SYLVIAH DISELE
Correspondent
mmegi, 15 February 2013, Vol.30 No.24 page 54

FURTEMBA SHERPA, A CYCLIST FROM NEPAL, LOCATED BETWEEN INDIA AND CHINA, ARRIVED IN BOTSWANA ON WEDNESDAY. HE LEAVES TOMORROW. WHILE IN BOTSWANA, SHERPA PLANS TO MEET THE MEDIA.
Sherpa has been cycling around the world since 2003 advocating world peace and environmental protection. He is hopeful that this will encourage people to use their bicycle instead of automobiles. Sherpa has travelled through 89 countries so far and witnessed great pain and sufferings amongst people due to war and oppression; and of families torn apart by their countries’ ideological differences. “Insecurities have led people to distrust and lose harmony with each other,” he laments. Throughout his odyssey, Sherpa carries Lord Buddha’s peace flag from his birthplace Lumbini, Nepal.

Through his endeavours, Sherpa has realised that a healthy environment and a peaceful world are inseparable. He says that he reminds people he meets that all of us are world citizens transcending borders, gender, race, religion, and that what happens in one part of the world affects the rest of us. “After overcoming many personal challenges including homelessness and with no formal education, I longed to emulate the contribution made by our great Sherpa. Sherpas are known to be excellent mountain-climbers. With the newfound fame, those great Sherpas have helped build schools, health clinics and provide clean drinking water for their villages. Many of them also had to overcome the same challenges as I had. I, on the other hand, chose to do something different; to pursue my love for cycling around the world and to challenge communities around the world and their leaders to preserve our one and only mother Earth and create a better world for our future generations.”

The cyclist says that his goal is to visit 151 countries by 2020. To date, he has achieved more than 57 percent of this goal. Botswana is the 89th country of his tour. In his journey, he has covered over 91,213 kilometres in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, Caribbean, Central and South America and now “onto my sixth continent, Africa”. Another focus of the tour has been to generate funds and raise awareness of social projects encountered along the journey. The Furtemba Sherpa Foundation was recently established for this purpose and as part of its Giving the Gift of Mobility programme, it has provided 10 wheelchairs to Asha Bal Bikash Sewa, a childcare centre for disabled and handicapped children and 20 wheelchairs to Anandaban Hospital caring for leprosy patients. Through his mission, he hopes to inspire people whom he has met to think that there are practical alternatives like cycling to “our modern lifestyles and we should all live in social harmony and with great cohesion.”