Weston Pink Scooter Nepal Ride Under Way: £50,200 Raised

Tony Hobden, chief executive of the Weston-super-Mare charity Shiva Charity, set off on 12 November on a 1,000km ride across Nepal on a small pink scooter. The Scoot4Nepal ride has raised £50,200 of its £80,000 target, enough for 34 of the 50 rural schools it wants to give clean drinking water.

Overview

• What: a 10-day, roughly 1,000km scooter ride over mountain roads in Nepal, from 12 to 21 November.
• Who: Tony Hobden, 52, who had no riding experience until this year, with a small team of riders.
• Why: each £1,500 pays for a water purification system in a rural Nepalese school, serviced for 10 years.
• Raised so far: £50,200 of £80,000, the charity says, with 16 schools still to fund.
• How to give or follow: scoot4nepal.org and the Scoot4Nepal YouTube channel.

Day one, Banepa to Pokhara

The campaign’s first video from the road covers the opening stage, Banepa to Pokhara. On its route map that is the longest day of the ride: 221km and about 10 hours in the saddle.

“After all the planning and training, it’s hard to believe we’re finally here and setting off,” Hobden said. “I’m excited, nervous and under no illusions about how tough the next 10 days could be.

“But the difficult roads and long days are exactly why we’re doing something like this. We want people to follow the adventure, share what we’re doing and, if they can, make a donation. Every £1,500 we raise can mean another school having access to clean drinking water for years to come.”

The team is filming the whole journey and posting footage of the terrain, the people and the communities along the way.

The route, day by day

The campaign’s map sets out the stages like this:

The high point comes on day three. The map climbs from 850m at Pokhara to 2,500m at Kalopani and 3,800m at Muktinath, then drops to 1,200m at Tatopani the next day. The stage distances on the map add up to 1,026km.

The school stops are written into the route: day seven is a short ride to Sanga School in Banepa, and day eight visits schools in Jyamdi and Bharabise, according to the answers the charity gave us in October.

The bike is a 125cc Yamaha RAYZR with “no mods”, the charity told us then. Hobden has lived in or worked from Weston-super-Mare “all his life. 12 generations apparently.”

Where the money stands

Each £1,500 raised can give a school a purification system and 10 years of servicing, which is how 50 schools comes to £80,000. The charity puts the total at £50,200, enough for 34 schools. That has climbed from £42,500 when Hobden answered our questions on 5 October.

Some of that came from Weston itself. A team of runners in Scoot 4 Nepal T-shirts, printed with a QR code, ran the Weston-super-Mare Half Marathon and 10K on 4 October to raise money for the ride.

The money reaches Nepal “via Shiva Nepal (the Shiva charity team based there) and REACT”, the charity told us. The Charity Commission lists Shiva Charity UK as charity number 1045197, based in Weston-super-Mare. (Charity Commission register)

The charity’s separate flood appeal, which we covered in September, runs on its own JustGiving page.

A message from Joanna Lumley

The ride has been on ITV News West Country, where Hobden talked about the challenge and why he is doing it, and it has a message of support from Dame Joanna Lumley.

How to follow the ride or give

• Donate: through scoot4nepal.org. £1,500 covers one school’s purifier and its servicing.
• Watch: daily footage goes up on the Scoot4Nepal YouTube channel, and the campaign also posts on Instagram, with Shiva Charity on Facebook.
• Businesses: the campaign’s partnerships contact is partners@scoot4nepal.org.

The ride finishes on 21 November. We will report the final total when the team is back.