Some searches start as casual curiosity and end as a proper rabbit hole. I came across a passing reference to a real Indian man named Ranjith — someone who had apparently cycled from India toward England on a bicycle — and wanted to know more. What I found was The Indian Cyclist by Surya Teja, published by Pen A Story. I downloaded the eBook on a Thursday evening. By Sunday I had finished it, recommended it to two friends, and found myself staring at maps of Central Asia like I was seriously considering my own route. That is the kind of book this is.
The Man Behind the Journey — Who Is Ranjith?
Ranjith is not a celebrity. He is not an influencer who cycled a hundred kilometres for a brand deal and called it an expedition. He is a real Indian man who made a decision — a difficult, irrational, expensive, and deeply personal decision — and followed it all the way across countries on two wheels, with very little money and no guarantee that any of it would work out.
What makes the book work is that Surya Teja does not mythologise him. Ranjith has doubts. He makes bad calls. There are nights in this book where he is exhausted, far from home, running low on money, and genuinely unsure whether he has made a terrible mistake. Those are the chapters that stay with you — not the triumphant ones, but the in-between ones, where continuing requires something that cannot easily be named.
If you searched for Ranjith the cyclist and wanted the full story, this book is it. And it earns every page.
India to England on a Bicycle — What That Route Actually Involved
The phrase “India to England by bicycle” sounds almost absurd until you start tracing the geography in your head. You are looking at thousands of kilometres across the subcontinent and into Central Asia — mountain passes, border crossings, roads that change character completely every few hundred kilometres, and stretches where there is no shade, no water, and no one who speaks your language.
The Indian Cyclist does not reduce any of this to a highlight reel. It gives you the granular reality — the preparations that did not hold, the landscapes that took his breath away, the days that were just grinding hard work with no poetry in them at all. Ranjith cycles through places that most Indians have never visited and may never visit, and Surya Teja writes those landscapes with real attention. You feel the altitude shifts. You feel the particular loneliness of a long flat road in a country where you do not know a single person.
It is not a travel guide. It is a first-person account from someone who had no safety net and no external validation — just a direction and a decision to keep moving until the decision stopped making sense or the journey ended. As it turned out, only one of those things happened.
What This Book Does That Most Inspirational Books Don’t
Here is the honest problem with the inspirational book category: most entries feel like they were written by committee and edited by a motivational poster. The protagonist is relentlessly positive. Every setback arrives pre-packaged as a lesson. The language is smooth and optimistic and, ultimately, unconvincing — because real life does not feel like that, and you can tell when a story has been ironed flat.
The Indian Cyclist is not that. It is a book about purpose and resilience told through the texture of real experience — which means it includes the confusion, the loneliness, and the days when Ranjith questioned everything he was doing. Surya Teja writes with a warmth that never tips into sentimentality. You feel like you are reading about someone’s actual life, not a polished version of it constructed for an audience.
There is a scene in the book — I will not give the details away — where Ranjith receives unexpected kindness from a complete stranger in a country where he does not speak the language. It is a small moment. It takes about two paragraphs. But it captures something true about human beings that most books spend three hundred pages trying and failing to articulate. That is the quality of writing you are getting here.
Why the eBook Is the Easiest Way to Start
If you are the kind of reader who thinks “I’ll buy it later” and then forgets for six months, let me make this simple. The eBook is ₹299, available right now on the Pen A Story app on Android and iOS, and you can be reading it within two minutes of finishing this sentence. No delivery window, no out-of-stock disappointment, no waiting for a package to arrive.
For the price of a mediocre café lunch, you get a book that will probably occupy your thoughts for longer than the lunch did. The Pen A Story app is clean and easy to use — if you’ve used a Kindle or any reading app, you already know how it works.
And if you are someone who prefers to hold a book rather than a screen — some stories do feel better in your hands — the paperback is available at ₹499 with Cash on Delivery across India. There are also limited signed copies available, which makes it a genuinely thoughtful gift for a cyclist, a traveller, or anyone who has ever quietly considered doing something brave.
If this story resonates with you, you have two ways to read it:
📱 Get the eBook for ₹299 — read instantly on the Pen A Story app (Android & iOS).
📦 Order the Paperback for ₹499 — delivered across India with Cash on Delivery. Limited signed copies available.