At 19, Vedangi Kulkarni became the youngest woman to cycle the globe. At 25, she did it again—not for records, but to test her own limits. “I wanted to see if I could be stronger, wiser, and better at bikes than before,” she says. The answer? Yes—just not enough to break the record. Yet crossing the finish line brought relief. “I was happy I’d tried something big,” she admits, even if it came with the sting of unmet goals.

The road was relentless. Heat exhaustion in India. Food poisoning in Mongolia left her vomiting. In Peru, she gasped through the Andes at 4,800 meters, chased by dogs and trucks. But on the toughest days, she asked herself: What would I rather be doing? “Quitting wouldn’t give me more peace than fighting to the end,” she realised. Sometimes, the only way forward was to embrace the challenge, reset at the next rest stop, and keep pedaling.

What kept her going? The quiet moments in between. The Peruvian farmer who shared his lunch when she was starving. The Mongolian mechanic who fixed her bike for free, waving away her thanks. “People think this kind of journey is solitary,” she says, “but it’s really a tapestry of kindness.” Even the landscapes became companions: Swedish forests brought endless green, the Omani desert’s star-flecked nights. “You learn to listen to the world,” she reflects. “It tells you when to push and when to rest.”

Amid the struggle, there was joy—like riding Australia’s Nullarbor Plain with a tailwind, the turquoise ocean beside her, no soul in sight. “I stopped at every viewpoint. I wish I could pack that happiness in a little box,” she laughs. There were lifelines, too: Mongolian families who fed her, the Indian Navy cheering her at the finish. “The world is cruel and kind, often in the same hour,” she reflects.

What did she gain? Patience, for one. “You learn to live with pain, fear, and boredom. You see the world as it is, not the stories we tell ourselves.” Most of all, she learned to live in the moment. “There’s no better teacher than traveling under your own steam.”

And what’s next? “Maybe a third loop—but slower.” This time, she’d linger where the wind once rushed her past. “I’ve raced the planet twice. Now I want to savour it.” She adds to her ambitions the hope of doing a Trans Arctic Expedition, exploring the evolution of bushcraft in indigenous communities and to tell the story of the effects of climate change on the region as a whole. “I would love to race my bike more, but when it comes to expeditions, I want to be purposeful and do something that tells a unique story, that adds value to the world”.

Her message to other riders, especially women and those from developing nations? “Never say something isn’t for you because of barriers. There’s always a way to your finish line.” Proving that it's the ride itself, not the record, that changes you, Vedangi didn’t just circle the world twice—she claimed her place in it.