Northeast cyclist bikes from Delhi to Manipur to raise awareness on pollution

New Delhi [India], Dec 07 (ANI): Pollution is the largest environmental health risk across the world causing millions of premature deaths. With a spike in pollutants in the atmosphere and increased numbers of vehicles, many people are now raising environmental concerns.
A 23-year-old Northeast cyclist from Manipur, Rohan Philem Singh is on a mission to make India better.
With an aim to educate and raise awareness about the growing menace of pollution, Rohan recently traversed through 12 states in 35 days. He covered a distance of 3500 Kilometres in his solo expedition from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to Manipur recently under the theme 'Save Sangai.'
During his journey, he interacted with young school children, college students, environmentalist, and many others and he termed his campaign as 'A journey taken with extra mile'.
After completing his 35-day-lone tour, he was warmly received by family, friends, tourism department, Cabinet Ministers, Pollution control board and was also felicitated by Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh during the 10-day-long Sangai Festival 2018.
Sangai Festival in Manipur has become one of the biggest socio-cultural events for the state.
Rohan, who is pursuing his masters in English from a private university in Noida, is increasingly worried about the deteriorating air quality of the city. He said that it was his illness triggered by the toxic smog in the capital that motivated him to embark on a solo journey.
Rohan is also an animal lover and has been tirelessly campaigning for the safety of Sangai deer or brow-antlered deer, the state animal deer found only in Manipur.
This is not the first time that the young man from the northeast attempted such a tour de force. Earlier, in January, he covered 2,800 kilometres in 28 days from India Gate to Manipur under the theme 'Pollution free India.'
When asked about the tourism sector of Manipur, he said, "In the past two-three years, tourism of Manipur has developed as we have received more positive feeds from India, abroad and day-by-day; tourism sector is improving in Manipur."
He firmly believes that awareness can have a great impact on the fragile environment and the earth we live in.
"This is the social awareness that I am doing, for now, I am doing this on my own expenses, so I am expecting NGOs to collaborate. So my request is not only to NGO 'S, Government but the environmentalist too," Rohan added.
As many as one million lives in the world can be saved if all the countries reduce the menace of air pollution in accordance with the Paris Agreement by 2015, as reported by World Health Organisation(WHO). WHO recently presented this report at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice on December 5. (ANI)