Gibraltar becomes 161st country visited by Indian cyclist raising HIV awareness

Gibraltar is 161^st country visited by Indian cyclist Somen Deblath since he left West Bengal in India in 2004.

Spending a few days on the Rock meeting a variety of people including members of the Indian community, the mayor and a government minister he left on Thursday May 10 heading into Spain en route to Andorra which will be his 162^nd country.

After he graduated with a Bachelor degree in Zoology from the University of Calcutta, he decided to undertake a journey which would take him to 191 countries to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS following the death of a close friend and also to promote Indian culture.

It hasn’t been all ‘plain sailing’ especially in some of the less tolerant countries and he has been attacked and beaten up on more than one occasion.

One major setback was the fact that he had to spend a year in New Zealand (not that he didn’t like th country) due to Covid-19 and lockdown and the pandemic also meant that he missed a number of European countries thanks to the pandemic.

This is why he has now returned to Europe with his first stop in Portugal then Gibraltar, Andorra, Monaco. Liechtenstein, Kosovo and Malta.

By the time he has finished, he believes that h will have travelled around 200,000 kilometres although by the time he hits country 191, there may be some more new ones created.

Thank you for reading ‘Gibraltar is 161st country visited by Indian cyclist’ and remember that all articles produced by Euro Weekly News may be accessed free of charge.