Demonetisation halts foreigner's bike ride

CHENNAI: Aurimas Seilius was about to enter the last leg of his long ride across India and Nepal on a Thunderbird Bullet when he heard of 'demonetization.' Interestingly, it was while crossing UP's Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on November 10 that this Lithuania-based civil engineer happened to feel its impact.When Seilius reached Agra, he only had some US dollars and demonetized Indian currencies left with him.
Adding to his woes, no one accepted his international credit card. An attempt to exchange dollars with Indian currency didn't work as the exchange centres had only demonetized notes. “I had covered more than 12,000km on road by the time I reached Agra. It was a very enjoyable ride until I heard about the demonetization. No one had any idea about this sudden deci sion. I was disturbed. There was no other option but to take a train from Agra to Chennai,“ said Aurimas Seilius, 29, who started his journey from Chennai in the first week of August.
It was after spending a couple of weeks in Chennai, Seilius finally bought a second hand Bullet. “I was eager to hit the road. I purchased the vehicle and prepared it for the journey . I even undertook a few hundred km test ride. My friends Paul Pradeep and Hari of the Madras Moto Garage helped me a lot to customise my vehicle,“ he said. Seilius covered cities like Hyderabad, Pune, Udaipur, Jaipur and Manali and entered Ladakh via the Rohtang Pass. He then spent a month in Nepal, detouring remote villages there. It was while returning to Chennai via Kolkata that the demonetization hit him.
Getting a train ticket from Agra was not easy. When Seili Agra was not easy. When Seilius reached the Agra railway station, it was crowded. He had to wait for two days to get a ticket to Chennai. When he got the ticket, there was another problem. He couldn't take his vehicle with him in the train.“The final phase of the journey was a mess indeed. No one spoke English at the booking office where I tried to book my vehicle to Chennai. The shift timings changed officers at the parcel booking counter, so we faced a difficult time. What we had was a couple of Rs 2,000 notes which we couldn't use as no one had change for that. An officer finally helped me to book my vehicle in another train,“ said Seilius.