Four men to cycle 4,500km to spread awareness about organ donation across country

Four post-graduation students from Mathura will embark on a cycle trip from Kanyakumari to Leh to raise awareness about organ donation.

The students will begin their 4,500 kilometres on June 17 from Kanyakumari and will reach Leh on August 6, on World Organ Donation Day.

We will leave from Agra Cantt tomorrow and after reaching Kanyakumari, we will set out for Leh. Covering 100 kilometres per day and going through 43 cities, we will complete our journey in 50 days, said Saransh Goswani who had come to visit his university here yesterday.

‘We have decided to provide financial help to the participants for their venture’, chancellor of GLA University said.

The cities they will visit include Ajmer, Udaipur, Manali, Panipat, Vadodara, Mumbai, Panaji, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.

We have named our campaign as GORGON, ‘which stands for ‘Go For Organ’, Goswami said, adding the idea of cycle trip was suggested by one of the participants, Manoj Sharma.

Also read : Rise in organ donation in Karnataka gives hope to those on transplant waitlist

The four men ; Manoj Sharma, Saransh Goswami, Suchitr Singh and Vikramjeet Randhawa, are also practicing what they preach as they have pledged to donate their organs, a decision that has earned them plaudits on social networking sites. However, it was clear when speaking to 25-year-old Manoj, a national-level volleyball player who currently administers tuition classes to commerce students, that he and his group of friends didn’t look to play up their act of altruism.

The four of us have adventure in our blood but we wanted our energy to be utilized for a good cause. There has been an upsurge in illegal organ trading in the country because people refuse to donate organs to people who really need them. This triggered an idea that we should travel the length and breadth of the country on our cycles to spread the message of organ donation.

The expedition may sound admirable now, but making it into a reality was fraught with several problems. Funding and worried parents were two of the primary obstacles, they added