Road to Mekong

For fifty-six days, four women left their 'regular lives', homes, families and comfort, to ride their motorbikes through scenic landscapes, inhospitable terrain and diverse regions. In this process, they covered 17,000 kilometres through six countries. What inspired them to follow this dangerous, and at times maddening, adventure trail? In Road to Mekong, Piya Bahadur recounts her once-in-a-lifetime journey through Southeast Asia. With little prior experience in expeditions of this nature, the group successfully planned and executed an exhilarating trip from Hyderabad, through the east Indian coast and the northeast of India, weaving through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, along the river Mekong, and finally to Cambodia. By the time they returned, the lives of these audacious women had changed forever. Piya takes the reader along on her travels through places rarely visited by the itinerant Indian and shares the new world that unfolds as she journeys from being a working mother constrained by her own inhibitions to a confident traveller accepting of whatever adventures life has to offer. 'The inspirational and adventurous journey of these four women across nations and through thousands of kilometres makes for an exhilarating read. The book should lead many more people to explore India and it's scenic places' MEENAKSHI SHARMA, Director General for Tourism, Incredible India

Piya Bahadur went to the US to do her master's and lived there for several years until, one day, she felt that her two daughters needed to be closer to their grandparents and moved back to India. Before the motorcycling bug bit her, Piya was Regional Officer at the US-India Education Foundation and before that, worked at the Indian School of Business. Piya is currently working at her startup, which makes software to help small businesses, especially women-owned, run more efficiently. She is happiest when she is on long walks with her children, or on the road, singing along to Kishore Kumar songs. Now that both her daughters are in college, Piya lives in Hyderabad with her husband, their cocker spaniel, and a black cat that pretends to be their pet.