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[Kanak]

This is Kanak Mani Dixit in Kathmandu, a journalist and civil rights activist. Following a trekking accident while going around Annapurna in 2001, friends and family came together to start the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre here in Nepal. The Spinal Centre, run by the Spinal Injury Sangha Nepal, was inaugurated by the late Sir Edmund Hillary in 2002. We run entirely by raising our own support. Faced with the need to suddenly raise our service from 38 beds to 51, we have had to do some emergency fund-raising.

And so, "The Great Nepal-India-Pakistan Spinal Beetle Fund-raising Drive", in which our 1973 model Bug will do the 1100 mile trip, raising funds at USD 100 per mile. At last count,we had raised USD 20K. My wife Shanta and I start the drive from Kathmandu on 4 November 2011, and go through Lucknow, Agra, Delhi, Lahore, Rawalpindi/Islamabad, ending the drive in Peshawar.

More information at our site, www.sirc.org.np. We will also be tweeting and blogging along the trip. Thank you for reading this.

(I had a 'cord sparing' injury, with only residual problems with my neck and three fingers on each hand.)