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In Truck de India!: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hindustan, journalist Rajat Ubhaykar turns an unplanned journey with truck drivers into a travelogue about highway life and the people who keep moving across it. In a January 2020 interview with Scroll’s Sayantani Dasgupta, he discusses how he approached truckers, what he wanted the book to do for readers, and why he left many experiences out.
A travelogue built around hitchhiking with truckers
Simon & Schuster India describes Ubhaykar’s journey as a 10,000-kilometre, “100% unplanned” hitchhiking trip with truckers across India. That figure and description belong to the publisher’s account of the book, not to an independently audited route measurement. The book follows encounters on the road rather than setting out to be a comprehensive study of India’s trucking industry.
The publisher’s account points to unexpected friendships, highway ghost stories, overloading and its consequences, corruption, and Punjab’s truck-art tradition. It also highlights Ubhaykar’s encounters with nomadic shepherds in Kashmir and travel along NH39 through Nagaland and Manipur. These subjects give the journey a documentary dimension: the road is both a route and a setting for stories about work, movement and everyday life.
A 2019 route list published by Condé Nast Traveller India names Mumbai, Srinagar, Udaipur, Chandigarh, Dharamshala, Jammu, Dimapur, Kohima, Imphal, Kanyakumari, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Bengaluru and Salem. It conveys the trip’s geographic breadth, but is not presented as a complete itinerary.
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Meeting truckers on their own terms
Ubhaykar told Scroll that he was conscious of the differences in background between himself and the drivers. Before beginning the trip, he visited truck terminals near Mumbai, including Wadala and Kalamboli, and spoke with truckers to get a sense of their world. He recalled preparing mentally for cramped sleeping conditions, summer heat and irregular meals, while doing little physical preparation.
In a separate Q&A with Travel Writing World, Ubhaykar described several motivations behind the journey: personal adventure, curiosity about trucking culture, a wish to document lives in India’s informal sector, and interest in how the rule of law works on the country’s highways. Those are his stated aims, rather than an external assessment of the sector.
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Reflecting on his encounters, Ubhaykar told Scroll: “Every trucker I hitched with treated me with the kind of honesty and generosity I can say I had never experienced before.” The remark captures the personal element of the book: its account of a less familiar working world is shaped by the relationships he says he formed along the way.
Clarity without flattening the story
Ubhaykar said he wrote with a reader in mind who might be easily distracted and quick to put a book aside for a screen. “Clarity in writing was my principal concern,” he told Dasgupta. He wanted the book to be accessible to someone who did not read much, without overwhelming them with information or long sentences, while still offering something to serious readers and avoiding language he considered trite.
That balance matters for a journey with many possible subjects. Trucking culture, regional encounters and highway conditions could each lead the narrative in a different direction. Ubhaykar’s stated priority was to make the writing inviting while keeping the account focused on travelling with drivers.
What he chose to leave out
Ubhaykar described travel writing as an act of curation. He generally left out what happened after he reached a destination and omitted many stopovers and side experiences—including local interactions, food and drink, and tourist outings. His reason was focus: he wanted the book to remain about travelling with truckers, rather than become a catalogue of everything he did on the trip.
That editorial boundary helps define the book’s perspective. It is a selected account of a journey, not a day-by-day record or a broad survey of every place along the way. In the Scroll interview, published January 19, 2020, Ubhaykar also said he was then beginning work on a historical novel and a travelogue; that was a time-specific update, not a statement about his current projects.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.About the book
Simon & Schuster India lists the paperback edition of Truck de India!: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hindustan as 240 pages, published October 22, 2019, ISBN 9789386797643. The publisher also lists an ebook edition, ISBN 9789386797650. The publisher page lists ₹450 for the paperback and notes that retailer prices may vary; current availability and selling prices can change.
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- Simon & Schuster India: Truck de India
- Scroll interview with Rajat Ubhaykar
- Travel Writing World Q&A with Rajat Ubhaykar
- Ubhaykar’s route account in Condé Nast Traveller India
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