Rishad Saam Mehta is an inveterate traveller. All he needs is the sight of a black tarmac and a set of wheels, and his reaction is Pavlovian: start the engine and get going. Being a writer, who deals with automobile reviews, road-trips are part of his work. But his acute observations aren’t entirely about horse-power and torque; they are also about people and diverse cultures within India and across continents.
It is a trait that was revealed in an earlier book Hot Tea Across India . And Rishad’s droll insights are back in vogue through his latest writing endeavour The Long Drive Home . It is a tome packed with pithy lines, a wry sense of humour and helps us gape at Germany’s smooth highways, Russia’s Tundra landscape, China’s hot-pot dishes and Burma’s lush paddy fields.
The book chronicles Rishad and his fellow enthusiasts’ 20,121-km-drive from Munich to Mumbai over 54 days, shepherding two Audi Q7s. A road-test that encompasses a study of people, weather cycles, urban and rural life patterns and the mandatory gushing about the cars they drive. The last mentioned could be either seen as embedded journalism or that innate instinct in men, to drool over their vehicles.
Rishad had always hoped to do the great-overland — driving from Europe to India. And once his mentor Hormazd Sorabjee pencilled him in for the journey, a dream became a reality. “There is a route, and it is one that stretches back to hallowed antiquity — the ancient caravan road through Central Asia that was once the only link between Western Europe and the Far East, and along which flowed trade, artistic traditions, languages, social customs, diseases, inventions, spices, gunpowder and religious beliefs,” Rishad writes.
The lone deviation from the ancient route is one that is forced by geopolitics. He obviously could not drive a Maharashtra registered car through Pakistan and the paths were aligned through Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China, Burma and from there to Manipur’s last border town Moreh before winding towards Mumbai.
The tricks he does to get a picture of the car next to a local monument; the search for a specific beer brand; the encounters with bemused immigration officials; or even the stoicism in dealing with broken bridges in Burma which forces his team to stay back for a fortnight, all make for an engrossing read.
And what do they yearn for just as they near the Indian border? A glass of tea laced with cardamom and ginger! Guess home is where the heart is.
The Long Drive Home ; Rishad Saam Mehta, Tranquebar, ₹399.
