Ultracyclist Vedangi Kulkarni Wanted to Be the Fastest. Instead, She’ll Be the First

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In the background of Vedangi Kulkarni’s WhatsApp audio messages, you can hear heavy traffic whizzing by. Occasionally when she’s speaking she also lets out an intermittent yelp but then continues talking.

“Magpies,” she says into the recording. “The situation is a bit dire. Currently it’s the season when they’re nesting, or breeding or whatever, and they get a bit territorial. I just keep riding fast, sometimes screaming at them, waving my hands frantically.”

Kulkarni then says that she’s fashioned an antenna-like attachment to the top of her helmet to keep the birds from swooping down too close to her head.

“It’s the least aero thing and it also looks hideous, but if that’s gonna stop them from drawing blood off my ear or face or whatever then I guess it’s worth it,” she says.

For Kulkarni, dodging magpies in Australia while simultaneously recording an interview and pedaling her bicycle is, at this point, par for the course.

The 26-year-old set off in July with a goal to break the Guinness World Record for fastest circumnavigation of the globe by a female. Since then, her ride has been riddled with challenges and setbacks, aggressive magpies the more humorous among them.

Then, on September 11, as Kulkarni was pedaling along Australia’s southern coast dodging angry birds, ultracyclist Lael Wilcox smashed the world record, held by Scotswoman Jenny Graham since 2018, in 108 days, 12 hours, and 12 minutes.

Nevertheless, Kulkarni isn’t one to give up easily. In fact, this isn’t even her first time riding around the world: in 2018 at just 20, she became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe by bicycle. She completed the journey in 159 days, covering over 29,000 kilometers across 14 countries.

So even though her current ride, which has so far taken her through India, Mongolia, Australia, and New Zealand, has been a test of patience and perseverance, Kulkarni remains undeterred.

“The thing is, I refuse to quit,” she says. “At the very least, I can beat my own previous time. And who knows? Maybe I’ll be the only woman to do this sort of round-the-world circumnavigation twice. Besides, I want to push myself. I’ve worked hard to get here.”

A Lesson in Not Giving Up

Just how hard Kulkarni has worked would have forced most people to quit before they’d even begun.

Although she was five years older, wiser, and stronger when she set off to circumnavigate the world for the second time in July, Kulkarni was confronted with issues as soon as she began planning the trip.

As an Indian citizen, she wasn’t able to secure all the necessary visas to ride what would have been the most efficient route, so she had to puzzle together her circumnavigation with what she could.

“My route is utter chaos purely because certain countries could provide appointments in time, while others weren’t able to convey their decision before I needed to leave,” she says. “I applied for everything in good time without waiting until the last minute or leaving anything for on-the-go, but it just wasn’t good enough.”

In order to have her ride qualify for the record, Kulkarni needed to abide by Guinness World Records rules for a “circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle:” the ride must cover at least 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers), be unidirectional, and cross two antipodal points (locations on opposite sides of the planet).

Initially frustrated that she couldn’t route through the United States or Canada due to the visa technicalities, Kulkarni decided to approach the situation positively.

“I have always wanted to cycle across the South Island of NZ and cycle through the Peruvian Andes,” she says. “So, initially, I was really mad that my Canada or US visas wouldn’t get approved in time no matter when I applied for them, but I decided that I will compromise on the efficiency a little bit by adding places that I want to cycle through.”

In July, Kulkarni started her ride in her hometown in India, then hopped a flight to Mongolia, where she rode through the high desert and mountains. Then, she flew to Australia to ride from Perth to Sydney. After that, Kulkarni routed up through New Zealand, from Queenstown to Auckland. When she reaches Auckland, she’ll fly Lima, Peru and ride through the Andes to Bolivia.

Then, she’ll make her way to Europe, where she’ll ride through Portugal and Spain, then to Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Belarus.

After a ride across Oman, her final leg will bring her back to India.

It’s a dizzying route that has been rife with both highs and lows, some related to her challenging travel circumstances and others the pure happenstance of a many thousands of kilometers-long bicycle ride.

Nevertheless, Kulkarni never has to spend too much time stuck in the trough of a challenge before she’s jolted back to higher ground. Like the time she was riding next to Lake Tolbo, nestled among the Altai mountains in western Mongolia.

“I truly felt like I belonged on a bike,” she says. “As I rode and looked around, I could see big mountains behind the blue lake to my right and the road in front of me. There was nobody in sight for miles. It was like I was born to fully experience and take in all that mountain happiness.”

A Goal Redefined

Since Kulkarni’s first ride around the world in 2018, she has spent the past five years getting stronger and smarter on the bike. She made it no secret that she was setting out on this year’s ride with a more audacious goal: to break the Guinness World Record for fastest circumnavigation of the globe by a female cyclist.

But with a mountain of setbacks early in her ride, as well as Wilcox’s blistering new record, Kulkarni acknowledges that her original goal is no longer in reach. The admission has taken her to some dark places.

“I kind of have loads of ups and downs mentally these days, especially knowing that things aren’t going too well and knowing that with the amount of days I’ve done now I was already halfway around the world back in 2018 when I was so much younger than this.”

However, her determination remains undimmed. While the initial motivation of Kulkarni’s ride around the world has shifted, a new and more poignant goal has emerged: to meet each setback knowing that she is resilient enough to push through.

It’s a strategy that works nearly every time, even if the bright horizon isn’t always so easy to envision. Take Kulkarni’s blissful ride along Lake Tolbo in Mongolia, for example. Just days before, she was offloaded from a flight from Dehli to Hong Kong due to visa issues. In an around the world record attempt the clock never stops, so delay cost her precious time and energy. It also shattered her confidence.

“It was one of those moments when I was like, ‘holy shit, I’m never gonna get there,’” she says. “This is the worst thing that could happen to me, I’ve lost the race before I’ve even properly started. It was a proper spiral, it was crazy.”

When she finally started riding, however, her perspective shifted.

“I got to Mongolia and had the best day on the bike and it was incredible. I climbed like three or four passes that day,” she says. “I was smiling the whole way. It was just the best.

“It’s quite funny when something like that happens. You realize that you’ll have the worst of worst moments and start questioning everything you’re doing altogether, then you’ll have the best day on the bike. It kinda takes that level of patience I guess to get to that point. So yeah, it’s a good life lesson that all good and bad moments will pass.”

So despite heat stroke in India and a debilitating tooth infection in Mongolia and the magpies in Australia, where she felt acutely alone at times cycling the lonely Great Australian Bight coast, Kulkarni now knows that she can get through tough times. Without the record to chase anymore, this seems like a worthy enough goal.

“Not all days on the bike are good days,” Kulkarni says. “But all days on the bike have the potential to be an incredible day. I love that I’m covering so much ground. I love that I’m in a different place every single day and I love that I’m pushing myself and that I’m having setbacks that aren’t pushing me off. I’m so grateful for that. I don’t think I’d rather be anywhere else right now.”