Round-the-world missions for a good and sometimes charitable cause are prevalent these days with mostly young and active Westerners engaging in energy-draining activities. But such a long-distance, cross-continent journey is relatively uncommon for Asians, let alone a middle-aged couple from Bangladesh.
Fatema Sultana and Mohammad Shahade Ferdous.
Mohammad Shahade Ferdous, 47, and Fatema Sultana, 42, have travelled all across Southeast Asia on their trusty motorbike as part of their self-funded "Ride for Greener Earth" campaign, which aims to educate people in general with regard to the adverse effects of global warming and climate change.
Ferdous, who back home works as a manager and distributor for wellness and beauty company Forever Living, and Sultana, who is a radio news host and representative of the Urban Primary Health Care Project (UPHCP), said their campaign started in 2013 as a 10-year endeavour.
It will see them travel over 400,000km across more than 200 countries, spreading the word on global warming to the people they meet along the way by word of mouth, as well as interaction with local media organisations.
The journey, which started in their home country Bangladesh, has so far taken the couple through parts of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, before arriving in Thailand through the Sadao border checkpoint in the province of Songkhla in early July. From Thailand, they will head to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, before returning to Thailand to catch a flight back to Bangladesh to prepare for the next leg of their journey.
A veteran cross-country cyclist, Ferdous embarked on his first long-distance adventure in 1998 with two other friends.
Their journey, though not as long as the one he is currently attempting with his wife, took him and his friends through parts of Asia, Europe and Africa on their bicycles. An adventurous soul, Ferdous has also climbed Mount Everest twice, first in 2001 and then again 10 years later in 2011.
"When I first visited Mount Everest in 2001, I noticed that there were absolutely no natural bodies of water anywhere," said Ferdous. "When I returned 10 years later, I noticed many streams and rivers had formed around parts of the mountain, as the snow is starting to melt due to global warming."
As an advocate of environmental awareness, Ferdous believes that if global warming progresses at the current rate, most of Bangladesh, being an island nation, will be submerged within a couple decades, displacing millions of people along the coastline and destroying treasured natural ecosystems like The Sundarbans forest, a Unesco World Heritage Site known for its mangrove and one of the few places in the world that houses a population of the endangered Bengal tiger.
"We Bangladeshi people are victims [of global warming]. Of the top 20 hazardous countries [at risk of being submerged under seawater] across the whole world, we hold second position, after only the Maldives. The Australian government has offered to take responsibility for those islands, but over 30-40 million people [in Bangladesh] will become victims due to rising sea levels. Our coastal areas will disappear. Around the world, average temperatures are increasing drastically. When I first visited India in 2003, during the summer, the temperature peaked at about 36°C. Recently, when my trip took me through India, the average temperature had risen to 45°. Worse, there wasn't a sliver of shade to be found anywhere. I hardly saw any trees at all while we passed through India."
The problem for Asia, Ferdous observed, lies in the fact that a huge percentage of the population are currently uneducated and unaware of the effects their everyday actions may have on the environment. Thus, educating these people on an issue as multifaceted and complicated as global warming can be a challenge.
"Westerners generally have access to a much higher level of education than the majority of Asians," he said. "As such, it is often Westerners who are seen taking action against the problem. However, it is my belief that it is the moral obligation of all humans to protect our world for future generations.
"People like to think that being environmentally conscious requires a significant change in their lifestyle.
"However, should they do nothing and allow climate change to worsen, life as we know it will inevitably change anyway. Therefore, we should all stop climate change before it changes us."
