The Road Ahead

I am an hour away from starting my drive down to Mumbai. Chennai-Mumbai, a distance of ~1,450 kms, I look to cover in two days with a night halt in Hyderabad.

It's all set, for once I have packed my stuff well in advance! The fuel tank is full, car serviced, maps ghoted/mugged, etc. But there is more to this drive than pure logistics.

It's my first long drive with Swift. There will be a bit of adjustments required before I feel absolutely 'in the zone' on highway. I am just about to getting used to the gear ratios and engine of Swift - a bit of a difference from Santro that I am used to driving on highways. Will probably take me a couple of hours upfront to get it right.

This drive is also important for my long term driving ambitions. In some vague corner of my dreams, I wanna break the current world record of 'around the world in 42 days by road'. That's a lot of driving and I myself know how difficult that ambition is. This drive to Mumbai and back will help me sort this conundrum to some level of comfort.

If I don't get bored and tired of driving 1450 kms in 2 days, that will be like one step towards the world record ambition. Still would remain a distant dream, but yeah, I will probably feel a bit more confident about it.

The other possible outcome is that I might just understand that World Records are World Records and I probably need to practical about things. I might decide to forget the time factor to the record and keep the aim to 'Round the world' - that would still be 40,000 kms approximately. I might get a bit more realistic and get it further down to Asia trip or a notch lower to sub continent trip. I don't think, covering India would ever be an issue. Anyways, I shall revisit my driving ambitions after this trip.

It's almost time for me to get started. I shall keep the long term goals aside and for now, it's one day, one drive. As I always remind myself about any long drive, it's not speed that matters, it's consistency and ability to drive long hours that the differentiating factor. For I know and remember the 'thought for the day' that my teacher made me say in 4th standard morning assembly:

"A journey of thousand miles, begins with a single step..."