A lifelong dream comes true

Siddharth finally fulfils a lifelong dream – to drive across the mighty expanse of the U.S. of A.

It’s been several years since I took my first flight to the US. Bright-eyed, naive and bursting with excitement, I got off the plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport – one of the busiest I had seen (probably since Singapore a few years earlier) – and waited impatiently for the domestic flight to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We got there around 4:30pm local time, and my father picked us up. We then drove to Carlisle about an hour away, and life as I knew it changed.

The first thing on my list was ‘not’ to try out a typical American hamburger, visit a mall or an amusement park. No, I had heard that the driving age in Pennsylvania was 16 – and so I just wanted to get my licence. I couldn’t quite get to it on the first morning of my life in the US, but I got there within a week!

The months I spent driving around after that, and the foundation it laid, is something that I’ll treasure always. It was truly one of the best things that could have happened to me. At the time, I drove the family’s old Volvo station wagon. The 240 DL was by no means anywhere near being cool, but I was super proud of it just the same. A friend of mine at school, Chris, had what was undoubtedly the ‘it’ car of my graduating class – a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The SUV craze was starting to catch on in the US, and the Grand Cherokee was not only tough and big – but, in those days, was as comfortable and car-like as an SUV could get. She (yes, Chris was short for Christina) had let me drive it a few times, and I was always in 7th heaven when I did. We used to talk – Chris and I – about one day taking her Jeep cross-country. “We gotta go coast-to-coast across these Yoonited States baby,” was what she and another friend Kris (this time short for Kristofer) used to say. And I was totally in!

I’ve been back to US several times since graduating high school in Carlisle. And I’ve talked about this unrequited dream even more times – with friends, family, and anyone else who cared to listen – both in the States and back home in India. And so many have wanted to do it with me. But I always knew it was never a serious thought. It was unrealistic – I needed to have done this in my early 20’s when you’re ‘supposed’ to go find yourself! I never felt that need to look for something that wasn’t lost – and so here I was – always pining for my dream road trip. One person with whom I know I had this fleeting conversation was Dhruv Behl – a friend, editor of this mag, and also someone who had previously lived in the US. And I know its something that he always wanted to do too. But he’s not one of the people I had talked with about doing this trip in all seriousness.

But life is full of surprises, and here we are – on the verge of something historic – two ‘global Indians’ (yes, we like to flatter ourselves), driving two made-in-in-India German cars across the mighty expanse of the North American continent. It’s the culmination of a dream for me, and a significant part of the journey on the Great Overland Adventure – and something that I know will give us memories to last a lifetime. They say such experiences mould you a certain way, leave impressions on you, and also help to shape destiny in some senses. Big words? Sure! But I can tell you this – as I sit in the plane and type out these words on my assembled-in-China American laptop, I can feel some of the same rush, the same emotion, the same anticipation, and the same expectation of great discovery as I did all those years ago. We touch down in New York in a couple of hours – and I can’t wait. It’s going to be legen – wait for – dary!

Read all about the American adventure later in this issue (as well as in our forthcoming January 2016 issue). And don’t miss the show on NDTV Prime, every Tuesday at 8:30pm.