Kochi man walks, hitchhikes, cycles and rides to raise awareness and funds for health-related causes

Vaishak Seetharam Dattani's personal project, Shores to Pinnacle, involves building a solar-powered e-scooter and riding it from Kochi to France in 2025, while also raising awareness and funds for health-related causes.

Vaishak Seetharam Dattani will take lessons on how to build a solar-powered e-scooter. He will ride it all the way to France from Kochi in 2025 as part of the fourth ‘edition’ of his personal project — Shores to Pinnacle.

From September 27 to November 22, 2023,  he walked 1,600 kilometres and hitchhiked 12,751 kilometres, making his way from Singapore to Sikkim (not in this order) in version three of his personal project and initiative to create awareness about and raise funds for health-related causes. 

The September solo expedition by Vaishak, Head of Service Excellence, Aster DM Healthcare, was to create awareness about ventricular septal defect (VSD) which affects children. His aim was to provide free cardiology treatment to 100 children from underprivileged families. He explains how it works, “Aster Volunteers is the CSR wing of Aster through which I was able to connect with healthcare professionals in the North-East. I connected with hitchhiking communities outside India via Facebook in Thailand and Laos, so I was able to spread the word among them. As part of Heart2Heart Cares, an initiative of Aster Volunteers, for every 10,000 steps achieved by those registered with the initiative, Aster Volunteers donates ₹100 to aid critical surgeries of 50 underprivileged children at Aster Hospitals.”

Vaishak, 34, started the hike from Singapore, heading to Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. While in Cambodia, however, circumstances changed. 

The trip turned out to be more of an adventure that he bargained for when, 14 days into the journey, he lost his passport, other identification papers and money at Phnom Penh. A couple of scooter-borne thieves snatched his bag leaving only his phone with him. “Now when I look back, it seems like a great experience, though it did not feel like that at the time. Luckily I had my phone but I don’t want to have to do that again,” Vaishak says. Losing one’s passport in a foreign country comes with a massive set of problems, he recalls. He needed an exit visa which would, literally, be his passport out of Cambodia. The plan was to head to Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar before hitting the North-East.   

Since he had to fly out of Cambodia and return to India, due to the lost passport, he completed his journey in the States in the North-East. He then headed to Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. “During those 55 days, the experience of my passport getting robbed to getting stuck in Dawki Valley forest [in Meghalaya] for a whole night without mobile network, the curfew in Manipur and the unrest in Myanmar caused plan A to give way to plans B, C, D and changed routes. This was challenging as it paved the way for me to see and experience more than what I had planned, and also do much more than what I thought my potential was,” he says. 

Since he was backpacking, he found accommodation through connections he made via couchsurfing.com and postcrossing.com. [sending and receiving postcards from people across the world] besides railway stations, hostels, and terraces of buildings. Vaishak refers to himself as a traveller rather than a tourist.