KOCHI: The picturesque green groves and the simple life of rural villages she saw on a Malayalam travel magazine fascinated Kakkanad native Mitra Satheesh, an Ayurveda doctor. She decided to go on a solo drive to explore them. When the plan came to the execution level, her 10-year-old son Narayan hopped on too. The duo started its pan-India trip named, ‘Oru Desi Drive’ on March 17, with a plan to cover the length and breadth of the country by road, in 100 days, covering more than 20,000 kilometres.
They had crossed 27 states and six union territories in 50 days as of Wednesday. However, the second wave of the pandemic hampered their trip, forcing the duo to wind up their tour early. “We had to make a sudden change of plans as I had to get back to the Government Ayurveda Hospital, Tripunithura, for Covid duty. But we managed to cover all the states. We hope to reach Kochi before the second week of May,” says Mitra who spoke to us from Jammu and Kashmir, a dream destination of her son.
Mithra updates the culture, food, art, architecture, lifestyle and titbits of every region that she visits through her ‘Dekho Apna Desh’ hashtag on her social media page named Wind In My Hair. “It was Narayan’s dream to see and feel the snow. I took him along on the trip to teach him the real world outside textbooks. My husband Satheesh and mother Radhamani encouraged me too,” says Mitra who undertook a solo trip to Bhutan before embarking on ‘Oru Desi Drive’.
The duo starts its journeys at 5am every day, halts at homestays or huts in villages for the night. “I get in touch with the friends residing in the respective places or just randomly get in touch with villagers. We prefer to eat lunch and dinner from the houses we visit. Breakfast is usually dry fruits and cornflakes with milk that we carry with us,” explains Mitra.
Some of the unique instances that caught Mitra’s attention are the Salmora potters of Majuli village, century-old terracotta temples in Bishnupur in West Bengal and a sweet delicacy named Puthrekullu in Atreyapuram village in Andhra Pradesh.
Mitra adds that a lot of research went into the journey. Even then, the globetrotter faced unexpected hurdles during her well-planned trip. Like her visit to the Mata Vaishno Devi Temple in Jammu. “We had a chance to visit the temple and reached there on a chopper. But surprisingly there was no return chopper service. We embarked on a two-hour-long horse ride back to our halting station in Srinagar, but managed to get back safely. These plot twists make the trip fun,” she quips.
NORTH-EASTERN ADVENTURE
One of her favourite memories from the trip is from the north-eastern part of India. According to her, there are many communities in states like Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland living far from the modern civilisation. “They live in mud huts and make food from weeds. There are even people who eat out of plates made out of big leaves, like the Bodo community in Assam. There is a misconception that we will only get to eat non-veg dishes in northeastern states. I got to eat around 10 vegetarian dishes made using leaves and herbs. Also, when my son insisted on staying in one of their mud houses, the community let us,” she says.
#UnexploredBasthar
On the outskirts of Chhattisgarh, there is Basthar district, an unexplored pocket of rural life. “Many people warned me not to enter Basthar village which is prone to Naxal attacks. But there, I found many gentle people having unique culture and customs. We got to meet the Dhuruva tribal community in Jamawada village who spoke with me in Hindi. Their food habits are unique. They make gruel using ragi and rice and eat it with red ant chutney served in plates called ‘Dhoni’ made from Sal tree leaves. One could even buy these red ants from the markets in the village,” says Mitra.