CYCLING LONDON TO PARIS

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

My name is Gabar Singh, I am a personal trainer based in London/Essex in the UK. (www.gabarsingh.co.uk) I have had many achievements in my lifetime but more importantly, I am blessed to be in good health, have clean water and good sanitation around me.

I was watching television one evening and came across an advert. It was a video of young children, from the age of 3 and sometimes with siblings, who travel many miles every day to carry dirty water back home for their family members to drink. They know this water is dirty and could kill them but they have no choice.

I started to think about myself, what I have in my life, what I need, forgetting about what I want but what I actually need. The answer was a list of many things before I saw this advert but shortly after, all I thought about was what I NEED to do to help these very unfortunate children. Sometimes we want so much more from life and take things we have for granted, when we should actually see how lucky we are to even have the basic necessities in life.

I decided to do some further research on this subject and found out some shocking figures.

2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, that’s one in three of the worlds population.

Around 500,000 children die every year from diarrhea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation - that's over 1,400 children a day

Just £15 can enable one person to access a lasting supply of safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation.

Why the Fundraising?

Reading some facts, I knew I had to arrange something to raise money and I wanted to do something different.

Anyone can donate money without actually thinking about the cause and what the money is used for. So after many hours of thinking and going through figures and how much I would have to raise to make a significant change. I decided this figure would be around the £1,300 mark. Knowing this, I knew I couldn't just do a normal event, fun day or a marathon, as it would just not raise enough money.

So I decided to do something out of my comfort zone. Where I would have to take time off work, something a bit more challenging and long distance, where I would feel some pain and where I would have to push myself. I wanted to pick a challenge I would remember in years to come, not only for self-achievement but for it to stand out from the crowd. I want people to think about what I have done and maybe, just maybe, it will plant a seed in their heads to stand up one day to do the same.

This is where i will be cycling:

Water is life. There are 748 million people in our planet that don’t have clean water. That’s one out of every nine people who cannot turn on a tap to run water down the drain and who walk through dangerous conditions to get water.

Can you imagine life without safe, clean water? For 748 million people it's a daily reality.