There were long nights spent driving on the desolate desert roads in the month of summer. Caring little for food and sleep, with all the concentration on keeping my eyes open and taking the right maneuvering decisions, among primarily trucks, in the fast moving traffic on national highways, marked long summer nights of that journey.

Traveling during the days was fast becoming a possibility after the near impossibility experienced while traversing Rajasthan on hot sun laden afternoons. In that part of the journey, crossed in an old car without the benefits of the conditioned air, traveling through nights was less an option and more a necessity. Carcasses and few living birds had distinguished those journeys, with perhaps a lone figure wrapped in white clothes and saffron turban or a bright red sari specking intermittently at some distant corner only to be dissolved later in the virtual of the rear view mirror. Above that, as if a permanent irritation in the eye, the scene was engulfed in pseudo permanence of sand.

Not that I didn’t drive in the day. I did drive; the car compelling several breaks from the coalesced assault of the hot sun and melting tarmac, during which the simmering damp air forced me outside. And I stood there, waiting for the cylinders to cool, the engine to recuperate and the vapors rising beneath the burnt rubber to fade away, only to realize that the irritation in the eye is air laden with fine dust that settles like a film on your exposed skin. The film was later to be scrubbed with warm water and the disturbance of the warm water bath invariably penetrated the nights. The evenings were unusually quiet wherever I used to go, as if this part of the world has accepted the might of the elements – sun, dust and corroding air – not out of veneration but of subjection. Here, the brave stories are of survival, not of conquer.

Now, traveling to the mountains rendered it possible to travel during the days also. As I stood besides a roadside shack sipping on the mountain tea, so different from the crude tea of the desert, I looked at the car. My car is dirt laden and the traces of blood of a pigeon that had smashed itself on the windshield a day back were fast becoming fossil beneath the dust film.

I took the road a month back. The idea was to travel till the spirit faded. Journey was the destination, and roads as means, the end. I decided to survive by the road, to drive on the national highways and not to divagate from them – highways eulogizing the efforts of the past century. We hardly know the efforts that went behind spreading the 33000 kms road network that lie over our country like second skin, for we – not of engineering hearts – take them for granted.

How is a nation understood?
A nation is understood by traveling through its roads, for a nation is not a dead piece of land but has a life of its own. To read the character of a nation, one needs to tread into it through the veins – the roads.

There were many wonderful moments in the journey – the discovery of NH 105 at a place where it should not be; the well built but never spoken of highways of Rajasthan; the NH 58 – one of the few that actually has an end at Mana (a small mountain village in Uttranchal), and does not dissolve in some other national highway or state road, or ends abruptly at Indian border. The huge efforts by National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) in upgrading the highways to meet the need of the devouring economy were witnessed in blockades at several places along the way. These interruptions were passed by and forgotten with benevolent cursory look by some, like me, and cursing, irritating others.

How different are roads in India different from a time machine?
Not much. From the swanky, sleek corporate houses in the newly built Gurgaon, the NH 8 is capable to taking you hundred of years back in history and thrust you in front of Amer fort in less than four hours. From poverty witnessed on traffic signals at busy, smoke filled roads of the capital, the NH 1/NH 22 will transport the traveler to the lush green rich fields owned by wealthy farmers in Punjab; the transformation in a cool three and a half hours. From the dry and thirsty capital, the NH 84 will take you to the side of the Ganges in a matter of few hours. What better would a curious traveler want when he does not have to read books to know but just travel for some hours to understand the cultural and geographic diversities on offer.

The roads also tell a story of migration. A poor boy from Haldia landed in Mumbai without knowing what route he took except remembering that he was bundled in the back of a truck for 21 days and ate at road side dhabas that swiftly, along the way and to the boy’s joy, changed the food on offer. Thousands such stories float and if you have time you will find numerous such migratory workers at the dhabas by the side of the highways to talk to and experience the long travels they endured in search of a better life.

These were the experiences that I ran into. The journey that I had ventured in without reason, on reflection turned out to be an invitation of the road, a call to the travelers to experience the richness it offers, in: culture, geography and life. Take out time one weary evening from the intricacies of the working world and step out to witness the neatly laid metal, concrete and tarmac fed roads carrying the burden of hundred trucks, cars, buses every minute providing the oxygen to the country’s businesses. I often do that and the thousand lights that appear in the horizon to pass me with the throttling music of engines remind me of the wonderful man made wonder – our road network.

I have to get back in my car. I have Himalayas to ride.

Author: Nitin Chaudhary