It is for a cause that he has been skating miles and miles. Rana Uppalapati has reached Chennai after covering the 6,000 kms of the Golden Quadrilateral. The international skater’s campaign, run with Titan ECHO as sponsor, has ot do with getting society to work for girl’s education and look after children’s safety.
He had previously taken up causes like early detection of cancer and to campaign against child marriage, when skating 600 kms between in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa. He feels even more motivated now as his skating is raising funds for the causes he espouses.
In his nearly 6,000-km journey that took almost 95 days, Rana has raised above Rs 5 crores for the education of underprivileged girl children and to create awareness among 6 lakh children about safety, and teach lessons about ‘good and bad touch’, which is equally important these days.
He has about 335 kms left to fulfil the whole 6,000 km. Some of the money he has raised will also go towards educating tribal children while about 16,273 gild children have benefited so far from funds collected from ECHO, which stands for ‘Educate to carry her onwards’.
His long journey began at Hosur, site of Titan’s first watch factory, on September 5, Teacher’s Day. “Living and eating in different places with no expectations and making do with bare minimum amenities were a big challenge during my journey,” said the enthusiastic skater during his halt in the city.
The skater in his journey on ‘road less travelled’ visited Tumakuru, Sira, Chitradurga, Hubli and Belgaum in Karnataka; Kolhapur, Pune, Mumbai in Maharashtra; Bharuch and Vadodara in Gujarat; Delhi, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Dhanbad, Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Vishakhapatnam and Hyderabad before reaching Chennai. His last few kms will be towards Hosur via Kanchipuram.
Towards creating awareness among the young generation, he visited Anna Adarsh Matriculation Higher Secondary School at Anna Nagar.
