Women bikers on expedition to ASEAN countries

A four-member team of women bikers are on a 50-day expedition to some ASEAN countries with the aim of highlighting women's safety and promote road travel, an organiser said here today.
The seven-week-long expedition, supported by Union Ministry of Tourism, started from Hyderabad on February 10 and the bikers will cross some Southeast Asian countries through the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway, and cover a distance of 16,992 kilometre, an official said.
"Through this campaign we are trying to promote road trip and it will help the riders explore places along road side. This will also help in highlighting the issue of Women's safety," Regional Director of Ministry of Tourism J P Shaw said in a statement.

The team reached Kolkata from Hyderabad on February 14. They travelled through Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar, Shaw said.
The members of the expedition comprising four women bikers, eight-member support unit, including a production crew to document the expedition, is in Bangladesh and headed for Dhaka at present, he said.
From Bangladesh, the team will go to Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, he said.

"This initiative will promote motorbike expedition not just across the country but beyond it, to the ASEAN region," Sudesh Poddar, president of Hotel & Restaurant Association of Eastern India (HRAEI), which is supporting the eastern leg of the expedition, said in a statement here.

The expedition, would pass through Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra after coming back to India.
The journey would cover 19 UNESCO World Heritage sites in the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) countries, the HRAEI statement said.