USA to India by road: 53 days, 22000 kilometres & costing upwards of Rs. 1 crore [Video]

This is the story of Mr. Lakhwinder who drove from USA to India in a pickup truck; Covering more than 22,000 kilometres in the Toyota Tacoma, he travelled from USA to Jalandhar by road in 53 days; The entire journey costed him more than Rs. 1 crore.

Some people are crazy about doing road trips and are always eager to travel by road to different destinations. Travelling within the country by road is quite an easy task and requires the bare minimum perquisites. However, when we think about doing a cross-country road trip by car, there are usually a lot of hiccups involved in terms of obtaining permits, visas etc. These types of journeys are physically as well as financially very demanding and you need to be iron-willed to take up such expeditions. So today we bring you the story of Mr. Lakhwinder Singh, who in an attempt to try out something new and different, travelled from USA to India by road. Let’s have a brief summary of his entire journey in a YouTube video by ‘Ride And Drive’.

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USA to India by Road: Some statistics and Mr. Lakhwinder’s experience

To begin with, the road trip was done on a brand new Toyota Tacoma mid-size pick-up truck, which he bought for $60,000 USD on road including all the taxes. He earlier drove the same vehicle for travelling, however, he bought a brand new lifestyle pick-up truck for the journey. Covering 22,000 kilometres, and crossing 23 countries, the 53-year-old Mr. Lakhwinder took 53 days to travel all the way from USA to Jalandhar (Punjab, India) via road. The expenditure of the entire road trip was more than Rs. 1 crore and was solely borne by him. The trip started from his residence in Sacramento, the capital city of California State in USA.

In the interview part of the video, Mr Lakhwinder spilled some beans about his experience and what went into the planning as well as execution of this epic journey. When asked about the fuel costs, he said that he didn’t bother to keep a record and swiped his credit card for fuel bills. According to him, the roads in Europe were really good, and the Germany’s infamous Autobahn was the best with no speed limits and he pushed his vehicle to 250 kmph. He paid 4 speeding fines throughout his journey, 1 in Serbia, 2 in Turkey and 1 in Pakistan, while he is not aware of the challans in Europe due to the automated system.

The idea of a road trip struck him in the 2 months of lockdown during the pandemic when he decided to do something unique by travelling from USA to his homeland India and it took him 3 years to plan out the whole journey. Discussing about the problems in the documentation process, he said that Iran was the hardest country to obtain a visa and took almost 1.5 years, followed by Pakistan.

For the record, the car was transported from USA to UK by a ship while the journey from London to Paris crossing the English Channel, was covered in 37-38 minutes by transporting the car by train. He further shared that he had only obtained a single entry visa for all the countries so he cannot go back to USA by road, however, he will try to ship his pick-up truck back to USA. Talking about the graphical representation of the journey on his vehicle’s body, he explained the main purpose behind this was to explain the entire route in the simplest way possible.

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