How a Chicken Curry Shrinks the World
It was March 5, 2010, when sanDRina, Jay’s Suzuki DR650 purred out of Chicago and into San Francisco, entering the first border into Mexico. That is when it really hit him. He had gotten rid of all his belongings at Chicago, a cushy job, a possible Green Card and was riding back to India from the US, covering as many nations as he could.
Ofcourse, this wasn’t just a flippant whim that he was catering to. This was a well thought out dream; the one backed with plenty of research on living on the road, whetting cooking skills (especially the quintessential Indian chicken curry) and the tricks of how to stretch the dollar in a day.
The idea was to ignore the treaded routes and go through the places that were relatively untraversed. For a richer cultural exchange, the best way would
be to stay with local families through couch surfing in exchange for the ‘home-made’ chicken curry dished out with a tinge of Indian spices and his mum’s recipe. Jay planned the trip largely in Southern Hemisphere (South America and Africa), touching Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and the massive Patagonia that all of us have read about. He recalls the time in Egypt, when he was the only tourist in the Pyramids, a rare experience. This was just months after the revolution and he had reached the country after riding through Hamburg and being denied entry into Morocco.
After Egypt, it was the White Saharan Desert that lured Jay- he reminisces on how camping by himself in the middle of nowhere was one of the most outrageous yet sublime experiences. The landscape is ludicrously beautiful, the kind that makes you feel humble and one with nature.
Jay planned the trip largely in Southern Hemisphere (South America and Africa), touching Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and the massive Patagonia that all of us have read about.
He recalls the time in Egypt, when he was the only tourist in the Pyramids, a rare experience. This was just months after the revolution and he had reached the country after riding through Hamburg and being denied entry into Morocco. After Egypt, it was the White Saharan Desert that lured Jay- he reminisces on how camping by himself in the middle of nowhere was one of the most outrageous yet sublime experiences.
The landscape is ludicrously beautiful, the kind that makes you feel humble and one with nature.
Jay’s staid and calm demeanor lights up when he talks about the 900 km off-road route from Southern Ethiopia into Kenya along Lake Turkana.
This was after staying in Sudan in a fishermen’s colony for five days, feeling the safest that he had in many other seemingly invulnerable countries. After Kenya, Jay swerved around East Africa into Mozambique and then Zambia, where he grew up. After a nostalgic stop, it was the desert of Namibia and then the final flight into India, while sanDRina was shipped in. On a personal front, this grand homecoming and the months that preceded it, was also a time to reflect on what it would mean to be back in India after he had stayed out since he was two years old.
Jay has mustered more than 100000 kms in his journey across the borders over three years and is now planning to get on an Enfield, a favourite in India, and possibly shrink the peninsula. Amongst many, the most important lesson he left us with is – Know how to make your chicken curry well and you will be able to exchange it for a comfy bed, possibly extra fuel and resilient friendships for years to come.
