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Truck de India!: A Hitchhiker's guide to Hindustan by [Rajat Ubhaykar]

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Rajat Ubhaykar

Truck de India!: A Hitchhiker's guide to Hindustan Kindle Edition

by Rajat Ubhaykar (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

99 ratings

"The share auto I squeeze into next seems unusually vulnerable after a night in the truck - too compact, too low down. Perhaps, these are the usual side effects of prolonged riding with the king of the road, I think to myself. But it is only when I fill in ‘truck’ as my mode of transportation in the hotel ledger at Udaipur does the utter ludicrousness of my endeavour truly hit home"

Think truck drivers, and movie scenes of them drunkenly crushing inconvenient people to their gravelly deaths come to mind. But what are their lives on the road actually like?

In Truck De India!, journalist Rajat Ubhaykar embarks on a 10,000 km-long, 100% unplanned trip, hitchhiking with truckers all across India. On the way, he makes unexpected friendships; listens to highway ghost stories; discovers the near-fatal consequences of overloading trucks; documents the fascinating tradition of truck art in Punjab; travels alongside nomadic shepherds in Kashmir; encounters endemic corruption repeatedly; survives NH39, the insurgent-ridden highway through Nagaland and Manipur; and is unfailingly greeted by the unconditional kindness of perfect strangers.

Imbued with humour, empathy, and a keen sense of history, Truck De India! is a travelogue like no other you've read. It is the story of India, and Indians, on the road.

Print length

268 pages
Language

English
Publisher

S&S India
Publication date

22 October 2019
File size

1305 KB
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Review

"Truck De India is fun to read, full of surprising insights, and a happy addition to any shelf of Indian travel writing." - Srinath Perur, India Today

"An epic journey, to say the least...one might compare the experience with, say, reading Hunter S Thompson's Hell's Angels... or perhaps, more sensibly, Vikram Seth's From Heaven Lake... I'd say Truck de India stands its ground among such important travel narratives." - Zac O'Yeah, Open

"Journalist Rajat Ubhaykar's truck rides across the country have resulted in a travelogue rich in feeling and insight." - Vikram Shah, Mint

"A delightful read on truck drivers who live in relative obscurity." - Sudhirendar Sharma, The Hindu

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Rajat Ubhaykar trained as an electrical engineer at IIT Kanpur, and went on to study journalism at the Asian College of Journalism after a stint in management consulting. A recipient of the PoleStar Award in 2016 for his reportage, his work has appeared in publications such as Mint, Outlook Business, Roads & Kingdoms, and Madras Courier. He lives in Mumbai, and spends his spare time reviewing books, collecting trivia, and exploring India's archaeological sites. Truck De India is his first book. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN : B07Y8R2YXY
Publisher : S&S India (22 October 2019)
Language : English
File size : 1305 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 268 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #9,267 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #18 in Travel Writing (Kindle Store)
- #51 in Travel Writing (Books)

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Mohit

Fun, refreshing and sweet

Reviewed in India on 22 December 2019

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Rajat Ubhaykar’s Truck De India is fun, refreshing and sweet. Suitably subtitled ‘A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hindustan’, the author escorts us on random truck rides across the ‘cheek of our nation’ in a spirit of journalistic inquiry but also with a childhood fascination and a sense of adventure. The result is a delicious cocktail that you want to both savour and drink down in a single sitting.

This book is not going to leave you thinking you know much more about India, truck drivers or the highway economy. It is going to leave you with a good feeling of how less you know about your own country. How, no matter how old, well-traveled, well-read you become, it is always going to marvel you should you be willing to keep your eyes and ears open.
(detailed review on goodreads)

2 people found this helpful

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Shailesh G.

Desi travelogue, finesse abundant.

Reviewed in India on 25 January 2020

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Mr. Ubhaykar seems to have done his bit in exploring all that he could during these travels. Not all of us could probably be on a journey like this, for the sheer difficulty one has to undergo when travelling without a plan on indian roads. I could feel myself sitting in the truck when reading this one wintery evening in Delhi. I read he is a former IITian, and an urban Mumbai chap, so am assuming it must not have been easy for him either. Because the books was months in the making, and not a one-of lift somewhere randomly. Kudos!

If at all, he could explore other such opportunities and write for us in future too. Technically tired of reading Indian authors who write about love, life and cheesy things in between. Good time to move on to something more intelligent, riveting and lively. Thanks Mr. Ubhaykar for this lovely piece. Waiting for new reads from your end. Cheers.

3 people found this helpful

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RSP

Worth a read

Reviewed in India on 16 January 2020

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A good account of author's highway travel with fair insight into the tough lives of the truck crew. The book also provides a layman's economics of what drives truck logistics and day to day travails of the people in the logistics business in grappling with corruption and regulations to keep themselves afloat. A good read for knowing life on the Indian highways firsthand.

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Looking forward to Ubhaykar’s second book

Reviewed in India on 8 February 2020

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Truck De India is a vicarious ride through India’s highways as seen from a truck’s cabin. Ubhaykar takes this ride on our behalf, eating, drinking, consuming bhukki (and occasionally relieving himself in the presence of simians) on India’s wide, narrow, smooth, rugged, deserted and traffic-laden highways. In the process, he tells us tales of drug addiction in Punjab, of the migration of Gujjars in Kashmir and of the dreaded NH39 in Manipur, at once educating us on lesser known quirks of our own history (and often, present) and making a case for greater empathy with the truck drivers that grease the wheels of commerce but are only remembered as irritant co-users of our noisy highways.

Ubhaykar is funny, informative, daring and deeply contemplative in his first travelogue. His second book cannot come soon enough.

One person found this helpful

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Nishant K

Excellent read

Reviewed in India on 14 November 2020

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Light but in no way a trivial read. Good writing style and an excellent recounting of a truly epic journey bringing to light the lives of a set of people invisible to us. A very interesting set of characters have made into the book and overall it's quite a page turner.

One person found this helpful

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Sagar Y.

Fresh topic, great perspective, easy read

Reviewed in India on 7 January 2020

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Truck de India gives a great insight into the backbone of the goods economy of India. It addresses stereotypes most of us have of truck drivers in our minds and hits them out of the field.. sorry.. out of the stadium.

Rajat's experiences narrate the lives, trials, bigheartedness, addictions and personalities of the stereotypes we have made of truck drivers. Not only truck drivers, reading the book changes the way you look at trucks - figuratively and literally. Just today, I caught myself today taking a peek into a truck standing at a signal - trying to match the interiors with the descriptions in this book.

Definitely recommended!

One person found this helpful

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Raghav

Great Insight Into India

Reviewed in India on 17 April 2020

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A brilliant look at the way India functions, through the eyes of truck drivers. The book delves deep into the trucking culture, focusing on its many aspects that are, at times, a revelation for us city dwellers. The author's journalistic approach and yet easy to comprehend prose makes this is a beautiful read.

One person found this helpful

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Bird yup awesome game

India on wheels

Reviewed in India on 29 September 2020

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In 'Truck de India', author Rajat Ubhaykar takes his readers through a long as well as pleasant trip across India. He travels North up to Kashmir, then to extreme East and finally down South where he ends at Kanyakumari. There are some interesting points to know as the author goes about his travels. Also, I read this book as I was stuck indoors due to the lockdown and travel restriction; yet, I could visualize the roads and truck drivers as they would normally carry about their business of moving goods across India. In some ways, this book has motivated me to take a journey across the country.

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Vivek K

A must read Indian travelogue by an Indian author.

Reviewed in the United States on 6 February 2020

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Truckers are like the nutrition carrying blood in the veins (Highways) of any nation. They keep that nation healthy and alive . Their stories are worth telling.

But Indian trucker’s stories MUST be told and I will tell you why.

I have been working in the US based Diesel Engine manufacturing company for the past 15 years and I have a little bit of insight on the trucking world here.Also I have a strong love for trucking and lot of respect for truckers. Unlike Indian Road transportation department, USDOT (US department of transportation) has lot of laws around the allowed operating time for long-haul truckers, overloading criteria, getting day offs, better pay, health benefits, fuel economy management system etc. Also, the roads and road rules are better here and are enforced without corruption. Their trucks are air conditioned with better beds etc. Some owner operators even have restrooms, kitchens inside their trucks. All these things make the US truck drivers life relatively easier. But our Indian truckers have none of the above. NONE.. But yet they keep the blood flowing in the veins of our nation. Their voice must be heard and their story must me told. Rajat just did that through this book. He becomes part of Indian trucker’s world for months at a time and participates in all aspects of their job. IMHO this is the best way to understand somebody’s way of life.
This travelogue gives you a honest, ground level observation about one of the many exploited voiceless proletariat of India. Indian truck drivers. We all have gotten only a brief split-second glimpse of their world through the windows of our speeding cars or buses on the highway, yet we have a very prejudiced understanding of their worlds through misinformation and opinions. Rajat goes on a mission to demystify their world and set the record straight by being a direct witness.

He didn’t stop at just experiencing, but was kind enough to document his interesting odyssey through his excellent writing skills and present it to us so that we can savor it. I couldn’t put the book down and also I did not want the book to end. I finished this book in a day. It gave me wings to fly to all the exotic places of India I always wanted to visit. I was constantly looking at the map to get a sense of where he was from chapter to chapter and it was a lot of fun. Unknown facts sprinkled all through the book and is is a treat for trivia junkies like me.
This is not your ordinary travelogue. It not only has all the elements of any enjoyable travelogue ,but it stands out in touching on some of the important current issues such as economic divide in rural India, labor exploitation, lack of trade union and its reasons, appalling working and living conditions, total disregard for the well being and safety of the workers in the name of profit, their destroyed work life balance , drug abuse and many more. Take the time to read through his tangents, they have more meat in it.
Indian City dweller very rarely get a glimpse of the inside world of a rural working person. From their POV they start to believe that the whole of India is modernized, and life is much better because everybody has a cellphone and access to information. They believe or want to believe all has changed magically in the current political climate. But this book reveals that it is far from true. It shows that very little has changed in rural India. The horrible living conditions, communal prejudices, prevalent caste and religion-based stereotyping etc etc. BUT… this book also shows that even not all is bad and the faith in humanity is not all lost. There are heartwarming beautiful acts of kindness to a fellow human being by complete strangers and friendship in unlikely places etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I really wish Rajat will publish a sequel to this book by traveling to other states he did not touch in this book.

A must read for lovers of travel or trucking or India or all of the above.

One person found this helpful

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