One road is the reason for the trip — 36 hairpins to 2504 m, built in the 1930s for the view and nothing else, driven twice in a day for the light. Around it: Hallstatt at dawn, the Salzkammergut lakes, the Krimml falls, and the Timmelsjoch over into South Tyrol.

The Icefields Parkway driven both ways, with Jasper in the middle. Peyto's wolf-head blue, the Athabasca Glacier at the road's shoulder, Moraine at dawn by shuttle, and Spirit Island reached only by water. Twice is the point, not the penalty.

The Ring Road, once around the youngest country on earth. The rift at Þingvellir, waterfalls walked behind, black sand at Reynisfjara, icebergs on the Diamond Beach, the Eastfjords, Dettifoss and Mývatn's boiling ground — and Snæfellsnes to finish. The weather holds the pen.

Nine days, three beds. Siena for San Gimignano, the Campo and the white roads of the Crete Senesi; a Val d'Orcia farmhouse for Pienza, Montepulciano, Saturnia's hot falls and Pitigliano's tufa cliff; Lake Trasimeno for Assisi and Perugia — and Cortona on the way home.

Chile's road through Patagonia — gravel and ferries from Puerto Montt to Villa O'Higgins, where the road simply stops at a lake. The Queulat hanging glacier, Cerro Castillo, the marble caves, and a town whose streets are boardwalks.

The best self-drive country on earth. Deadvlei's dead forest, the Kuiseb moonscape, a German seaside town, desert elephants in Damaraland, and Etosha's floodlit waterhole doing the safari by itself. Gravel at 80 with nobody coming the other way.

Six national parks in the red rock country — Zion from below, Bryce from above, Highway 12 over the Hogback, Arches and Canyonlands from Moab, the road from every western into Monument Valley, and the Grand Canyon as the only possible finale.

The strangest driving country on earth — the Salar's white void, lakes of red and green farmed by flamingos, geysers at 4,870 m, and no roads at all, just braided tracks across the puna. A closed loop out of Uyuni — out over the salt, home through the Valle de Rocas, no border crossed.

Four hours from Bangalore by air: Nizwa's goat market, the kilometre-deep rim of Jebel Shams, the Wadi Bani Awf descent through Snake Canyon, a swim up Wadi Shab, dhows at Sur, and a night on a two-hundred-metre dune. The nearest world-class drive to home.

The forty numbered hairpins from Aliyar up to Valparai, then the road most people miss — west through Malakkappara and down the Vazhachal core forest to Athirappilly, which turns an out-and-back into a loop. Topslip and Parambikulam to finish.

A thousand years of temple building in the order it happened. The Chalukyan valley first — Aihole the sketchbook, Pattadakal the finished painting, Badami cut into a red sandstone cliff — then east into the boulder country where Vijayanagara built a city the Portuguese compared to Rome.

Inland to the Chola delta by way of Gingee's three fortified hills, the Pichavaram mangroves and the Danish fort at Tharangambadi. Rajendra's abandoned capital, a bronze workshop at Swamimalai, Rajaraja's tower at Thanjavur, and a last night at The Bangala in Chettinad.

Dry plain to forest to thirty-six hairpins to tea and cloud, then two thousand metres down through cardamom to a boat moving at walking pace. The gradient is the trip.

Two hill countries rather than two hill stations — Ooty by the gentle Gudalur climb, then over the Nadugani ghat into Wayanad, where the tea gives way to jungle and the food changes entirely. The Masinagudi hairpins avoided on purpose.

The most sustained driving of the three. Coffee country out of Chikmagalur, up to the highest point in Karnataka, then west through Kalasa and Sringeri and down the fourteen hairpins of the Agumbe ghat. A fraction of the traffic the Nilgiris carry, and longer, more open corners.

The shortest and the kindest to a car — the best surfaces in the region, gentler gradients, and coffee under shade trees most of the way. The Bhagamandala and Talakaveri road on day two is the reason to come.