An 'Expecting The Unexpected' Journey Or Travelling Offline In An Online India
This approximately 1000km long road journey - a circuitous route to the west coast and back from Bangalore had been long pending - for a few years actually – but never realised owing to schedules and myriad other reasons. Long years ago, till the turn of the 21 st century I had traversed the length and breadth of India in my Mahindra CJ340, 1991 model, from Kanya Kumari in the south to Hardwar in the north, from the Sundarbans to the Wagah Border, mostly on film assignments, logging close to 150000 km before the era of GPS and expressways. When I first drove all these miles diesel was Rs. 9 per litre, complaining as it rose to Rs. 27 per litre over the decade. With fuel prices spiralling thereafter I ruled out any chances of driving long distances ever again. Two decades and more elapsed till a long-term assignment popped up in Jharkhand in early 2023, requiring lots of driving within the state for which it made sense to take my car rather than spend fortunes on ...
