Pune Creating a brand new file, a Pune couple and their good friend – all software program engineers-cum-adventure lovers – went on a ‘lengthy drive’ in an SUV, protecting a whopping 21,000 km in 70 days throughout all the boundary of India, from east to west, north to south.
They’re — Jaykumar Anadkat, his spouse Pooja Padiya-Anadkat, each from Gujarat, and their good friend Sonesh Mehra from Rajasthan, who’re the co-founders of the journey membership, ‘PlacesAroundPune’.
“We’ve finished many actions like mountain climbing, trekking, biking, mountaineering, scuba-diving and many others., however this time we needed to do one thing distinctive and fulfilling. So we charted out this journey — “#MapMyCountry” — in our Tata Safari SUV, and we hope to make it to the file books,” mentioned Jaykumar, after the trio returned dwelling late on Monday.
The trio, all aged 35, launched into their journey on February 27 from Magarpatta and returned to the identical location on Might 8, zooming by means of 26 states, a number of Union Territories, 52 main cities and over 250 essential journey locations alongside the boundary and borders of India.
“We went across the nation’s periphery, all of the border states and drew the India map by means of the automobile route, beginning in a clockwise route from Maharashtra,” mentioned Mehra.
From Maharashtra, they went to Gujarat (Dwarka and Koteshwar temples within the excessive western elements of India), Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, the Northeastern states like Kaho in Arunachal Pradesh, the primary village of India within the east, and Danushkodi Rameshwar and Kanyakumari because the southernmost tip.
“We touched six worldwide borders — Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. We learnt quite a bit in regards to the completely different folks of India, their cultures and life, the climate techniques, the considerable magnificence of various elements of the nation. It was a really enriching drive certainly,” mentioned Pooja.
The ultra-long drive took them from 45-degree Celsius in Rajasthan deserts to the -5-degree Celsius in snowy Kashmir, braving hailstorms in Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland, torrential rains in Assam, and the humid climate within the southern states. Although they carried appropriate garments, many a instances they needed to hunt for extra domestically to be able to survive.
The trio remembers dashing by means of a few of the wildest and densest forests akin to a jungle safari, off-roading, dusty dry desert sands, boat-rides in mangrove forests, traversing snowy mountains roads, or gingerly driving by means of bamboo bridges, over deep valleys and turbulent rivers in several elements of India, soaking within the first dawn within the east and the colorful sunsets within the west and southern seashores.
Additionally they joined some tribal and conventional cultural festivals, sporting native costumes, singing, dancing or prancing to their tunes, and gulping cuisines starting from the weirdest to delicacies, cooking for themselves on roadside fires, or simply gobbling some fruits when nothing was out there or dhabas had been shut.
There are actually miles of many reminiscences, together with some a bit spooky, that the trio returned with — like one excited gentleman from Punjab, Ripu Daman, who contacted them by means of Fb and fortunately hosted them together with his household for an evening.
In Nagaland, they met a 95-year-old member of a tribe of erstwhile ‘headhunters’, who nonetheless proudly wears a garland with a couple of heads on it that he claimed to have acquired many many years in the past!
Right this moment, Jaykumar, Pooja and Sonesh are extraordinarily thrilled on finishing their ‘lengthy drive’ with none untoward incident, one thing they may cherish for lengthy.
(Quaid Najmi might be contacted at: [email protected])
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