Over 100 Days on the Road, 28,000km and 20 Borders Crossed as Couple Make Epic Journey to Kolkata

Recently Dr Mitra and his wife Sanjukta, visited Rotary Priory and gave an awe inspiring talk about their trip from King's Lynn to Kolkata. This is the story as written by Sue Irving, Lynn News 22.6.2026...

A Lynn couple are believed to be the first from the town to complete an extraordinary overland 28,200km road trip from West Norfolk to India.

Sanjukta Mitra, a secondary school maths teacher in Lynn, and her husband, Dr Prabir Kumar Mitra, a GP partner at the town’s St James Medical Practice, travelled over 111 days, crossing 20 international borders in their white Toyota Hilux, they affectionately named Chetak.

The couple spoke about their amazing journey which was both emotional and aimed at raising awareness of diabetes, to members of Lynn’s Priory Rotary.

Reaching Tangu La in China at 5231m in snow

The club’s Phil Davies said it was a “fascinating” talk and he compiled this report.

The couple’s route took them through Europe, Central Asia, China, Tibet and Nepal before they finally reached Kolkata.

Sanjukta said: “We called it Odyssean Journey because it really did become an odyssey. It was not just long in distance, but full of unexpected tests - border closures, difficult roads, poor health at times, and natural calamities that forced us to change plans again and again.”

The couple's Toyota Hilux, affectionately named Chetak, on the road in Tibet

Prabir said: “It was never simply a drive from A to B. The journey kept demanding patience, adaptation and resilience. That was what made the name feel right.”

What began as a dream at home in Lynn gradually became something much bigger - a modern overland expedition inspired by the ancient Silk Road.

For the couple, who have built their lives in West Norfolk while keeping deep family roots in India, the journey was about more than distance. It was about connecting their life in England to their life in India by land, and discovering what still links people across continents.

The journey itself was full of drama, humour and unexpected human kindness. In Russia, they endured a gruelling 16-hour border crossing, followed by navigation failures, police checks and long stretches of uncertainty.

In contrast a surreal roadside moment involved a Russian police officer who had stopped them suddenly broke into a Bollywood song after discovering they were from India.

In Kazakhstan, a forced reroute added around 2,500 kilometres to their journey, sending them deep into the desert. Yet it was also there that they experienced one of the most memorable cultural moments of the trip, when Sanjukta found herself joining in with local music in the dunes.

There were lighter moments too. In Venice, after a long day of ferries, factories and wrong turns, they ended up chasing the wrong ‘Marco Polo’s House’ through the rain, only to be told by an amused resident that they were far from the first tourists to make that mistake.

The journey also had a serious purpose. Dr Mitra, who specialises in diabetes, used the expedition to spread simple diabetes awareness wherever possible, speaking to people along the route and sharing translated information in different countries.

Supported by the Rotary Club of Lynn and Rotary Club of Calcutta Metro City, the couple also helped raise funds towards a dialysis unit at The Hope Hospital in Kolkata, that serves underprivileged people and a large diabetic population.

Prabir said: “Even if we could help only a small number of people along the way, we felt it was worth doing. I had printed a simple take-home message in twenty different languages, and that became incredibly handy when discussing diabetes awareness with local people indifferent countries.

“The journey gave us an opportunity to carry that message across borders, and that mattered deeply to us.”

One of the moments that has stayed with them most strongly happened in Uzbekistan. Recalling the encounter, they said an Uzbek man went out of his way to help, and when Google Translate failed to bridge the language gap, he simply got on his bicycle and rode ahead of them to show the way, turning back repeatedly to make sure they were still following.

For the couple, it summed up the greatest lesson of the journey.

Sanjukta said: “In this day and age, when intolerance, hostility and war dominate so much of what we hear, we found immeasurable kindness in all shapes and forms throughout our journey.”

The emotional high point came in Tibet, where they reached Mount Kailash and Manas Sarovar, sacred places they had visited before as pilgrims.

This time, however, they arrived after driving across continents in their own vehicle, making the experience feel even more personal and hard-won.

When they finally reached India, they were welcomed home by family, celebration, and emotion.

But for Lynn, their achievement already stands as something remarkable: a local couple who set out from this Norfolk town and drove all the way to India, carrying with them not just supplies and maps, but a belief that the world is still held together by good people.

Prabir said: “When you spend that long on the road, you realise the biggest story is not really about borders or roads. It is about people. Again and again, we found kindness where we could easily have expected difficulty.”

And after 111 days on the road, that is the message they brought home most strongly of all.