are virtually locked up inside a skill development institute at Lembucherra, some 10 km from Agartala.

Cliffin Francis, Dona Jacob, and Haseeb Ahsan, in their twenties and from different parts of the State, are united by the passion to explore. They had their sights set on the Tokyo Olympics when they started biking from Kochi on December 15. They had planned everything, from a route map to the distance to be covered every day to reach Tokyo a day ahead of the Olympics, originally scheduled for July 24. Then came the pandemic.

“We were scheduled to enter Thailand from Myanmar, and should have been pedalling to Laos now. Instead, here we are, stuck in Tripura for more than a fortnight,” said Cliffin. From Laos their route was to take the road to Shanghai and thereon to Tokyo by cruise.

Things were mostly going according to plan, except for some time lost in getting a visa for China, till they entered Bangladesh last month. No coronavirus case had been reported there till then. Then they started emerging. Anticipating a lockdown, which would have trapped them in a foreign country, they returned across the border in a hurry.

“We were advised to undergo a 14-day quarantine in Agartala and taken to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital where we stayed till April 2. Since then we have been at the skill development institute run by a priest known to Dona, and helping him make masks,” said Cliffin.

With the Olympics postponed, the trio just want to get back home. Pedalling back is ruled out as that would mean successive quarantines.