Seamount Massacre 2026: The Unfinished Business

The run is three weeks away. July 18. The Mandwa-Pune 280 km that I’ve attempted twice before, quitting at 154 km (2012) and 204 km (2013). The unfinished thread in a 20-year story that started in 2007 with a simple ritual: run on your birthday for as many hours as your age. Big Birthday Bash. It’s taken me across Delhi, Montreal, Newfoundland, the Himalayas, Sweden, Norway. But it’s never taken me back to the place that broke me twice.

Until now.

If you know me, then you know, I love horror. And I think about how the Babadook grows – not because it’s real, but because you keep it in the dark, you don’t name it, you let it reshape itself every time you look at it. By the end, it’s become a monster you created through your own silence.

That’s what fourteen years of not talking about Mandwa-Pune has been. The memory shifts every time I touch it. In one version, I quit because I’m weak. In another, I quit because I didn’t train hard enough. In another, I quit because I’m fundamentally broken. The story changes. The monster grows.

Until this year, when I had to actually talk about it out loud—what happened, why it happened, what I’m afraid will happen again—and suddenly the thing shrank to its actual size. Which was bad, but manageable. Not a monster. A real problem with a real shape.

Here’s what actually happened in 2012. I was 24, fresh off a broken ankle, with forty kilometers of training runs. I ran into heat and humidity so extreme my body temperature hit 103-104°F. I vomited at 4 km from food poisoning. Stray dogs chased us relentlessly. I quit at 150 odd km because my body temperature was dangerous, groin was bleeding and my mind had already left the track.

That wasn’t weakness. That was a kid learning his limits.

In 2013, the story was different. I was feeling much better, I was focussed, I was moving slow but steady. Everything was going as per plan, until it wasn’t. Chaffing returned, blisters got worse, both of my partners had quit and I was the last running standing. There was only enough I could dig inside of myself. And eventually as sleep deprivation took engulfed me, I was lost. I was defeated again. I once again, discovered my limits.

But I didn’t learn it gently. I learned it through shame. I wrote about it as “a heroic tale of humiliation.” I flagellated myself in print. I carried that for thirteen years while running across continents, while building a career as a scientist, while nearly dying from depression, while climbing back out of that hole. The Mandwa-Pune quit was just one data point in a larger story of “I am fundamentally not enough.”

Until this year, when someone asked me directly: why are you doing this? And I realized I’d never actually answered that question for the people closest to me.

The Real Stakes

It’s not about finishing 280 km in monsoon heat. It’s not about proving I’m tough. It’s not even about conquering the route that broke me.

It’s about closing a narrative loop with the people I love, so I can start the next chapter with integrity.

Because JOGLE next year—840 miles, John o’Groats to Land’s End, a 20-year milestone—can’t happen with Mandwa-Pune still unfinished in my rearview mirror. Not because I’m superstitious (I admit I’m a little stitious). Because I’ll carry the same shame I’ve carried for fourteen years, and shame is heavier than any pack.

Vishwas Bhamburkar, the partner in crime on both attempts, and stupid enough to join this year too, doesn’t know why this matters. My therapist knows I’m afraid, but we haven’t talked about what I’m actually afraid of. And I can’t run 280 km with unspoken fear. The mathematics of ultra-running are simple: add fear + add physical suffering + add monsoon heat + add my tendency to overheat + add isolation in your own mind = quit at 200 km, just like you did before.

Unless.

Unless I name it first. Unless I tell Vishwas: “We started this in 2012. We failed twice. I’ve been ashamed of that for fourteen years. I’m going back not to erase the failure, but to show myself that I can face the thing that broke me and finish it with people who understand what I’m actually facing.”

That’s completely different. That’s not punishment. That’s reclamation.

I’m 38 now, not 24. I’ve run Gothenburg-Oslo (358 km, 99 hours of movement, self-supported, through my own mental health crisis). I know what genuine suffering feels like. I know what the voice in my head sounds like when it’s telling me I don’t deserve to exist, and I know that voice is a liar.

I weigh 60 kg, not 75. I’ve optimised my gear. I’m not the same runner who quit at 150 km.

But I’m also on medication I’m still adjusting to, which means my mental landscape is still shifting. My thermoregulation is still compromised—I sweat even at 24°C—which means 40°C monsoon humidity will still be brutal. My IT band and lower back are vulnerabilities that no amount of training can fix in three weeks.

So I’m not going to Mandwa-Pune ready. I’m going ready enough.

And there’s a difference.

Ready enough means I have a pacing strategy. I have a backup sleep plan. I have pain management resources. I have gear tested on real long runs. I have a partner who’s done crazy shit and knows his own limits. There is no car this time to make quitting easy.

But most importantly, I have the conversations I need to have. Before July 17, I will tell my therapist exactly what I’m walking into and what I’m afraid of. I will tell Vishwas why this matters—not just the logistics, but the emotional truth. I will have permission to stop if it becomes self-harm instead of self-reclamation.

I’ve known for years that my body doesn’t thermoregulate well. I grew up in Delhi, so I sweat to cool down. I live in Reading’s humidity, so I sweat constantly without evaporative relief. In Mandwa’s heat + monsoon humidity, I’ll be sweating maximally while evaporation fails completely. My body’s cooling system will be working overtime while not actually cooling anything. This is how I nearly broke myself in 2012 and 2013.

Another block is Room 101. That’s what I called it in the Stonehenge post—the place where, after hours of running on no sleep, with no one around, you’re alone with your own mind. And your mind is not a friendly place at km 200 when you’re exhausted and everything hurts.

On Gothenburg-Oslo, I spent 99 hours alone with the voice that says: you don’t deserve this, you shouldn’t exist, why are you taking up space, people have to slow down because of you, you’re a burden. Same was the story when I spent 112 hours during Quebec-Montreal.

I pushed through it. I finished anyway. And then I spent months processing the fact that I’d run 350 km while simultaneously fighting my brain’s conviction that I was worthless.

That’s not sustainable. That’s not winning. That’s just surviving.

So for Mandwa-Pune, the work isn’t physical. The work is: what happens when Room 101 shows up at km 200 and I’ve still got 80 km to go and Vishwas is there and people actually know what I’m facing?

Can I ask for help instead of suffering silently? Can I keep going because I’m choosing to, not because I’m trying to prove something? Can I believe—actually believe—that finishing matters because I deserve to finish, not because finishing will finally make me acceptable?

That’s the real test.

Because Big Birthday Bash has been the thread that held me together when I was falling apart. Since 2007—through breaking my ankle, moving countries, depression, nearly dying, recovery, building a life in oceanography, learning to be human again—every July I run for as many hours as my age.

And Mandwa-Pune is the knot in that thread. The place where the tradition nearly died. The place I’ve been carrying shame about for fourteen years.

If I finish on July 18—safely, without self-harm, with people who understand what I’m actually facing—then I can go into JOGLE next year knowing I’m not running away from something. I’m running toward something.

That’s the difference between punishment and reclamation.

That’s the difference between a loop that keeps tightening and a loop that finally closes.

Running is what I do. But this time, I’m also doing the work of being human. That’s the real race.