Given the choice, I'll drive.
Flying is just teleportation with extra steps — you trade the journey for the destination and call it efficiency. A road trip refuses the trade. The journey is the thing.
What the road gives you
- A real sense of distance. You don't know how far two places are until you've felt every kilometre of it under the wheels. The map flattens it; the road restores it.
- The in-between. The best stops are never the ones you planned — the dhaba with the impossible parathas, the viewpoint that wasn't on any list, the town whose name you'll forget but whose light you won't.
- Time to think. A long, straight road is one of the few places left with nothing to do but drive and let your head untangle itself. It's the cheapest therapy I know.
I take a camera, of course — most of those frames end up over at mnegi.com. But the photographs are almost beside the point. The point is the driving, the not-being-anywhere-yet, the slow arrival.
Tell me where the good roads are. I'll find a reason to drive them.