The four young men have travelled 17,000 km and have another 3,000 km to go. Picture by Amit Datta

Spine-chilling cold in Leh, a few knocks on the Bihar border, unruly terrain in north Bengal… a group of four bikers took all these and lot more in their stride and reached Calcutta on Wednesday morning on course of their Great Indian Road Trip.

The bikers, all in their 20s, have covered 17,000 km and are yet to travel another 3,000 km.

The first leg of their journey — Delhi to Leh and back — started on August 15 and ended on September 18.

Calcutta is on the second leg of their road trip from Delhi to Kanyakumari and back. “We have already covered 17,000 km and do not even remember the names of the cities and towns we’ve passed through. We went to places as different as chalk and cheese in terms of culture and terrain,” said Sundeep Gajjar, who works as a graphic artist

The states they have passed through include Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Bengal and a few in the Northeast.

“At the end of our trip we will release a coffeetabler with the details of our expedition,” said Sunil Gupta, a medical transcriptionist.

The bikers have several anecdotes, though not all pleasant, to recall. On the Bihar border, they were assaulted by a gang after they refused to pay up Rs 50. The other two members in the team of four are Ashish Diwakaran, a student, and Bunny Punia, a journalist.