March 22: London’s Parliament Square was the flag-off point for a 30,000-km motorbike tour of environmentalist Sadhguru on Monday, as he set off on his Save Soil awareness campaign across Europe and the Middle East en route to India.
The 64-year-old yoga guru donned his biking gear for the 100-day tour ahead, which will take him to Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague over the course of this week on a BMW K1600 GT motorcycle.
After a series of events scheduled in key cities along the way, he is aiming for a homecoming in New Delhi in 75 days in honour of India’s 75th year of independence.
“It’s extremely important that we act now. I’ve been talking about this for over 24 years, but the solution can only happen when there is a positive policy in every nation,” Sadhguru told reporters at the Indian High Commission here before setting off on his bike tour.
“It is still snowing in many parts of Europe and we’ll be going through that on a two-wheeler. At this age, it’s not really a joy ride. So why am I doing this? Because over 300,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last 20 years. Not just in India, across the world this is happening… one of the main concerns is soil depletion,” he said.
The Save Soil Movement, launched as part of the spiritual leader’s Conscious Planet initiative, is aimed at turning the world’s attention towards dying soil and growing desertification.
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The focus is on getting countries to institute national policies towards increasing the organic content in cultivable soil.
“Whether on the cricket field or on the field of life, if we are to play well, the soil has to be well. Time to come together and turn things around. Let’s make it happen,” he said, during a visit to the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground for interaction with Middlesex Cricket Club (MCC) as part of the UK leg of his tour.
The campaign, which is backed by the World Food Programme and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, calls on policy-makers around the world to make soil regeneration a priority.
“No matter how much wealth, education, and money we have, our children cannot live well unless we restore the soil and water. Conscious Planet is the only way forward,” Sadhguru, whose full name is Jagadish Vasudev, said at the University of Birmingham last week.
His lone motorbike journey ends in time for the Summer Solstice on June 21 at the Cauvery Calling project, which is enabling the planting of 2.42 billion trees in private farmlands in the Cauvery river basin to restore the severely depleted river and revitalise the soil
