Bijoy’s blog: The India-Myanmar-Thailand expedition

Words by Bijoy Kumar

I love my job alright. But every now and then I try to take bites that are difficult for my team to chew. For everyone who came to know about the Mahindra Adventure organised India – Myanmar – Thailand expedition, it was pretty straightforward stuff. ‘So you took twenty cars from Guwahati and drove to Bangkok via Myanmar. And on the second leg, you drove those cars back. Big deal!’. Well, it was a real big deal indeed. I will need a substantial part of this magazine to make you understand the kind of background work that went into this epic drive. Let me try doing that in 650 words.

Like all good plans, this one too was made in a cosy air-conditioned office. And we went one step more – included it in the 2017 calendar. Next thing we know, both the legs were fully booked! Actually the first leg got booked in six hours. Suddenly it dawned on us that we need to execute this event! To begin with our calculations on pricing this event was flawed since it took a substantial amount of money just to organise the CARNET to take cars out of the country and back. We had no option but to opt for Plan B, which incidentally we didn’t have. The previous year we had partnered with Kalinga Motorsport in the IMT rally organised with support from ministry of road transport and highways and external affairs ministry of India. Kalinga stepped in to rescue our event and we decided to do the expedition as a follow up of the first drive in 2016. It took a long time for the government machinery to work and get things in order, but when it happened, the event got approval from not only the respective ministries but also the governments of Myanmar and Thailand.

In between all of this, the refugee crisis erupted in Myanmar and only the totally insane would have conjured up, let alone try and execute a convoy drive complete with journalists and video crew through Myanmar. Then there was this minor issue of getting visas on passports for the crew and participants. It is easy when you are flying to a country and not exactly so when you are attempting overland border crossings with two sets of people. More relentless paper work ensued and more permissions were obtained. Then there was the curious case of five teams from the Middle-East whose visas could not be stamped because, ahem, there was no Myanmar embassy in UAE. To cut a long one short, we managed to get invited by Myanmar and Thailand and the last of the passports were flown into Manipur from Delhi, just the day before the convoy crossed over to Myanmar. Phew!

You see, Mahindra Adventure is not exactly Thomas Cook and we realised that pretty late in life. Some extraordinary work from the Hari Singh and his band of men and woman who form the Drive Tech India team, took over from thereon and the rest as they say is history. I flew in to Bangkok to start the second leg and enjoyed the 3800km journey back home thoroughly. The charm of driving through Myanmar, which in many ways is still stuck in the last century, is something every motorhead need to experience. To do that with like-minded people was an even bigger privilege. The seventeen Scorpios and three XUV 5OOs handled the expedition like a dream (mandatory plug be excused!).

So where to next? We at Mahindra Adventure are now busy finalising the 2018 calendar and I keep hearing places like Lhasa, South Africa and Chile being mentioned. Here we go again! Did I mention that I love what I do?