Acknowledgements

This magnum opus of ours have many, many, people to thank. So we shall start and keep thanking people here, and hopefully we will not miss anyone!

So first, en-route our lovely friends, hosts and guides:

  • A R Rahman, for suggesting the name of our expedition
  • Mehernosh Shapoorjee for coming up with our brand identity and helping us now going forward build up the HighwayToSwades web presence
  • HV Kumar for being our navigator on call literally, with whom we checked many routes and who guided us on many crucial points
  • Bimal for coming to capture our first photo at Chennai
  • Vijaya Naidu in Tirupati for taking time to take us to chandragiri fort, meeting with JEO Tirupati temple, and even hosting us at his home that night; our dear friend
  • Jay Galla for taking time out to host us and take us along his campaign trail despite being in the middle of such huge political campaign.
  • Members of the Kumara Tribe for sharing their time with us in Araku; Abanis Nayak in Bhubaneshwar who we could not meet but thank you for keeping time aside for us
  • Atul Chaturvedi in Kolkata who took out time to arrange some mind blowing interviews for us, and hosting us and taking time out to be with us
  • Saira Shah Halim and Faud Halim for hosting us at their home and sharing the deep connections of India and Iran history and sharing the workings of communist party and its ideology
  • Shaurya Veer Himatsingka, Riddhima Thacker, and Maalika Himatsingka for making time to see us at their home in Kolkata at the ungodly hour of 11 pm
  • Souvik Pal for coming all the way to be with us at Rare Earth Home Stay, Bouticholi Village, Santiniketan
  • The owner of Rare Earth Home Stay, Subrata for hosting us there
  • Atul’s friend Mr. Singh in Siliguri who hosted us at night when we arrived late in his hotel
  • Ram Mohan Mishra, Baphin Iban and the entire team at MBDA in Shillong in the Meghalaya Govt. for taking time to host us and share their work with us
  • Vikas Pradhan and Hasina Kharbhih for hosting us at a lovely Khasi dinner in Shillong
  • Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barma for taking time to call us and keeping time aside. Unfortunately we could not reach Agartala but we could see Unnakoti because of his suggestion
  • Kalpana “Bina” Sarathy who arranged meetings, found us a great hotel and also spent time with us despite having to take a flight to Chennai from Aizwal in Mizoram
  • Benny Chawngthu, Shirjit and Chandra Kishor for taking time to be with us in Imphal in Manipur, taking us out and sharing insights on local situations showing us sights and sounds
  • Hekani Jakhalu for arranging our meetings in Kohima and stay at Tophema in Nagaland and sharing her incredible insight
  • Theja Meru for hosting us at a lovely lunch in Kohima
  • Leitong for taking time out to be with us in Mon in Nagaland, taking us through Tangnyu village and hosting us at his home
  • The members of the Phom tribe who hosted us and took us to safety
  • Prabhat Bezbaruah in Jorhat for hosting us in Jorhat at the Jorhat Gymkhana Club, spending time to take us through the Tea Institute and having lovely lunch packed for us from his home
  • Heren in Majuli Island for arranging a accommodation at his Missing tribe home stay and spending time to show us Satras
  • Tage Tabin in Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, for hosting us at his Ziro Valley Resort and taking time out for us to share his views
  • Muni Taku from Itanagar for taking time to come and see us at Ziro, hosting us in her home for lunch and dinner, and sharing her family with us and her parents for giving us lovely breakfast on the way to Ziro
  • Lawrence Koj who came all the way from Itangar to meet us at Ziro
  • Deepak Mishra in Nalanda for making sure we could see the site even though it was past closing time as we were running late on the drive that day due to election closures in Bihar
  • Mishra in Varanasi for hosting us to lovely saatvik dinner
  • Ashish Gupta in Lucknow for taking time to meet us and share some great insights
  • Shazia Bakshi in Kashmir for making all the arrangements, taking time to be with us, hosting us for dinner at an ungodly hour, arranging all meetings for us
  • Insha Mir for arranging some fantastic visits to artisans
  • Muheet Mehraj Mohsin and Nasti for taking time to share their views
  • Waseem Tramboo for taking time to meet us share his most useful views on Kashmir
  • Nazir Bakshi for being such wonderful guiding light
  • Iqbal Bakshi for arranging all our logistics
  • Ashish Chopra for helping us have a fantastic Amritsar experience at temple, local food, and at the Pakistan border and also offering us his ancestral home converted to a hotel to stay which we could not take up due to excessive rains
  • Prakash Detha for driving all the way from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer to be with us and host us for dinner with Mungaliyar singers
  • Sandipani Ashram and Tushar Jani for hosting us at Porbandar and allowing us to understand Gujarat.
  • Anju Jani, Koka Kishan and Keval Patel for hosting us in Vadodara and sharing some great thoughts on Gujarat, healthcare and Modi
  • Amod for giving us a great visit to Ellora left us wanting for more
  • Krishna Deva Raya for taking time to host us and show us around his ancestral kingdom of Vijayanagara in Hampi and Anagundi
  • Prithvi, Divya Praveen and Rashmi in Madikeri for spending a lovely evening with us.
  • Thomas in Allappey, Kerala, for an out of the world experience of the backwaters and Kerala life
  • Sabiraj in Ooty for making our stay at Mahesh’s home truly unforgettable
  • Vani in Madurai for taking time to show us around the temple and the market
  • Zafar Salim of Madural for offering us his home to stay, which we could not take up as we saw his message after we checked into the hotel
  • Anjali and Jerry for getting all communication gear in place
  • Bhamini Shankar for making sure we were on track, and always suggesting interesting places to visit
  • All the Mahindra Staff and Service Centers who serviced our car with great passion and commitment
  • Countless Indians who welcomed us in their homes, took care of us, fed us, sometimes reached us to safety, guided us to experiences and sites.

This is also to thank all our friends, well wishers, persons whom we had never met earlier but offered all help, guidance, love and assistance; the thousands who connected on our websites and blogs; those who messaged us, mailed us, called us, and the many who followed us ; the press and media who have asked us for our stories ; the management and staff at all our overnite stay hotels; the followers and visitors to our website www.highwaytoswades.in ; Kumar HV our phenomenal road guide whose knowledge of the roads in India will be better than Google’s street level maps; friends we made who had tears in their eyes when we parted; the BSF, State Police and the Indian Army who gave us protection, advise wherever we were and even put local guardians in our car to take care of us ; the Border Road Organization personnel who work in the most difficult and inhospitable conditions just to make our travel easier ; everyone who hosted us at their homes even though we arrived at the most unearthly hour ; the underground extremist outfits and bandits in a few places who surely would have been in the know of our movement, but decided we were too insignificant and/or harmless to be captured and just let us be! We thank them all. We apologize if we have inadvertently forgotten to acknowledge any person.