After races in the European, South American, North America and African ARWS series, it’s time for Asia! India is back with another ARWS regional race and this time it’s the Odyssey Adventure Race hosted by NthAdventure in India.
The adventure racing community is growing in India and now there are many teams who have realized the potential of this sport and are training for competitive racing. There are some more experienced adventure racing teams now too.
Many are now regular competitors who keep coming back for sprint and regional races to gain more experience. Currently on the ARWS Asia Regional ranking its Indian teams on top. In the past there were very few adventure racing opportunities in Asia. From just one race in entire continent to having more than 9 races in 2023 is a big boost for the region, which has some incredible locations for adventure racing.
NthAdventure, India’s only licensed organization from ARWS, have made continuous efforts to grow the sport in the country. Through the year they conduct navigation workshops (orienteering on trails, bikes and kayaks) and urban, adventure racing workshops open to the public and universities. And they are organizing races of 30KM to 60km as part of Indian National AR Series, as well as hosting 3 ARWS Asia Regional Races. They want everyone to experience this sport in India.
Odyssey AR is a 100km race with a lot of technical challenges. Ajita Madan, Race Director says, “We evolve with every course. We wanted to provide a course which is a little shorter in distance but with multiple transitions and activities to test how team’s strategize and pack their transition bags.
In this race teams will not go through the 24-hour cycle since we have strategically placed a cut-off. For the first time we are introducing an “underwater checkpoint” which I saw in Expedition Africa Rodrigues and have been waiting to introduce. There will be a river crossing, rogaining, abseiling, hanging CP’s and more.
The location of this race is “Ramanagara”, which is surrounded by many granite hills, has an amazing history and was the location of the very famous Indian Movie “Sholay”. While teams look for checkpoints the mountains will always be watching over them.
The winner of 100km race will confirm their spot at the AR India Championship 2023, which is India’s Qualifier event for the Asia Championship. The winners this weekend will be a step closer to representing India at the Asia Regional Championship “La Routa”, to be held in Philippines in November 2023.”
Talking about the categories and difficulty level, Sayeesha Kirani, Race Director said, “Every course is unique and we don’t always anticipate how teams will find a way to do certain activities. This race is going to be the same. We have 3 categories, 100K, for the challenger, 60k for those who want to push their game, and 30k & a trail-O of 6KM for those who are just starting their AR journey.
We will have 25 teams racing and every category will have the element of surprise on their course. We mix and match Google Maps as well as Topo maps for navigation. All the topo maps are old and we manually update the route from our own surveys for accuracy. It’s going to be interesting to see how teams plan to do everything in the least amount of time.”
The race opens on Friday when there will be team welcome, registration and a briefing followed by dinner. The race will be flagged off on Saturday 3rd June in the morning.
There will be lots of action and updates on the NthAdventure social media pages. Support and follow the journey on Instagram pages @nthadventure and @arwsasia
About NthAdventure:
NthAdventure is a Bangalore based Adventure and Outdoor sports company and is the only licensed organization in India to host Adventure Racing from The Adventure Racing World Series.
NthAdventure’s prime focus is to grow and build the adventure racing and orienteering community in India. Both the Race Directors have been part of multiple Expedition Races and have been conducting workshops, training sessions, webinars, and multiple sprint races since 2016 to help Indian teams get race ready for global competitions.
For more information about NthAdventure and upcoming races visit; https://www.nthadventure.com/
