“When I got onto the road heading to Southampton, I thought to myself, ‘wow, this country is so considerate of cyclists with this huge bit of road at the side!’ People were even honking me as they passed and I thought they were encouraging me. But when I got back and told those I was living with, they informed me that this was in fact the hard shoulder on the motorway…” said Vegandi Kulkarni, recounting her first experience of cycling in the UK after moving from India to the coastal resort town of Bournemouth to study Sports Management at university, aged 19.
After recovering from the “shock of doing something illegal” and still adjusting to a completely different culture in the UK, Kulkarni was eager to explore more of the country she was now living in on her bike. She headed to Exeter, then to London, and before she knew it, Kulkarni was headed to John O’Groats – the Scottish village famous for being the start or end of the famous Land’s End to John O’Groats (LEJOG) route. But her decision to ride LEJOG was not a planned one, not by any means. It was only decided when she was cycling from Bournemouth to London and back as part of her training for the London, Edinburgh, London cycling challenge, that someone she was staying with asked her where she was cycling to. Her response? John O’Groats.
“I had then committed, right?” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of stuff with me, I just ended up sleeping in bus shelters or just knocking on people’s doors.”
Long-distance cycling wasn’t a new hobby Kulkarni got into when she moved to the UK, she had already achieved some impressive feats back in her home country, including cycling across the Indian Himalayas – an 800km route from Manali to Drass – when she was 17 years old. Her parents would meet her during the evening to stay with her, but during the day when she was riding, it was just her and her bike, complete freedom. This is what she loved and continues to love today about cycling and when she speaks to me on the phone, she is calling me from Oman in the Middle East, where she is undertaking her second full circumnavigation of the world.
Cycling the world, part one
During Kulkarni’s cycle to John O’Groats, she was reading Juliana Buhring’s (the fastest woman to cycle around the world in 2012) book, titled The Road I Ride. She was inspired so much by the trip that she herself decided to do it, solo and unsupported, the following year, while she had a placement year, with the aim of becoming the fastest woman to complete it.
“I don’t know where the confidence came from,” Kulkarni said. “I just thought to myself, 'It is just cycling, how hard can it be?'” But she admitted that she was woefully unprepared and everything that could have gone wrong on the trip, did, from being mugged to getting into bad situations with wildlife to visa issues to getting hit by a minibus during a storm, plus much more.
“The whole experience was me learning to make my own mistakes and be OK with them,” she said. “I got so much wrong. It wasn’t exactly a smooth journey, and I certainly wasn’t very chill about things going wrong either, even if they were minor setbacks. I would think when something happened that it was the end of the world. But this was my biggest learning: that nothing really is the end of the world, unless it is actually the end of the world.”
This trip gave her the confidence she needed. Kulkarni had played professional football when growing up in India, but had stopped due to a lack of self-esteem. She noted that she didn’t get on very well with the team situation and couldn’t fully appreciate how she was contributing to the team. As a result, she had planned to become a football coach, which is why she came to the UK to study, so she could go back to India with her international coaching licenses along with her qualifications and open a goalkeeping academy – the first of its kind in India, she said. However, one cycling trip led to another, and the search for adventure led to Kulkarni pursuing new dreams.
But as her career in cycling grew, so did her confidence. “It allowed me to believe I could do something for myself,” she said, noting how she felt about being in a team sport.
Despite everything that went wrong, Kulkarni completed the 28,000km-plus trip, cycling the world in 160 days. She may not have been the fastest woman to circumnavigate the world on her bike, but she’s pretty sure she is the youngest woman to do so. That record-breaking time, however, was still a dream she wanted to chase.
Cycling the world, part two
Kulkarni finished her first world trip when she was 20. Now, 26, she is currently attempting to take on the challenge for a second time after setting off from India on July 8, 2024. Between those two trips, however, she’s certainly kept herself busy on the bike. Kulkarni attempted the Silk Road Mountain Race, but a nasty crash in the Tien Shan mountains saw her out of the race; she left university and set up her own business called The Adventure Shed; put together a 1,000km cycle route in the southwest of England; organised the UK’s first downhill race for adaptive mountain bikers; broke the record for being the fastest woman to cycle the Manali-Leh highway; and went to the French Alps to race down a 3,330m glacier on her mountain bike.
After plenty of experience riding and racing on two wheels now under her belt, Kulkarni's second attempt was with the aim of achieving her dream of becoming the fastest woman to complete this ride. The day before her birthday, however, endurance cyclist Lael Wilcox broke the record, riding around the world in 108 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes, breaking the record which was set by Jenny Graham in 2018 (124 days and 11 hours). How did Kulkarni feel when she saw the news? “To be honest, I was extremely stoked that Lael broke the record,” she said. “I cannot think of a more deserving person and a better role model for not just women in endurance sports, but basically everyone. That woman is a badass.”
This is not like missing out on a 10km personal best though, these attempts take a huge amount of effort, training, planning and dedication. With the record broken, and unachievable for Kulkarni at that moment in time, she had to reframe her mindset. It could have been easy for many to give up now that the sole aim of the trip was no longer there, but this is not the attitude Kulkarni has instilled into her. “I was still bothered about doing well and getting around the world, but obviously, I just could be a bit more relaxed about certain aspects,” she added.
“I did have to learn how to deal with embarrassment, however,” she admitted. “Embarrassment because I wondered if anyone was stupid enough to fail at something twice. I thought to myself that this was my second time around the world and I had trained hard for this one, and it is still not good enough.”
Dealing with some tough questions and thoughts while being away from loved ones, Kulkarni had to work hard to make sure she remained positive. “I had to learn to switch somewhere along the way because it wasn’t helpful and whatever the problems I was facing, I can still get to the finish, which means I still would have gone around the world twice, which is a big thing.”
Now 186 days into her second full circumnavigation of the world, Kulkarni has less than 5,000km to go – “Just around the corner,” she said when she spoke to me in December. But with the goal of the record now off, Kulkarni has returned to India and briefly to the UK since then in order to raise some more money to complete her trip.
She put on her Instagram that: “There doesn’t seem to be a point going broke over this. If I was on track for the record that I was going for, then I know for a fact that everyone would’ve chipped in. But it’s not, so it makes sense to do things in a way that seems more feasible. Maybe this is not a mark of my failure but a mark of growth.” So, while it has not been the ride she thought it would be, it has turned out to be a ride of far greater meaning.
But what about the dream of the record? “One day, I'll be back,” she said confidently, and there's no doubt that her journey is far from over.
