Meet the nomad on a bicycle journey across India to collect native seeds

Yashok Sivasubramaniam is on an 18,000-km journey to collect native seeds, document tribal wisdom, and interview environmentalists.

Yashok Sivasubramaniam likens himself to the pitta, a shy and secretive bird.

On August 30 this year, the 30-year-old set out on an 18,000-kilometre-long expedition on a borrowed bicycle with a palm-sized doll fixed on the handlebar. “She is called Pitta, and is my companion on this journey,” says Yashok speaking over phone from Auroville where he has stopped to study the Auroville Botanical Gardens.

Yashok’s expedition may seem all-encompassing: to collect native seeds, document indigenous tribal wisdom and interview environmentalists, ecologists, entomologists, ornithologists, and researchers from across India. But he is in no hurry.

“I am simply a snail in search of people to learn from,” says Yashok, who started the journey from Singarapettai near Tiruvannamalai. He does not strive to cover several hundreds of kilometres a day. “Right now, I cycle 60 to 70 kilometres a day, stop by to rest at friends’ and well-wishers’ or pitch a tent where possible,” he explains. He takes notes on a scribble pad, and shoots footage on a hand-held camcorder along the way. “I hope to put the footage together to create short documentary films,” he says.

Yashok is armed with a backpack that holds an extra set of clothes, his tent, cloth bags for seeds, a cycle pump, a flute, and books. It is fast filling up with feathers, pebbles from various landscapes, a dried length of shed snake skin, and broken butterfly wings. He has a love for butterflies and has studied their migration patterns closely from his hometown in Pollachi, set by the Western Ghats.

Yashok thirst to study the environment deepened in 2021, when witnessed a forest fire at Jawadhu Hills in the Eastern Ghats. Joining the locals to put it out, and found himself grappling with a manmade disaster that wiped away vast stretches of forest. “99.9% of forest fires are created by man,” he says, adding: “This may be because of a small beedi cast carelessly on the forest floor or a broken piece of glass that acts as a lens when direct sunlight falls on it.” Yashok was deeply affected by the disaster and sought to understand its impacts on the environment.

“This led me on a new path,” he says. “I realised how little we know about even the most common native trees in our surroundings. Many of us suffer from a certain degree of plant blindness.” Yashok hoped to contribute to change this. “This journey is my attempt to condense knowledge on the environment for the sake of the younger generation,” he explains.