farewell to our faithful car

we thought getting our car into india was a hassle we were done with, but only when we tried to ship it back to the uk we realised that there was more to come. customs in chennai were more complicated and there was no getting around without an agent, as the site simply did not allow people without agent passes. our agent turned out to be next to useless, telling us about added expenses after he had spent the money. in any case, the car was shipped from chennai and ash flew to uk in what we thought was adequate time to recieve the car. but the car was delayed by 4 weeks, because of more messups by our agent, so ash ended up spending additional time hanging around expensive london. which was not bad in the end, as the time was well spent in catching up with friends and saying final goodbyes. the car eventually arrived in good shape and was functioning perfectly till the day of sale to its next owner. ash left the keys with the owner and was on the way home when the new owner called saying the car wont start! it was fine for the whole week when being driven around uk after the long sea journey and when he had test driven it a few days before buying. turned out that the battery was flat and needed to be replaced. we like to think that our beloved car couldnt bear to part from us and refused to be driven by anyone else. it was very hard saying goodbye to our car.... and we hope someday the import rules in india will change and we can get it back and keep it with us for good.

when our car reached india

now that we have completed our journey, we're not sure if anyone reads our blog anymore. but we have to complete what we began...and here's the story of what happened when our car reached india.

we had shipped our car from iran, and had to pick it up from nava sheva, the new port in mumbai. the car arrived on schedule, but the local agent who had to file a manifest to unload the container, didnt do it on time, and the container (containing our car) was not offloaded from the ship! so the ship sailed back with our car in it, and took another month to come back to india. thankfully, we didnt get charged for it. when it finally reached india, arya was stuck in heyderabad waiting for paperwork from the passport office (for our onward journey to australia), and we ended up going to pick up the car a good fortnight later (and paying the port charges for the extra fortnight).

of course nothing is straightforward in the indian bureaucracy, which we had forgotten, having dealt with the more or less efficient officials of the rest of the world! first of all there were only a few agents who specialised in getting a car into india under 'carnet' and all of them asked for a large commission, which we felt was unnecessary since (we thought) we could try to get the car on our own. and so we went to nava sheva and spent the first 2 days only gathering information about which part of the port would be sorting out our paperwork and whom we would have to bribe just to get things started. when we finally got hold of the superintendent in charge of the customs, he was extremely distressed to learn that we had no agent. he didnt seem to be least inclined to tell us the various procedures required to get our car out....but we made him. we told him we knew things wont get done without 'paying the right people', and instead of paying the agents and paying the officials it was just easier to pay the officials and do the donkey work ourselves.

it would be unjust to burden you with the details of our ordeal, so we should just summarise the rest. it took us a week to complete the paperwork, and we realised that even if one had the highest connections, and paid the best agent in town, it would take just as long since the damn paperwork was such that it could not be done any sooner. we didnt even have to bribe anyone.... everyone was so shocked at seeing us doing our own paperwork that they just completed their bit and passed the papers on. some were glad to be dealing with us instead of rude and dishevelled agents, and went out of their way to help us.

the best part was, our car was in great shape and just needed a shove to get started. once we were back in it, we didnt waste a minute and set off for bangalore the next morning. the nh4 has been repaired all the way to north karnataka and it was a treat to drive on it. we left mumbai early morning and reached dharward by evening and spent the night at our friend chandru's place. thanks to the ymmuy food prepared by wife jyoti and the full time entertainment provided by son sharan, we quickly forgot our harrowing week and looked forward to taking our beloved car home.

Celebrating 60th anniversary of Indian independence

erasing your footprints

as promised before we set off, we have offsetted the carbon emissions resulting from our drive, by donating towards environment friendly projects around the world, through www.climatecare.org. we do not think that this should be used as an excuse to indulge ourselves, but help us to enjoy our travels with responsibility towards the environment. in the last 18 months that we have been away from india, a rapid change has engulfed the country. we wish people would slow down a little, and try to smell the cowdung along the way, rather than speed jet between cities leaving a heavy carbon footprint. its easy for us jobless doctors to say that, knowing well that we would easily succumb to the rat race like anyone else. but our road trip has taught us to atleast make a conscious effort to think of the impact our actions will have on the environment and work towards an eco-friendly lifestyle.

photo exhibition

even before we reached india, our brother bhushan got busy organising a photography exhibition, the finer details of which are now finalised. thanks to sandeep biswas, our curator and ajay rajgharia, our producer from wonderwall, we are having a photography exhibition showing a select few of our snaps in new delhi from 13th to 17th july. we hope all of you who are in town around that time can make it. prints of the snaps will also be available for sale. if all goes well in delhi, we hope to extend the exhibition to other cities.

iran

the last country before we reached home, gave us the most setbacks and the opportunity to meet the most friendly people yet.

tabriz was our first halt in iran, where we faced our first hurdle. no international atm's in iran. the only way to get cash is to exchange existing currency (mostly euros/dollars, neither of which we had). mr nasser khan, from the tourist office in tabris, helped us exchange jordanian currency which would be hard for them to sell, so we had running cash till we made arrangements for more.

in tehran, we spent 3 disappointing days trying to get our pakistan visa, without success. our friends in uk and uae (naveen & zakir) got busy trying to send us cash through a bank transfer. we left for esfahan, only to learn there that the thursday-friday middle east weekend would delay our cash transfer by several days....making it impossible for us to leave esfahan as we couldnt even pay the hotel bill to checkout. enter MR HAMID MOUSAVI, the most amazing person we have met till date. this bespectacled, ever smiling manager of firouzeh hotel in tehran, settled our bill in esfahan and made arrangements for cash to be available in our next halt yazd, while zakir handed over our cash to mr mousavi's contact in uae. extremely complicated we know, but this meant we could carry on and not waste any of the limited time we had left in iran.

with the money problem finally out of the way, we allowed ourselves to relax in yazd and spent time chatting with fellow travellers and exploring the mud-brick-lined streets of this desert town with amazing mosques and badgirs (wind shafts).

our last halt was bandar abbas, the port and 'sauna house' of iran, where we spent 3 harrowing, sweat drenched days trying to ship our car to india. thanks to mr panahi, the manager of the shipping company, who gave us the service of an agent houdayit, without whom we would never have got through the custom formalities.

with the car in the container, we faced yet another problem of getting back to tehran in time to board a plane to india before our visa expired. summer holidays in iran meant that all domestic flights and trains were overbooked well in advance and our only option was to take a 21 hour bus journey which would reach tehran 2 hours before our flight (the only one available for the next 4 days) was scheduled to depart. enter mr mousavi again, remember our friend from firouzeh hotel? he found out which bus company would actually leave on schedule and kept in touch by phone with all the 3 drivers, making sure they were on time. the bus was to drop us off on the motorway near the airport, where mr mousavi was waiting for us with a taxi to whizz us off to the airport. we were so dumfounded at this selfless hospitality, that it didnt matter that we had not eaten for over 24 hours and our flight turned out to be delayed by 8 hours and there were no phones to contact our families and that when we finally landed in delhi it was just as hot as it had been in iran.....

egypt to iran

our initial plan was to stay for one night in aqaba, and head north towards turkey. but enticed by the diving school on our doorstep and highly recommended by fellow travellers, we stayed back for a day and (ash) completed padi open water qualification. the red sea is amazingly clear full of bright colourful corals and exciting marine life. the highlight was swimming with a sea turtle that had wandered towards shallow waters.
this delay allowed us to spend more time with our friends from the ferry, claire and leon. this enterprising couple from netherlands have been on the road for 6 months on their landrover miles. it was very inspiring meeting them, and learning what it really meant to be on a road trip. they had a mattress on their rooftop, on which they camped wherever possible, cooked most of their meals and were able to fix anything that went wrong with their vehicle. checkout their website http://www.milestogo.nl/. moving quickly through the rest of jordan and syria (with a night halt at hama), we reached the surprisingly modern town of diyarbaker in turkey. this was only to be a night halt but we met some really friendly kurdish businessmen, who invited us to their carpet shop and chatted for hours over tea. one of them had been to india and enjoyed recounting his experiences there. the best part was they knew from the start that we were not going to buy anything, and yet they remained hospitable as ever, keen to make friends and not customers.
our next halt was van, where we had an amazing drive along the van lake and a visit to the akdamar island (10th century armenian church) was refreshing. in van we stayed at hotel bayram, the owner of which, mr rashat, was very friendly. he was delighted as we were the first indians to stay there and treated us like vip’s. he even made sure breakfast was available for us at 6am, as we wanted to leave early to cross the turkey-iran border.
our last impression of turkey was the majestic snow capped mt ararat, which we passed as we drove through the border town of degubayazit. fantastic!

near the border we met a swedish group driving ambulances from sweden to india for donation. they were very friendly as well and keen to help us in obtaining pakistan visa. but despite several attempts through their travel agent in islamabad and pakistan embassy in tehran, we were unable to obtain a visa to pakistan. our next few days were spent in talking to various shipping companies based in iran and uae, to find a sea route to india. but as all our options were slowly closing it became more apparent that we will have to fly the last leg of our journey home...