There is a particular kind of restlessness that hits you about a month before a long trip. Not anxiety. Not excitement exactly. Something in between — a low hum that gets louder the more you look at maps. I know this feeling well. It is the wanderlust arriving, right on schedule.
The occasion was CIES 2025, an academic conference in Chicago. A work trip, officially. But it was also close to a month long, loosely planned, and the US of A was at the other end of it. I had been here before — 2013, to be precise. And 2013 had left behind one solid regret.
I had chickened out.
Many would say that is quite non-typical of me. A senior partner at Accenture US had offered a fully sponsored, exciting business development trip along the famous west coast. California. The Pacific. Route 1 perhaps. And I said no. I don't fully remember why. But the regret, I remember very well.
So when Chicago came calling in 2025, I made a quiet decision. This time, I would make up for it. And some more.
A few things were decided early. The conference was in Chicago. I had friends and family to visit. I had to fly out of New York at the end. Everything in between — rest, I said, we'll figure out. A road trip or two across the heart of America. I romanticised about Route 66, explored the idea of the West Coast, and finally decided to head east from Chicago. The research only deepened the wanderlust. I downloaded maps from the Road Trip USA website. I applied for an international driving licence. I was going to drive in America.
My family had no idea.
My wife would have thrown a fit and threatened with everything she had to forbid me.
Chicago received me at the historic Palmer House Hotel — 1641 rooms, one of the largest hotels in North America, and a history as layered as its lobby ceiling. It was here that Bertha Palmer invented the brownie. Yes, the brownie — that most beloved of baked goods — was born in this hotel, conjured up by the wife of Potter Palmer, who had gifted her this very hotel as an engagement present. Shah Jahan, you are not alone.
My friend Soumya Ranjan drove down from his home to downtown Chicago and we stayed together in the last day of the conference. And it was Soumya who, knowingly or unknowingly, would go on to play the most important role in this adventure — not as a companion on the road, but as the man who gave me the confidence to drive on it.
But first, the Art Institute of Chicago. We visited it together, that magnificent building that stands at the very spot where Swami Vivekananda addressed the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, on the sidelines of the World Fair. A moment of history quietly folded into an afternoon of art.
From Chicago, I headed south with Soumya to his home in Normal, IL, where his lovely family — two children and an amazingly warm wife — waited. She cooked Odia food for me. In Illinois. In America. Some things about Odia hospitality, I have decided, are simply immune to geography.
Over three days, Soumya let me drive. His Honda. On American roads. Left-hand drive, right-hand traffic — everything my hands and instincts had been trained against for decades. We made small trips — the supermarket, restaurants, a local brewery, the Rent-A-Car store. Each trip a little longer, a little more confident. Soumya guided me on the said and unsaid rules of American roads with the patience of a man who understood exactly what was at stake and the calm of someone who pretended he didn't.
By the time we walked into the Rent-A-Car store that evening, I was ready. We got a Nissan Altima. Available. Practical. Unassuming. Perfect.
The morning of departure, I gave myself one hour to pack. This is a ritual I trust — an hour of packing gives me the illusion, and sometimes the reality, of organisation. Before I left, I gifted Soumya a scarf of mine. Kissed his children goodbye. Stepped out into the fine Normal, IL morning.
Adventure and excitement were in my eyes. I know this because I could feel them there.
The Nissan Altima and I pulled out of Soumya's driveway and pointed ourselves south, toward the Mother Road. Route 66. And the first stop — Lincoln, IL. The only city named after Abraham Lincoln before he became president, christened by the man himself, legend has it, with the juice of a watermelon.
America, I was coming. Again. This time, I wasn't chickening out.
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