Neha Thakur had everything ready to fly. At 20, she left her village, Khudla, in the Mandi district, and moved to Chandigarh to train as a flight attendant. That was the plan.
Then the pandemic arrived, bringing the entire aviation industry to an abrupt halt. The dream suddenly went dark, but not the determination. Neha remembered the afternoons when her father, a truck driver for more than twenty years, would take her to school in his truck. There, amid the roar of the engine, something stayed with her forever.
In 2023, she obtained her license to drive heavy vehicles, and today she drives a truck of up to 16 tons on India’s roads, documenting every journey for the thousands of people who follow her on social media. She became the first woman truck driver in Himachal Pradesh, and she says it plainly: she drives a truck just as her father did.
