We didn’t make the decision, the decision made us. On October 20th, 2007, we left our comfortable city of San Francisco to follow a simple algorithm – go North till the road ends then turn around and then go as far South. In between those two points was the stage, the timeline, the space, where we made things happen and things happened to us.

The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn’t speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain – the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.

This will be the last post on A Long Drive. In a few days the home page will start showing randomly selected posts from the past. The website will be up for the forseeable future. We thank everyone who followed us on our journey.

Safe Travels!

Shreesh & Neena Taskar, San Francisco, CA