Rajat Ubhaykar
Rajat Ubhaykar is an Indian civil servant, travel writer and former journalist. He is well known for his book "Truck De India: A Hitchhiker's Guide to Hindustan". Ubhaykar has travelled more than 10,000 kilometers in India by trucks to understand the struggles, challenges and life of Truck Drivers. He has cleared UPSC 2020 with All India Rank 49 and will be joining Indian Foreign Service as a diplomat. Ubhaykar has also achieved 378th rank in Civil Services Examination 2019. Early life and education. Rajat Ubhaykar was born in 1991 in Bhatkal, Karnataka and grew up in Mumbai . He did his matriculation at Sainik School Satara. Ubhaykar graduated from IIT Kanpur with a B.Tech in electrical engineering in 2012. After a stint in management consulting, he did a post-graduate diploma in print journalism at the Asian College of Journalism. Career. After doing Post Graduation Diploma in Journalism, Rajat Ubhaykar worked as a business journalist at Outlook Business in Mumbai. After travelling more than 10,000 kilometers in India by trucks, he wrote a six-part series for Outlook Business. after closely experiencing the struggles, challenges, lives and motivations of truck drivers. He put all those experiences with the  truck drivers in his book. Ubhaykar wrote Truck De India while preparing for the UPSC Civil Services Examination. In 2020, after clearing the exam, he was appointed as a Probationary officer in the Indian Railway Accounts Service. He cleared the UPSC CIvil Services Examination again in 2021, and will soon be joining the Indian Foreign Service. Truck Journey. Ubhaykar was inspired to write about truck drivers when as a student at IIT Kanpur, he found himself stranded on a highway near Shimla and a truck driver agreed to give him a lift without charge. He started his journey from Mumbai , headed north via Gujarat and Rajasthan to Kashmir, then steered east beyond the chicken-neck of the country all the way to the troubled Nagaland and Manipur borderlands, before undertaking the last leg of his tour south via Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, where he eventually traversed Tamil Nadu and reached land’s end at Kanyakumari. He stayed in lodges that charged not more than 500 rupees per night. During his journey of around six months he encountered the real struggles of truck drivers which influenced him a lot and this made him to cumulate all his experiences with the truck  drivers in his book. Writing. In 2019, Simon & Schuster India published his book "Truck De India: A Hitchhiker's Guide to Hindustan". It received widespread critical acclaim in India and internationally.