On this day, Bimal Mukherjee, Ashok Mukherjee, Ananda Mukherjee and Manindra Ghosh began their journey from the city as the first Indians to circumnavigate the globe on bicycles.

Bimal, who wrote about his experiences in his book Du chakaye duniya, would return to Calcutta in 1937.

Starting from Town Hall, the cyclists stopped first at Chandannagar, then went to Delhi, Karachi and eventually entered Europe after travelling across Syria and Turkey.

They crossed the Bohemian Alps in December’s cold, wearing only flannel shirts and relying on rapid cycling and keeping one hand inside their pockets to ward off frostbite.

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