Meenakshi Arvind is a car enthusiast who once drove from Coimbatore to London traversing 24 countries while covering 26,800 kms in 72 days in 2017. The driving bug drove her into further adventures and recently, Meenakshi, with her enthusiastic team of eight members travelled from Coimbatore to St. Peters burg, covering over 21,000 kms in 52 days.
She is a travelling soul with the zeal to conquer roads, break barriers and the will to challenge herself in accomplishing impossible sounding feats. “My family was very supportive of the trip. I would have definitely done it without their support but if there is a support that's where you have your heart and soul and that's something I'm so glad that I had”, she says.
She has travelled to 70 countries now and she likes South America most. Meenakshi adjusts well to sleeping in a different hotel every night, tackling weather changes, handling a variety of food, and meeting different people every day.
Meenakshi Arvind with her team in front of the Great Wall of China.
The team travelled recently in Tata Hexas named Dhanno and Sheru (inspired by the Hindi film, Sholay). “An interesting part was a Chinese guide in China called Wang Ta who gave us our nicknames - Meenakshi was called Captain, Sharath Madhav as money man, Sanjay Subbian as happy man and Pardeep Yuvraj as the new guy. We also gave him the name U-turn Wang Ta”, relishes Sharath, one of the members of the team.
The journey was with a purpose to talk about cervical cancer and create awareness but it also had another side which was great. “We made a happy boomerang video in every place we went and people saw us like crazy and laughed”, says Sharath.
Talking about travelling the wild roads of Siberia - “There were parts where you won't see a city for 1,000 kms and on two days we did 1,000 kms a day just because we had to do it as we didn't have a place to stay. That's the one aspect and the other one is driving a right-hand drive car on the right side overtaking becomes a challenge. Language too was a challenge because Russians won't speak English,” he said.
The team also has a few more adventurous drives lined up for next year, starting with a Himalayan climb, starting from Leh in Ladakh to Bhutan, Nepal, Assam and Tezu to cover the entire mountain range.
