The wind is my mother / The highway is my brother / I was born to wander / Turn around and I'll be gone…

The opening bars of Rare Earth's 'Born to Wander' from the car stereo are the only sounds on the road, as the Santro cuts through a silken Rajasthan night like an arrow. The song could well have been an anthem for the car itself - colour: white; license plate: MH 04 AP 8960; age: four months; owner: Kamaljeet Sandhu, a bum in a pinstripe suit.

Sandhu is at the wheel, a businessman by day, a trucker by night, wrapped in the habitual trance of the long-distance driver. I, co-traveller, navigator and general dogsbody, concentrate on the Himachal Roadways map spread out on the dashboard.

Mumbai… Delhi… Chandigarh… Rampur… Sarahan… Kalpa. And then the names get a whiff of the mountains, exotic Tibetan syllables that roll of the tongue like a child forming new words… Puh… Chango… Nako… Sumdo… Tabo… Kaza… Kibber… Kunzum La, terse printed words mapping mindscapes as yet untravelled.

It had started innocently enough a week earlier, over perhaps too many beers at a seaside tavern in Juhu. What had begun cautiously as a weekend cycling trip had blown into a full-fledged, trans-Himalayan car odyssey. The payoff: city slickers charging into the high wilderness like Don Quixote without a four-wheel drive. What is the use of living if one does not occasionally question it?

We reach Delhi on October 18, 48 dusty hours later. Sleeping in the open on a dhaba charpoy is an experience recommended to smoothen out the urban edges. Rajesh Kochar, adman and long-distance friend, has dutifully arranged all the mountain gear. For his efforts, the good man gets to join us for the next leg.

For what is billed as a 'small car', the Santro has an appetite for a surprising amount of luggage. There's a four-man tent, sleeping bags, carry mats, an ice axe, a storm lantern, rucksacks, tow rope, spare tire, a bagful of tapes, a medicine box, a toolkit, a rug, cushions, food rations and other paraphernalia stowed away in the back. The general who comes prepared has half the battle won. We don't intend to make the same mistakes as Hannibal in the Alps!

Three nights later, we're camped near the singularly untouched Sangla-Baspa valley. By now, the Santro has acquired a personality of its own - doughty, steadfast, resolute, irrepressible.

It doubles up as a shelter from the night wind for the smouldering bonfire, the canvas huddle of the tent and the increasingly bizarre conversations: a more fitting hideaway than the prohibitively priced tourist camps a kilometre downriver. White-tipped mountains loom in the distance, the city seems far away. Cell phones no longer ring in our ears, just the thoughts zinging through our skulls.

"First you own it, then you disown it," Kochar declares meditatively, in a rare moment of clarity. Thought for the day.

Kalpa, a picture postcard of Mount Kinner Kailash, wooden houses like Swiss chalets and prayer flags fluttering in the wind. This is the Rupa valley, home to bountiful apple orchards and rosy-cheeked, strong-limbed village women caught in the daily cycle of living.

Kochar departs atop a rickety local bus with a salutory wave of the hand, homeward bound to the lowlands of the advertising world. A man, like most of us, striving for the middle path.

It's time to move on.

ride on...Deep mountain country (continued)