After three years of travelling together and creating seven records between them, Tushar Agarwal and Sanjay Madan decided to take the most epic road trip of all time: six continents, 50 countries and over 90,000 kilometres. “We planned it for more than a year and we knew that the experience would stay with us forever. We wanted to document and share it since it is, to say the least, a unique concept,” says Tushar.
That’s how The Great Indian World Trip, TLC’s latest travel show, came about. Travelling with just one cameraman, the two travel junkies set off in their Toyota Fortuner from India Gate on September 22, 2013. From there they went to Manipur and crossed over into Myanmar. This started off the Asia trip that included Thailand and Singapore; they then went on to Australia where they set a Guinness World Record for the longest trip taken by car (17,000 kilometres), Africa, South America, North America and Europe. They ended the trip on November 11, 2014 in Turkey. They did not use a GPS, but only road maps and a compass to guide them.
Sanjay says, “The car was shipped to each continent, and during that break, we would come back home and spend time with family and gather funds for the next leg of the journey.” Tushar and Sanjay jointly founded Adventures Overland, a company that specialises in driving experiences. They share the same passion and decided to capitalise on it.
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The trip, of course, had some memorable experiences, like an old Argentinean couple who spent a few hours driving around with them till they settled in a good hotel and then invited them home for dinner. Another memory that stuck with them was the fact that they saw the Northern Lights for four days straight while in Alaska. Car breakdowns in dangerous places, wonderful views in Serengeti National Park and crossing borders, the two of them have a host of stories to share.
Sanjay, who’s married with two children, says that the one thing he discovered on the journey is that people are all the same: “They look different and everyone’s character is stereotyped, but everyone loves helping others.” Tushar agrees, saying, “The idea was to explore the world and meet and talk to more people. Not using the GPS was a masterstroke: the best experiences are those that are unplanned.”
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