Last week, a woman from Ireland embarked on an epic three-month, 1,000-km unsupported trek across India on elephant-back. Caroline Casey is caring for her elephant herself, and camping at every stage of her journey, accompanied only by an elephant feeder and Indian guides. What makes the already daunting undertaking all the more remarkable is the fact that Casey is registered legally blind.
Casey came up with the idea for the trek, called the Aisling Project Indian Challenge, as a way of raising money for people with disabilities, and demonstrating that physical disability need not be a barrier to the realization of your dreams, however impossible they may seem. ("Aisling" is the Irish word for "dream.")
"The Aisling Project Indian Challenge is about an ordinary person doing something out of the ordinary," says Casey, 29, a management consultant for Accenture. The project aims to change the perception of disability, by focusing on individuals and their positive personal abilities and achievements, instead of what they can't do.