Road to Mekong - Piya Bahadur

Author: Piya Bahadur

Genre: Travelogue, Nonfiction.

Rating: 2.5 stars, mainly for their riding than for the writing.

In a Nutshell: Good but left me feeling disconnected, partly because of the writing and partly because of my relative disinterest in the topic.

Travelogues aren’t really my preferred genre. I’d rather travel than read a travel book. But I won a copy of this book through an online reading challenge organised by the Brunch magazine published by Hindustan Times. Moreover, I have been on a 20-day motorcycle trip (as a pillion rider 😄) through one of the toughest terrains in India (the Leh-Ladakh highway, known to be the world’s highest motorable road at almost 20000 feet above sea level– ‘motorable’ being a very relative word, of course.) I felt like comparing biking experiences with these women.

‘Road to Mekong’ is a travelogue, detailing the motorcycle journey of four Indian women from Hyderabad (a city in the state of Telangana in South India), passing through North-East India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and back to India, thus covering a distance of about 17000 kilometres. This journey was partially to promote Telangana tourism (which is why they got a lot of support from the media and the government) and partially to try out a challenge changing the image of Indian women motorcycle riders. As the author says towards the start, “Women who help advertise motorcycles and women who actually ride them represent opposite ends of the spectrum of male imagination.”

The four women comprised JB (an experienced biker and founder of an all-women motorcycle riding group), Shilpa (ex-corporate professional, wanting to start her own travel business, and an experienced biker), Shanthi (a constable with the Telangana police, the youngest in the group but with less long-distance riding experience), and author Piya (a upper class corporate professional with little long-distance riding experience.) Considering the variety of backgrounds of these women -- financially, professionally, and personally—I expected a lot more interaction to be part of the content, especially in terms of group dynamics. It is present in bits and pieces but on the whole, I feel like I hardly know the women better after reading the book. There’s hardly any personal anecdote narrated beyond a sentence or two!

More importantly, there was a certain sense of adventure to the fact that these four women travelled the distance alone. Imagine my surprise to find out that they were accompanied by a production crew in a bus. The women did handle the riding but it is easier when you have a team to fall back upon. It is hardly roughing it out.

The structuring of the book is sequential in parts (mainly during the international travel chapters), but there’s a lot of back and forth, especially towards the start. There are some philosophical musings peppered along, but most of the content is like a first-person factual narration of the journey with minimal observations or emotional experiences.

As I said, I'm not an avid travelogue reader but when I do pick such books up, I expect to be taken along on the virtual journey. Unfortunately, that didn't happen here. Rather than feeling like the pillion rider travelling on these bikes, I felt like I was reading a neutral report on the journey. The ‘thrill’ was missing from the writing despite there being the possibility of thrills galore in the locations and the adventurous mode of transport. There isn’t anything about local customs or scenes or anything else which would make the narration more personal.

I did enjoy the limited glimpses it provided of the four countries they passed through - Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia – but I wish the book also included greater content on North-East India. It whizzes by without much detailing.

India is currently the right mix of modernity and tradition, and this book goes to show how far Indian women have come along, while still highlighting how far we have to go. The differences between urban and rural facilities and lifestyle is starkly visible. (It does make the writing seem a little elitist at times, but I suppose that is natural coming from a lifelong urban dweller. I might have experienced the same feelings.)

I didn’t expect to have such a lethargic response to content that should ideally have wowed or awed me. Would I consider this book memorable? Not at all. Five minutes after I completed it, I forgot almost everything. (Right now, I am sitting with the physical copy on my lap, so that I can crosscheck what I wrote.) This is definitely more of a writing issue.