For British IT consultant Yogen Shah, India’s Covid-19 crisis is deeply personal.

The pictures of people hooked up to oxygen bottles on the streets of New Delhi and patients sharing beds in overcrowded hospitals remind him of his uncle in India, who recently contracted the disease.

So Shah joined volunteers from one of Britain’s largest Hindu temples who set out to raise 500,000 pounds by racking up 7,600 kilometres on stationary bikes — roughly the distance from London to Delhi — in 48 hours.

“I think every single person of Indian origin will have someone affected over there,” Shah, 40, said outside the temple in northwest London. “And anywhere around the world that you have Covid, you feel for that human being, you feel for that person, whether they’re Indian origin or not.”

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