Mumbai man travels across 59 countries to meet change-makers

Representational Image

A 52-year-old textile trader and travel enthusiast, Praveen Mehta left India from Juhu in April 2019 and a year later when he returned home, he had driven across 59 countries and met some of the most celebrated people who have made a difference.

As per Times of India, he has driven through several central Asian countries, Russia, Baltic and Nordic countries and 30 countries in Europe, including the UK. He shipped his car in London to the US to resume driving and visiting over a dozen more countries.

His purpose? To meet and interview "interesting" people from around the world. Mehta, who has met 150 such people through the course of his journey, says, "Meeting people, the change makers, the influencers were the driving force behind this world drive. It was not to see sites or prove my driving skill."

And he has definitely had the privilege of meeting a variety of influencers. In Myanmar he met Kyaw Thu (pronounced Cho Thu), a critically acclaimed Burmese movie star and pro-democracy activist. While he lives behind several layers of security, Mehta managed to "virtually gatecrash and meet him."

He met Cynthia Muang, a peacekeeper and Magsaysay awardee who runs a centre for free child births and has helped around 4000 women in giving births.

From revolutionary poets, to peace activists and rockstars, he has met some of the coolest people live among us but his most memorable meeting was with a café owner in Kazakhstan who had offered him bread and hot chocolate after a hard day's ride, even though they were a non-vegetarian joint.

The owner later refused to charge him and said that "no one can go hungry from my café."

Mehta has managed to achieve and experience a lot in merely a few months. So what next for him? "I have to save my marriage first as I was away from home for so long," he quips