How these two Mumbai-based women started exploring the world on four wheels

When Indian travellers Sujal Patwardhan and Medha Joseph embarked on a self-drive trip from India to Morocco in 2015 with a group of friends, little did they know that this journey would lead to a transformative experience, prompting them to pursue this professionally.

During this expedition, the duo drove 23,000 km, traversing 17 countries over 57 days. While it was a turning point in their lives, the journey wasn’t without challenges. However, their love for travelling and driving was too deep to be deterred by that; the spark plug for this journey was lit quite a few years before that.

Sujal, who took her first self-drive trip in the US in a Mini Cooper in 2011, expresses, “My love for driving started early—I’ve always been drawn to the thrill of the open road. Over the years, I took countless road trips, pushing boundaries and discovering new landscapes globally. But what stood out to me was how self-drive travel wasn’t as mainstream in India, especially for women, and then we both went on our life-changing expedition from India to Morocco, and the rest is just a series of self-drive expeditions,”

On the other hand, Medha’s journey started almost two decades earlier. Her first road trip was from Pune to Bengaluru in an Ambassador in 1990 and first solo drive from Hyderabad to Pune in a Maruti Alto in 2008. She embraced driving on most of her travel expeditions. “Not just India, but every time I got an opportunity to travel overseas, I would make sure that I would drive some part of it even when it was not commonplace for international visitors from India. This gave me such a taste of freedom that there was no turning back,” she shares.

Their shared love for the open road led them to join hands and organise self-drive expeditions for other travel enthusiasts, especially women. The duo, founders of the travel platform Embarq, led an all-women self-drive expedition from Kashmir to Kanyakumari in March this year to mark Women’s Day, as part of their ‘The Bold Route’ series. The trip featured a convoy of 25 cars covering 4,000 kms. But that’s not it. The duo will also lead other women-only expeditions in 2025, including Spain in September and Nagaland in December.

Glimpses from previous trips

Women in the driving seat breaking stereotypes

The duo is charting global territories and empowering other women to explore the joy and freedom of travelling. With people often stereotyping women drivers, they have had their fair share. “We have faced plenty of stereotypes,” Sujal says, continuing, “The most obvious is when people assumed we couldn’t drive long distances or handle difficult terrain. I remember an incident at a border checkpoint where the officers were convinced that we needed a male driver. They kept asking, ‘Madam, akele kaise drive karenge (Madam, how will you drive alone)?’ It’s always satisfying and sometimes amusing to challenge these perceptions.”

Medha recalls another incident. “During another expedition, a roadside mechanic refused to believe that I had driven the vehicle through tough terrain. He was convinced that one of the male participants must have taken over,” she shares, reiterating that it is moments like these that reinforce why it’s important for more women to take the wheel and prove that stereotypes are often dated.

The duo, now based in Mumbai, expresses delight on the growth of all-women trips, solo drives, and more. While women drivers started their journey a bit later, they are embracing it wholeheartedly now, embarking on new and exciting expeditions.

Sujal shares, “Do you remember the first time you sat behind the wheel of a car? That spark of independence is gender neutral. However, since women drivers started their journeys a bit later, the feeling of empowerment is immense. Self-drive, women-only, and solo travel are growing at levels that are unprecedented.”

It is not only them but also the many women who have travelled with them, says Medha, and their personal stories that would deeply inspire people to see the large steps they have taken to embrace a mode of travel that was esoteric a decade ago.

Learning as travellers

Given Sujal and Medha, who left their corporate jobs after their Morocco trip, have embraced travelling not only as a personal interest but also as a profession, they have diverse experiences and learnings to share.

Medha expresses, “For me, the biggest learning has been about human connections. No matter where we go, we meet people who are kind, welcoming, and willing to help. It’s a reminder that the world is full of good people and that travel is as much about the people as it is about the places, and it makes you a better human being as well in return.”

“(My biggest learning is) the ability to not take life too seriously, to become resilient, and not be surprised by any unexpected turn. These have stood such solid test of time, that I often wonder how else I would have learnt it if not travel!” Sujal signs off.