ALL IN A DAY'S WORK

1 Skoda. 3 Drivers. 10 States. 24 Hours. Non-Stop!

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How far can you travel by road in India in 24 hours? And we're not talking about going around a track or zipping up and down a select few expressways to rack up kilometres for the record books. No – we're talking real India. Well, that's what we set out to explore in a unique road-trip challenge: cover 10 states in 24 hours!

At first, the idea sounded almost too easy. But as we began mapping the route for this challenge, we quickly realised that this was no cakewalk. You see, India may have 28 states and 8 union territories, but with over 3.2 million square kilometres of land, it's difficult to explore our country in a lifetime, let alone a day. Not to mention, the road infrastructure varies wildly and, then, there is the diverse landscape of our country – you have everything here, from snow-capped Himalayas to dense forests and coastal plains. Getting a true taste of the entirety of India in just a day seemed impossible. But, then, nobody can stop you from trying, no?

In what turned out to be an ultimate endurance test – both for man and machine – we embarked on a nonstop 24-hour road trip from the foothills of the Himalayas in the northern state of Uttarakhand and aimed to finish in the Gangetic plains of West Bengal. We mapped out the route carefully to ensure that we cover a total of 10 states – Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. A distance in excess of 1,600km. All in a day's drive!