DHARAMSALA (India): Hoping to experience a world before the age of email and airplanes, an Italian with a beat-up four-wheel-drive car has driven from London to Mumbai to deliver mail as the British did a century and a half ago.

Rosario Mascia endured potholes in Pakistan and insults in Iran but, after 40 days on over 10,000 kms of road, he has arrived in India, more than 100 envelopes in hand.

The bearded, bespectacled 52 year-old journalist began researching the mail route between Mumbai and London in the 1980s and wrote a book on it. Two decades later, he decided to experience it himself by reviving the old postal route — on his own.

“There was uncertainty and fear, but adventure and excitement at the same time kept me going,” Mascia explained.

In a white Russian-built Lada Niva 1600, two Italian tricolour stickers posted on his car’s front bumpers, Mascia set off in London. He has had envelopes stamped at most of his stops — Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan and India.

But he quickly learned the road journey would not be entirely smooth. Just before leaving his hometown of Brindisi in southeastern Italy his car broke down and he did not get back on the road for half a year. (He insisted he still made the trip in 40 days, minus the six-month break.)

His car survived the endless potholes along some 750 kilometres of road between Quetta and Lahore.

The road experience came just after a hurried race through Iran, where authorities allowed the journalist only one day to make it from the Turkish border to Pakistan.

While Mascia modelled his trip on the adventures of Thomas Waghorn, who founded the London-to-Mumbai India Mail in 1829, his experience was significantly different from that of the Englishman.

Under Waghorn, mail was taken from London through France and Italy, then by boat to Egypt, where it would again be taken overland before meeting another ship to take it to India.

He is selling his 100 envelopes, stamped across the two continents, for $50 each.—AFP