Jyoti would cycle for 30 to
40 km a day and sometimes, an odd truck driver would agree to take them aboard.
Ivanka Trump had visited India earlier
this year (File)
New
Delhi: Jyoti Kumari, the Bihar
girl who cycled almost 1,200 km with her father as pillion to reach home, has
been praised on Twitter by US President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump.
Ms Trump has described the
15-year-old's arduous effort to get to home her home in Bihar amid the
nationwide coronavirus lockdown, as "beautiful feat of endurance and
love".
"15 yr old Jyoti
Kumari, carried her wounded father to their home village on the back of her
bicycle covering +1,200 km over 7 days. This beautiful feat of endurance &
love has captured the imagination of the Indian people and the cycling
federation!," she tweeted.
Ms Kumari, a Bihar native,
was visiting her father Mohan Paswan in Gurgaon in March, when the nationwide
lockdown was announced. Mr Paswan, an e-rickshaw driver, had met with an
accident and was injured.
Because of the lockdown,
Jyoti was forced to stay with her father. With no job, no money and with the
landlord threatening to throw them out, the father-daughter duo was staring at
starvation.
Jyoti then decided to head
back to her hometown Darbhanga in Bihar, but not without her father.
She first borrowed money to
buy a cycle. There was no option, she believed, since trains and buses were not
running and her father couldn't walk.
Mr
Paswan later said he tried to dissuade his daughter, telling her that riding a
bicycle with a much heavier pillion rider was not easy. But Jyoti insisted and
he gave in.
Jyoti
said they would cycle for 30 to 40 km a day and sometimes, an odd truck driver
would agree to take them aboard.
"It
was unbearably tiring. We would stop for food at places where we could see free
food being distributed among people like us," Jyoti later shared.
The
Indian Cycling Federation has invited her to trials next month.