Chennai:
In a bid to enter the Limca Book of records, two engineering students of a city college on Wednesday embarked on a mission to drive around the Golden Quadrilateral (Chennai-Kolkata-Delhi-Mumbai) in 72 hours on a four-wheeler.
The team comprising SRM university students Tarun Kumar Tripathy, Prateek Daroliacar and Electrode Firm Assel director Ashish Tripathy started their journey on early Wednesday morning from the varsity campus at Kattankulathur on city outskirts.
Travelling at an average speed of about 80 km per hour, the team would drive the car in turns and try to cover a distance of 5,949 km in 72 to 75 hours.
The present record is held by a six-member team of drivers (looping) which covered the GQ in 75 hours and 32 minutes on June six this year.
The students, with 20,000 hours of driving experience, told reporters before their journey that they had taken all precautions for safe driving and had sought assistance of police and National Highways Authority of India for the venture. The team would cover the GQ in a Honda CRV 2.0 gasoline car, they said.
According to SRM university Chancellor T R Pachamuthu, this is the first time students are undertaking such a mission to sensitise the public about issues such as terrorism, global warming, corruption and pollution.
SRM would bear about 50 per cent of the journey's expenditure as part of the varsity's effort to promote sports and other activities among students, he said.