Naga Baba Shiva Giri, otherwise known as Bike Baba is 59. He is a wandering holy man, a travelling Sadhu. He took to the road on his Hero Honda 100 in '92 and has since covered 164,000 km.
Every year he rides across India from north to south following routes inspired by Hindu spirituality and linked to Shiva to whom he is particularly devoted.
Bike Baba is a naked ascetic, who has renounced worldly goods and chosen motorbike travel as his form of meditation.
In modern day India there are more cities than open country and his motorbike allows him to hurry through the infinite number of chaotic urban agglomerates.
In today’s India the Sadhu is still believed to possess great spiritual power and if Bike Baba were to travel on foot, he would constantly be stopped and distracted by people seeking his blessing and advice.
We followed Bike Baba for 5,000 km across southern India, from Hyderabad, the capital of Andra Pradesh (his birthplace) to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, the end point of India where three oceans meet. We shared Bike Baba’s journey for 40 days sharing, too, his belief that “Travel is essential, and only when you have seen everything can you stop in any one place."
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