Mohammad Shahade Ferdous and Fatema Sultana Shama had started their “Ride for Greener Earth” from Dhaka in Bangladesh on 29 April. They reached Kolkata on 1 June and spent a couple of days for campaigning on the city street before leaving for Jharkhand.

The couple would complete their mission in 14 phases and it would take around eight years. They will tour nine countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives in the first phase. The distance to be covered in this phase is around 40,000 km and it would take around 8 months.

After completing their awareness campaign programme in Bangladesh and Bhutan, they came to India. “We came to Kolkata believing that people here are very environment conscious and our awareness campaign will help to make them more enthusiastic on preserving greenery,” said Mohammad Shahade Ferdous.

The couple stopped in various areas in the city including, Park Street and Lenin Sarani, where people stopped to watch them and they utilised the situation to create awareness among people. They left the city this morning for Jharkhand.

Mohammad Shahade Ferdous said that in the second phase they would cover around 23 countries including Qatar, United Arab Emirate (UAE), Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While the tour will end with the last phase of journey in countries including Fiji, South Korea, North Korea and New Zealand. He said: “I took a tour of Asia, Africa and Europe earlier on my bicycle and hopefully, I will be successful this time as well.”