Imagine.

You’re driving a ’66 Sunbeam Tiger through the slums of New Dehli, where the horn is used not as an exclamation mark but as a full stop letting you know where one car ends and another begins. You are a part of the circus. It is real. It surrounds you. In ten minutes you are out, headed for Mandawa across Indian plains. Breathe the dusty air, fresh after the suffocating smog of the slum.

Your old wheels have a hard time on the potholed road, but you have a sense of adventure so you don’t care about the bumpy ride.

The days go by.

You see the Temple to Rats; you pass through forgotten villages, their children chasing wildly for as long as they can, laughing as they disappear in the dust plume behind the car; you drive away from the plains towards dunes, and then back again to rugged terrain that strains the Tiger. It is not used to this. You are not used to this.

The hills fold around you, covered in soft grasses like the fur of a fawn. A bus passes in the other direction with people hanging out the windows and lying on the roof amidst piles of luggage. Vendors jostle for customers in the tight alleyways of the Jodhpur night-market.

Each day begins with an endless drive. Each day ends with a meal served in the private home of the Maharana with silverware and soft light from a thousand candles. Every night you forget the tumult of the day and sink into bed.

Each morning, in the glaring sun, you forget the fine wine, hot shower, and soft linen of the night before, Today is a straight and long and hot day.

You head for the capital of Rajasthan, Jaipur, affectionately known as the Pink City. Another glorious meal in another glorious palace with evening tea overlooking the Crystal Lake.

The rally is drawing to a close and your car is starting to peter out—covered in dust and rattling like a child’s toy as it winds along the mountain roads. Approaching back into New Dehli from the south, there is one final stop at the inland container depot. Your Tiger is left behind for the final few miles.

One last stay in a bed that envelops your entire body as you lay it to rest, and then you fly home once again.

All the times your car broke down, or the heat got too much, or your bum was sore from sitting for so long: all this is forgotten.

Instead, you remember shaking hands with the Maharana; seeing his massive collection of classic cars; turning around a fold in the hills to see the dunes of an endless desert creeping up the slopes below you; a candle lit dinner far out on the dunes.

This you won’t forget; they’ll become stories of adventure, people and land—that irrepressible memory of never-ending untouched plains, mountains and scrub.

Chasing Cars

Would you do it?

Just shy of £20,000 gets you all this, assuming you already have a car to use. Go out and buy a 1966 Pontiac Lemans or a 1967 Austin-Healey or a 1939 Chrysler Royal Sedan or a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette. Drive for 3 weeks around Rajasthan on a fast-track tour across hills and desert and plains, through villages packed with people and fields speckled with just a few.

Who wouldn’t do this?

Let’s face it, this would be amazing with or without the classic car and, for me, without the five star hotels and meetings with the Marahana. But if it was all expenses paid, would you?

“Be brave, take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”

Forget about the brave bit. And the risks bit.

It’s the experience that counts.

Isn’t it?