NEW DELHI: What can you do in 24 hours in the capital of India? If it is Shashank Sharma, he would definitely say you could visit all the museums in the city. For that is what the 33-year-old did to create a Guinness world record, visiting 24 museums in Delhi in 24 hours to create awareness about the capital's rich heritage and history.
Sharma completed his momentous task in July last year to see his name entering the Guinness Book of World Records, the certificate for which was issued to him recently. "I am fortunate and proud to be a resident of New Delhi, a city that boasts scores of museums. I not only got the opportunity to explore the heritage of my home city, but achieved an accomplishment in the form of a world record," said Sharma.
He actually covered the 24 museums in 24 cumulative hours over two days. "I visited five museums on July 19 between 9am and 7pm and the rest the following day, complying with the 24-hour deadline required of the record," he said, revealing that his visits to the museums were brief because there was no timeline defined by the Guinness authorities.
Sharma said he was pained that of the over 50 museums in the city, many of them lay neglected. "I hope that my record will help to create awareness about them and promote them," he said.
Achieving the Guinness milestone of the most museums visited in 24 hours was not an easy one to achieve. "Guinness gave me a long list of rules and guidelines to be followed, including use of public transport when going to the museums, no Ola or Uber or autorickshaw even, only the metro train, bus and walking," Sharma recalled. He also had to submit the GPS data of his entire trip so they could track where he was at any point of time.
During his record attempt, Sharma was also asked to submit signatures of the museum staff from every institution he visited and to submit the admission tickets. "It was mandatory to be accompanied by two independent witnesses, who oversaw the rules and submitted their report to Guinness," he said.
Among the repositories Sharma visited were the National Museum, Gandhi Darshan Museum, Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya, Metro Museum, Museum of Illusions, National Gallery of Modern Art, Tribal Museum, National Science Centre, Indira Gandhi Memorial, Red Fort Museums, Election Museum, National Rail Museum and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. He omitted the interesting Sulabh Toilet Museum and Shankar's International Dolls Museums from his itinerary because they weren't deemed to the true museums by Guinness.
Originally from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, Sharma has three master's degrees - in tourism from both Hungary and Delhi and an MBA from Delhi. He has travelled to over 70 countries so far.
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