The journey there and knowing that you have someone to unconditionally share it all with.”

“We first met 39 years ago at a wedding. The girl was my best friend and the boy was his relative, but we’d never met before. During that wedding we became really good friends and continued to meet pretty much everyday after. I don’t know at what point our friendship became love…or maybe it always was love but there was never really a need for him to ask me to date him — we were already madly in love. We were both working and at that time there were no cellphones — so we had one designated bus stop or a particular spot at the train station where the person who got done with work first would wait for the other. From writing long letters to each other to sipping on hot tea in the rain…our old school romance was innocent but so pure. The best part of our relationship was that we never needed to use words to understand each other — even about our marriage. He didn’t need to ask me to marry him…the question was never ‘will you?’

The question was ‘when should we?’
“We got married in 1982 and started building our life from scratch. We moved out on our own and were financially independent from day1. We were both working around the clock to pay the bills and make ends meet. It was during this period of struggle that we realised that the one thing that kept us going was our relationship. When the hours were long and work was demanding the thought of my wife waiting at home for dinner is what pushed me. She pushed me to work harder, to be a better version of myself and the life we have right now has been created by both of us together. From wanting to educate our children at the best of schools to moving to bigger spaces we’ve achieved everything together. In 1999, we both began to discuss the prospect of starting a business but neither of us were sure of taking the risk of quitting a well paying job. Over time, I realised just how passionate she was about running a business so I encouraged her to quit and told her not to worry about the finances. That was the best decision because over the next 6 years she grew our Logistics business idea from strength to strength and eventually in 2005 I left my job and we both worked on our business together!

“Our lives became comfortable from there and with our children being well settled we had the freedom to travel a lot more. We were taking 2 or 3 trips a year, but we wanted to spend more time together. It was around this time that we stumbled upon a post on Facebook about a couple who travelled by car from Bangalore to Paris in 111 days and we fell in love with the idea! We immediately started planning our trip and within a few weeks we had mapped out our route from Bombay to London and back — a 8 month road trip across 52 countries. And what a trip it was — we’ve visited places that are so remote and unknown but have so much soul in them, eaten the most delicious local food and met some of the best people on the way. At 55 and 61 we were discovering the world together but by the end of it we rediscovered ourselves and our entire relationship. From re- visiting old memories to fighting like children our dash cam has seen it all. Honestly we’ve felt a rollercoaster of emotions during this trip but the one emotion that stayed is love. In the little things he did — putting my comfort above his, making sure that I eat well and bundling me up with that extra blanket when it got cold. Isn’t that what it’s about? Not so much about the destination but the little things, the journey there and knowing that you have someone to unconditionally share it all with.”