India-ASEAN rally pauses for ceremony
India-ASEAN rally pauses for ceremony
Aye Aye Win, Associated Press/Vientiane, Laos
A caravan of about 60 mostly Indian-made cars reached Laos on Tuesday after meandering through jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia in an Asian car rally to promote the region's little used byways for travel and freight.
The four-by-four vehicles, which had set off from India on Nov. 22, crossed the Mekong River from Thailand over the Friendship Bridge to arrive in the Laotian capital Vientiane before heading off to Vietnam en route to Indonesia.
A line of Laotian women in colorful traditional attire and schoolchildren waving flags greeted the drivers, crossing the region in national teams from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and India.
"All of you are pioneers in knitting our countries together," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a speech to flag them off after their brief halt in Vientiane. Singh was here to attend a summit of ASEAN and its partners.
"In future such overland travel will become commonplace, as it was centuries ago. But today there are considerable hurdles for overland travel, and I am glad that this rally proves to the world at large that difficulties can be overcome," Singh said.
The first ASEAN-India rally aims to promote the region's expanding road network and raise public awareness about relations between South Asia and Southeast Asia. India and ASEAN plan to work toward a free trade area as part of New Delhi's "Look East" policy.
The 20-day, nine-country rally that was flagged off by Singh in the northeastern Indian city of Guwahati, will cover 8,000 kilometers (4,950 miles). It passed through Myanmar and Thailand before crossing into Laos, from where they will go to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore before concluding at Batam, Indonesia, on Dec. 11.
"All along the way we saw tremendous hospitality. It is very exciting. It's very touching to see so many people coming out to greet us," said Chen Fei Wei, leader of the 12-member Singaporean team.
Only two of ASEAN's 10 members, Brunei and the Philippines, have been left off the route, but all the countries have teams entered in the rally, carrying nearly 250 entrants from all 10 ASEAN countries.
"This is the first of its kind event," said Sunil Kant Munjal, president of Confederation of Indian Industry, which co-organized the event with India's External Affairs Ministry.
"We found much more complexities than we anticipated and the response and reception of the people was also much more exciting that we anticipated," he said.
Most participants used Indian-made cars such as Tata and Mahindra, provided by the Indian organizers. Drivers from oil- rich Brunei brought their own Land Cruisers.
"We used our Land Cruisers because we don't know about the performance of the Indian cars. Our cars have 4.2 liter engine with inter-cooler turbo," said Salleh Abdul Rahman, leader of the Brunei team.