When we decided to go on our First Long Trip, all we knew was two of us, limited budget on a daily basis, one vehicle, different & difficult environment and miles to go… and Our Dream becomes Reality!!
At last before my last breath I am able to live my childhood dream of seeing the unseen India and shooting, and it started with support from my life partner, Ayesha.
It took us some time planning and preparing for the trip, which also includes preparing our car - Tough as christened by Ayesha , and the most important part earning some finances to support our journey.
We had to complete all our pending tasks and wind up certain things which were to be taken care of by us only and then to push off at the
To start the trip we had many destinations in mind and finally we zeroed on to the head of India i.e. Jammu & Kashmir.
First thing we did was to get the vehicle ready - serviced along with spares, followed by completing our photographic equipment to carry, some basic food stuff for our trip, and sleeping arrangements within the car, to save on our boarding and lodging expenses :P.
Our Caravan, is relatively a new concept in India, or I should say people have Caravans in those big vehicles which are like Vans, but a caravan in a mini truck or SUV is a new concept, to the best of my information, with the start of our trip, we are also facing some problems, first is to carry stuff on the top of the car and show casing ourselves as travelers with lots of luggage and being centre of attraction, second is us sleeping in the car, where ever we park people try to sneak a view.
I strongly feel the Motels/ Hotels should start providing a place for parking the Caravans like ours at no cost or very nominal cost so that it is safe for travelers to park their vehicle and enjoy a good sleep without having to wake up at night, again and again.
At the same time the Insurance companies should provide insurance for life, medical and the equipment to travelers like us.
We are self content/ self sustaining traveler as of now and will keep you updating about the experiences & difficulties we face en-route.
All we have to do is to make our rooftop lockable somehow so that the belongings atop are more safe and that will allow us to leave our car on its own while we take a short trip nearby.
Although we have tried to carry bare minimum but still the stuff we are carrying is pretty much, we had to install a roof top carrier on our Tough to facilitate some space inside the car, our two 20 Liters Jerry cans are atop out of which one will be used for Fuel, when travelling in remote areas, and the other will be used to carry water with us.
A water proof plastic sheet to prevent our belongings from rain and dust when travelling, we used some of the discarded twin buckles from the waste at home to make a quick tie kind of rope system for the carrier, and they are proving to be a great help.
It took us almost three hours to keep all the stuff in and on the Tough, which was a rehearsal to check how long it will take to get our stuff out from a particular bag, also to mention here that we have list of all the individual bags to help us on this, and then this rehearsal also helped us see what is the practical space available for us to sleep inside the car.
We also installed some reflectors on all sides of Tough to make sure the visibility to other vehicles at night.
With all done we set our foot on our first long road trip to Leh via Amritsar, Srinagar.
Here we go. . .
