Luke Grenfell-Shaw is a cancer patient, who is travelling around the world on bicycle, has reached Pakistan.
Luke Grenfell-Shaw, is a british man, who set out to cover 30,000 kilometers across the world on a tandem after being diagnosed with late-stage cancer at 24.
Luke Grenfell-Shaw was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive sarcoma in June 2018 which had metastasized into his lungs. Yet, he decided to fight back by performing physically strenuous activities such as running a marathon in his hometown of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
In 2020, Grenfell-Shaw launched Bristol-2-Beijing, his plan to bike across the world not only to raise money for organizations fighting cancer but also to create awareness about what people with cancer were capable of. With a goal of raising GBP 300,000, he set off to introduce the world to “CanLivers.”
“Rather than the word ‘cancer survivor,’ which I think gives this false sense of certainty, I coined the word ‘CanLiver,’ or someone who is living with cancer,” he said. “Such people acknowledge their situation and the challenges and uncertainties associated with it, though they also demonstrate how people can live with cancer and still manage to fulfil their dreams and do much more.”
Grenfell-Shaw decided not to let his diagnosis stop him from living the life the way he wanted.
“There’s so many things that we can’t control, but it’s really important that we think about what we can control and do as much as possible with those things,” he continued. “I couldn’t control whether I had cancer or not, but I could control how I tried to live with it.”
“You only live once so you might as well make the best of it,” he added after a brief pause.
Before arriving in Islamabad, Grenfell-Shaw had already ridden across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. In Pakistan, he spent two weeks in the country’s north, biking through the Khunjerab Pass and taking in the mountains and landscapes of Hunza.
“We cycled across Pakistan for about two and a half weeks, covered 900 kilometers and did 9,000 meters of climbing. That’s insane! That’s more than like going through Kyrgyzstan, which is known as the Switzerland of Central Asia. The amount of climbing we did was ridiculous, like more than K2,” he said.
Grenfell-Shaw will be heading to Lahore from Islamabad where he will visit Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center and make a donation.
He said his time in Pakistan had been a “really positive, warm experience.”
“I was really optimistic and expected a very warm welcome [in Pakistan],” he said.
