Srishti Bakshi walks a billion steps to spread a word for ‘women safety, facilitated by J&K State Women Commission in Srinagar.

In 2016 Bakshi read a news about the gang-rape of a mother-daughter duo in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahar district. When she read the news item, she said that, “it made me think that women in India are not safe even when they go out with their families.”

She is neither an athlete nor a social activist. Yet she is on a ‘mission’— the mission to understand why India is “unsafe” for the girls. Her mission has made her to walk all the way from Kanyakumari to Kashmir covering a distance of 3800 kms in 260 days.

Srishti Bakshi who ended her walk on Monday highlights the issues of women empowerment and safety. Working in corporate sector in Hong Kong, the 30-year-old Bakshi of Indian origin says, whenever she conversed with her friends at her work place, they would tell her that “India is beautiful.” “But then they were reluctant to visit this country saying India is not safe,” she says.