Mecca Cyclist!
• Abu Bakar Siddiqui Habibi, 91 Years “Young”, from Cuttack (Orissa), has set out on a ramshackle bicycle for Mecca in Saudi Arabia. He is set to travel 35,000 Km, through AP, MP and more than a dozen countries. He started his journey 45 days ago and is likely to finish in 2006.
• Habibi is living separately from his family for the last 30 Years. His wife stays with her sons, who are tyre mechanics. He stays in madrasas and masjids and travels with financial help from the faithful.
• In 1990, in his earlier travel by the bicycle, he started for Mecca, from Cuttack, through Guna, Indore, Gwalior, Dholpur and Agra, NH 3, to Bradnagar on the Indo-Nepal Border via Purnia in Bihar, through Nepal, Lhasa in Tibet, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to Kupfa, the ‘Makan’ (abode) of Hazrat Ali, Nazrat Azras, Karbala, Jerusalem and thence Mecca.
• Habibi has interesting experiences. Though he got a lot of help from the people in India, Pakistan refused him a visa. So he had to take the Nepal - Tibet route. Similarly, he found it difficult to get shelter in Iran, another Muslim country. This time he is afraid that Iraq would be too hot in view of the current unrest.
• “There is no problem in India. Once Naga terrorists broke my bicycle. However, on learning of my mission, they not only bought me a new bicycle but treated me as a guest,” Habibi said.
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“Saarey Jahaan Se Achchhaa Hindustan Hamaaraa,” Habibi says.
- NIE, 4 June 04, p 5
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Salute Secular India!
JAI HIND! 
