At 74, his body seems to be supporting his spirit and he plans to go riding again, this time on the Golden Quadrilateral that is presently under construction.
But that will be one of his smallest and one of his last trips to spread a message of peace and adventure. It will bring the journey to an end—a journey that began more than half a century ago.
After joining the army in only the second session of the Indian Military Academy at the age of just over 15, Jain took on his trips as a hobby. He drove through Europe with his mother and roamed the extents of the country.
“The urge for adventure and knowledge of human nature drove me into this,” he says.
After retiring in 1992, he went on to make a trip to London in 1993 from New Delhi, covering 9,000-km. For Jain, the trip came with some nostalgia.
“My father studied in London and used to talk about his days there. However, he passed away when I was quite young and so I wanted to explore that city too,” he says.
While arranging for visas for every country he had to pass through was difficult, he says the best response he got was from the embassy of Pakistan; and a grand welcome too - with an escort through the 1,800-km he travelled in the country and a special stamp on his visa that said “exempted from any police checking”.
That response, he says, kicked off his first suspicion of the journey he had decided to make on the scooter. And since then his scooter has taken him many more trips—to Australia via Singapore and Thailand and to the heights of Nathu La in Sikkim.
And the response from his family and friends has been good too, he says. Friends made sure he could get air lifted over seas, his son accompanied him to Singapore on the trip to Australia and even his scooter mechanic was in touch on the phone to check on the scooter. But they aren’t too supportive of the last trip he is planning. His health concerns them but Jain plans to stop only after he has done the trip. And then he plans to sit down to write the memoirs. Memoirs of “love and support” he got on his trips from families of shopkeepers in Iran and tribals in Myanmar.
And the knowledge and control over mind to value the body that he calls “a valued gift of god” will then be remembered in his works, in the pictures he clicked and the maps that guided him through his travels.