Life Lessons from an Epic Road Trip

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[Applause]

the best image in the world

is no good in the camera

if you have a dream it’s in your mind

it’s a sincere and good dream

don’t ever let it remain in the camera

bring it out show it to the world

because the best picture in the world is

no good in a camera

oh right so um as a young child

i grew up in a place lock called

and there was a small building by the

side of grand front road

or commonly called the gt road and gt

road i don’t know if you are aware

it is a 2 500 kilometer

distance which starts these days from

bashar

and mostly by 2000 years back

this road used to start at kabul and

bring people to chittagong chittagong is

now in bangladesh

so the grand trunk road has seen a lot

of mysteries

happening coming and going i used to

live in a small village next to grand

trunk road

and when we were young children we used

to play around this road

and in those days in early seventies

once in 15 minutes a vehicle will cross

as of now about 20 metres lost in a

minute

you know that same village so um

so we would actually in summers we’ll

come and play on next to this road and

watch people coming and going

and one of the very enticing thing in

the summers which used to happen was

this hippie

anybody’s heard of hippies okay this

hippie

vans would come all the way from i used

to think beginning of the world

and they were going somewhere to the end

of the world

you know we used to think that these

people and i was very enamored

by these people because they used to

wear some psychedelic colored clothes

they used to have a guitar they used to

live life like a gypsy

and they they had a home which was on

the moon

which is amazing like for a person who’s

living in a village whose boundary was

just to the fields and back

and to the gt road and back and watching

these people

i was very enamored by their life and i

was always thinking

whether in my life like them

i’ll go to firework places i was not

sure it was a dream

and that’s a dream i want to talk about

but this is hippie trade

there used to be a cruise called india

man it used to

start in london and amsterdam and come

all the way to kolkata um

through pakistan of course

from kolkata this bus used to be loaded

in a ship

and sent back to london this was a very

very inspiring stuff which i read

in my schools and i used to see these

bus

i think they stopped functioning

sometime in late 70s and as you see them

and the hippie vans volkswagen

vans which used to come with families

and go all the way down to kolkata

then to southeast asia and probably make

their way all the way to

australia now these long trips which i

used to hear about

that was a dream i really wanted to live

my life

so one day uh very anxious of my dream

i went to a post on an astrologer

and i sat with him and i asked him he

also has my life so

on a tiny hand he saw the lines and

uh he told me you’re gonna have a very

good life partner

which i was very happy about and one

thing he told me after

is that you don’t have a foreign travel

life i don’t know if there’s a lion

guard for a travel line in public street

but this already told me it really broke

my heart um

so i was always growing up in my life

in a circle red circle like this which

is like a frog in the well

thinking that in my life i will never go

outside of this way

in my village the village i used to stay

eighty percent of the people have been

maximum to karnal i mean that was a city

next to

our village and the other flamboyant

twenty percent had reached

till delhi or maybe haridwar at times

and there was just one guy who probably

had gone to bombay i used to hear to

become an actor

but that guy came back within a month

and when his money finished he just got

back so that was all the kind of travel

my village people used to do

and and i was here i was with a dream to

actually travel the world

as the time passed at about 17 years of

age i went to national defense academy

um i joined the army after that and

served the country for about 20 years

um in the army uh when you do go to a

lot of places

beyond karnal you go to a lot of jungles

a lot of mountains a lot of deserts

sometimes you’re in the city

so i was always thinking in my life

whether that promise was

right that i would never go abroad on a

foreign travel

so i used to keep cursing him all the

time

at 35 i got an opportunity to go

abroad it was army nominated

uh hosting to united nations

and i was sent to a place called combo

how many have heard of congo

raise your hands wow that’s quite a lot

of people okay

um so david democratic republic of congo

um the peace in that country is kept by

united nations

it will support one country it is very

rich in minerals

and therefore a lot of people are

interested in holding control of that

country

so on this united nations posting

when i went out well i didn’t feel like

a foreign trap

because this is not london or paris or

rome this is congo

and i thought is that what that promise

was thinking

his travel is going to be you know

or stuff like that so um

[Music]

but then one thing was clear from this

posting that this promise was definitely

not right because my

passport was stand i had moved out of

the

well and therefore now i was little free

and i had hoped that my dream of moving

around

to around the world is gonna come true

so that’s my picture in congo and this

this gentleman standing next to me

is a pakistani officer that was a good

thing

so once i got back from congo

this stream continued to dag me and you

keep telling me that

you know you have a dream in your heart

and you’re still not doing anything

about it so as i finished 20 years in

the arm

i powered out and i took a premature

retirement

and came out and here i was now

out of the way but the dream of mine was

still

in the camera so i thought to myself

i have one life just one life no time

ever comes back

half of my life like i interval of a

movie

is over and my picture is still in the

camera

now i said second half of my life

i am going to handcraft myself and not

allow

my picture to remain in the camera

so uh me and my wife

we dropped anything and we came to

design this stream of art which was

called

team 25 so we were then

mid-40s my wife was always younger

so um in mid-40s we thought we have 25

years

of active life left with us

and if we travel to one country

and explore that country well in a year

well that would make 25 countries in 25

years for us and

that’s the dream which we thought was

worth worth living

so was their struggle well there was

immense struggle

financial physical mental

there was a lot of struggle but the

blockbuster amongst them

was this road trip to london it was

opportunity that came our way

sometime in the in the march april of

2018

and i had to leave a group of 12 people

from india to london and we have to

travel that kilometer by kilometer

um there can’t be a better way of

traveling

the world like so to summarize it was a

54 days road trip

two continents 16 time zones 17

countries 31 regions

56 cities half the equator length

20 000 kilometers of drive about 460

driving hours

and about 180 kilometers of walking most

of this walking was to search for pizza

or whatever because we got so fed up in

china’s eating noodles

uh that we really wanted to go and have

some something with you

right so there’s one story i want to

there’s a lot i mean a lot happened on

this trip

it is a 53 day trip so every day

something is happening

we were on 28th day and we were to

i was a landmark day because we had

finished china and we were to enter

central asia so we have to start from a

place called kashgar

uh which is in sinclair province and we

have to travel all the way to ash

osh fertilizer valley uh from where baba

came

if it relates to you and it was a whole

day’s journey

so we started very meticulously

and we reached the chinese border post

at the chinese what waterpost we were

the first ones

but what happened was the systems on

that particular day

went down we were to

take about two hours on the chinese post

and took us eight hours to cross

uh the chinese border we thought we’d be

out in the morning

i was in the evening that we were able

to go ahead

and cross the chinese border now it was

dark by the time

we crossed into kyrgyzstan and

in kyrgyzstan by the time we reached

about eight nine o’clock in the night

the officers were shot now for our

expedition leader

this is a very frightening situation

we were standing in front of a dark

building

no immigration we had bikes whose fuel

was dipping

we had temperature which was falling to

sub-zero and here i was

people hungry nothing to it for last six

to seven hours

and nothing is happening on immigration

so this was very frightening situation

for me and one of the worst nightmares

of mine came through in which i didn’t

know what to do

so we parked all advice i told people

okay guys just relax there’s nothing to

panic i went

inside the building and i saw one small

lamp in one of the rooms on

and i walked up there and i met this one

immigration officer

who was packing his bag he was slipping

his

coat and he was about to leave so in

whatever english he could understand

whatever sign language i could explain

to him

um i told him i said we have had a very

bad day on the road and if you can just

help us out

this man i don’t know what he saw in my

face

he said uh oh okay he put his back down

he

grabbed the keys he opened the office he

fired up the computer systems

and he started doing our paperwork all

by himself we were twelve of us

and while we were doing paperwork he

sent us some tea

i mean that was amazing we had kids we

had children

we had families with us so he finished

by then we finished the

passports it was 12 o’clock in the night

now i was really nervous that we have

11 more hours to go to osh where we were

supposed to stay

and so they checked him and asked me um

so where are you gonna go i said we

gotta go to ash

he said no sir no way you can recharge

today

there’s sub-zero temperatures the water

is frozen on the roads

and you’ll have horses you know

incredibly some horses are free

because they grow horses actually

so they will cross the road and some

animals may hit you

so he says wait let me do something to

you so he called a family

in a village and he arranged

foundation for us and he said

sir we go go go two hours down the road

and you will cross a path called it

krishna is very famous on a silk road

and there is a village and that lady

will come and

fetch it so we drove it was minus eight

degrees celsius the bikers

really had a very very difficult time

they had to get down

warm up their hands on the exhaust and

then drive again so it was

it was a tough day had a tough night and

by the time we reached this village

it was two o’clock in the night and what

do we find

there is this family of four or five

there is the only light on in the old

village

they were standing outside their house

and when we reached there they took us

in

they had put warm food for us they had

laid down

mattresses on ground in three of their

bedrooms

and we just went and was like as if it’s

our own home

well by the time people finished eating

and went off to bed it was three o’clock

i had to do one last thing i stepped out

and wanted to check whether all the

cars and bikes are locked when i saw

those bikes and cars and i came back in

i heard a bit of a sound

of talking in their kitchen so i knocked

and they opened what do i see

six members of this family is in that 10

feet by 7 feet kitchen

they were all tucked in there and they

had left all three of their bedrooms

for us

this is this was a muslim family and it

was a ramazan month

in ramzan at four o’clock

you actually wake up again to eat your

early morning food

now that was the level which really

moved me

many stories happened on on this london

trip like this

on one of the occasions

but that’s the panel and that’s the pass

that being in the in the in the rear is

called mount linen

so these are um they were all communist

block

and um so all the peaks are not there a

there’s a communist

footprint everywhere in central asia so

that’s a fun one

so another in another story

so in um the petrol pumps are foreign

in between and if you miss one petrol

pump probably you

may be out of fuel and that’s what

happened to us we started in the morning

and we were to fuel at about 400

kilometers for this vehicle

and that fuel pump didn’t have fuel

so we started moving to whatever

distance we could and moved forward and

finally

this vehicle which was a logistic

vehicle ran out of view

within about 15-20 minutes there was

this bait this is

but there was big driver trucker who was

coming down

and he saw us standing there

he caught on from his truck he was with

his family his wife was with him

in the truck he got down from his truck

and asked us

i wish that we had a pure he said i know

it was in this place so you should

always carry reserve fuel

he gave us 21 liters of diesel some

local bread and food

and we wanted to pay him he refused to

take the money

this is god’s work and this is a ramazan

month i cannot take

anything from you

in china we got stuck in a windstorm you

see these bikes why they’re leaning to

the right

they are actually facing a 80 kilometers

per hour

sandstorm and they say

uh my son who was with me he’s 14 and

15 now he

he asked me that i want to try it right

because this was definitely a very very

dangerous situation

we actually after this picture we put

the bikes down

on the road and we went down under a

bridge culvert to hide ourselves

and one phone call to the authorities

they blocked the highway because it’s

only one way you can travel

it’s a six lane highway on one side you

can only go forward

so they had to block the whole highway

and they brought us slowly back

to our hotel now

on the road trip to london there were at

least a dozen more situations in which

uh we found this was insane we thought

we will get stuck

we thought we’ll really have a bad guy

we thought we’ll have accidents

but none of that happened moment we face

the situation

sooner or later some of the other head

came our way

now just imagine why would

some immigration officer in them on his

way home

stop by and do your immigration out of

the line

and then he’ll arrange a statement why

would

a family who’s going through a ramzan

one wake up in the middle of the night

cook food for you vacate all all three

of their bedrooms

for you why would anu’s big

trucker get down and give you free

diesel

why and how would you get saved from a

life threatening situation like

like a storm like this but let me tell

you why

if you have a very strong will

and if you are on a noble mission there

is always

humanity and help and support available

i can tell you this 53-day road trip

which we did

there must be about 20 to 30 situations

in which we thought

we’ll get stuck but we did not get stuck

on 21st of june 2018 we were supposed to

finish

in london at five o’clock we finished at

four

he was ahead of time with all these

problems

solved

so what’s the wisdom wisdom is very

simple

if you have courage

to take the first few steps about your

dream

and you have tenacity to never

never never ever give up

lots of doors open for you lots of

support comes your way

lots of help comes there is humanity and

help

everywhere look at our dream

from that promise who said i would never

go abroad

we had a 1925 as i stand today

um in last seven years of our company’s

existence

i’ve done 34 countries so dream 25

is already a little distance behind

now i have dream 50. why not i mean i’ll

start in india

go all the way down to australia then

fly down to alaska

anchorage come all the way down to

buenos aires

then go to cape town then go all the way

to london from london i’ll go all the

way to vladivostok that covers seven

continents

in a year’s travel well that’s my next

dream because green 25

was so encouraging and so life

fulfilling for me

yeah seven contents one likes why not

so this brings me to

the thing i started with best image in

the world

is no good in a camera you have to bring

it out

and make it into a reality and let me

tell you this

this wonderful world you see today

this columbus discovery in america

somebody going on to move

was sometimes somebody’s dream

they brought it out and they had courage

to

not give up and that’s when

amazing stories of success are made

so here i will finish the talk i have to

give

and i wish and pray that your sincere

dreams all come true

thank you