How I migrated to France with my family: The challenges & the journey

The plan was for me to move earlier and my wife and daughter were supposed to arrive a few months later at the end of the school year.

BHPian amolpol recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Let me start by saying, I have always enjoyed being in India all my life even with its quirks and annoyances, crowds and noises, potholes and pollution, religions and racism, festivals and bandhs, but most importantly family and friends. Over the years, we have had such amazing trips across several regions of India and yet we feel there’s so much biodiversity left to be experienced. Somehow we have always felt it’s where we belong, and that’s mainly why we haven’t fancied the great migrations undertaken by a lot of fellow colleagues and friends to other countries in search of a better life. A big part of their better life versions were always the tick-boxes of good infrastructure, safety and air quality, work-life balance etc, which are unquestionably true and yet weren’t enough to convince me to make the jump.

But as in every story, there’s always a turning point, and mine started just a little before the world was consumed by Covid for 2 full years. My career evolution needed me to be closer to the HQ in Paris and it meant either continue to travel every few weeks and have a lot of wasted weekends with collecting bills as a hobby or to decide to move as an expat and try the European way of life for a few years. Before I could even deliberate on the choices, it was the world of lockdowns and we got some breathing space to make the decision because it was clear that there was no added value to work from home in Paris instead of Bangalore. Wave after wave, we hit the “snooze” button on the decision but I found myself against the wall to decide in early 2022 when face masks were recommended but not mandatory anymore.

Over the past several years, I spent a considerable amount of time in Paris for work every year. Contrary to the world view of Paris being the most scenic/romantic of all cities etc, my views remain a bit different. But as a family, we had done a long road trip across France and parts of Spain and Italy and we loved every bit of that. One thing was for sure, Europe has a lot of experiences to offer and the best way to tap into that was to be there!

This felt different, we were neither going to be on a holiday nor a business visit. It was supposed to be a temporary move but it almost needed the same level of commitment like a permanent relocation. The decision making involved several key variables: my career, wife’s career, daughter’s education, our handpicked garage arsenal, our house, families, friends and most importantly our lifestyle. The financial viability of the decision was also important but let’s just say it wasn’t probably the biggest factor. The big motivator for us as a family was the opportunity to absorb a different culture, experience the beauty of Europe as travelers (not as tourists) and try to take advantage of the motorsports culture that the region has to offer.

This thread aims to cover a few aspects of our migration journey to France, the rewards, the sacrifices, the new beginnings, the learnings and of course the return to base to complete the full circle. I like to think of this like a long travelogue, with accounts of experiences that shaped a lot of things in our lives.

Our choices for the garage were mainly driven by function over form and that meant we preferred several specialized tools vs jack of all trades. The strategy was well supported by the ability to rent multiple secured parking spaces in our residential campus. Each vehicle had its own purpose and couldn’t easily be replaced by another one, made it quite difficult to choose sometimes.

The pandemic had affected everyone in different ways, for us it ignited the motocross journey for my daughter who was just 10 years old at the time. What began as a silly idea in 2020 had taken some interesting turns, she had become a promising talent at the 2022 MRF Supercross National Championship. The move to France was definitely going to put a stop to her racing prospects, but on the flip side it also opened the door to possible training opportunities in France. It probably deserves a separate thread for kids in motorsports especially in India since it’s an emerging trend but let’s keep that for someday later.

Now that 2 out of 3 family members were riders, our garage was strongly influenced by it. I was in love with my R1200 GSA Rallye while the lesser known SWM Superdual 650 mainly helped in accompanying my daughter at the off-road track and nearby trails. My daughter rode the pocket rocket Kawasaki KX100 on dirt and a stripped down Yamaha R15 for her tarmac lessons.

Of course, this meant we needed to have an Isuzu VCross to move around because neither her bikes were road legal nor is she legally allowed to ride for another few years.

A monstrous Landcruiser 80 series equipped with heavy duty off-road kits stood in the garage with magical powers to go anywhere.

The mighty Fortuner in its stock form had served us well over the past years and continued to run like it was bought yesterday.

Last but not least, a Superb TSI which initially felt a bit out of place in a family of 4x4s but had won us over with its sheer comfort and mile-munching capabilities on long highway journeys.

It was a near perfect setup for what we enjoyed as a family: camping, wildlife photography, trails, motocross, and cross-country touring.

We decided to divide and conquer on the criteria we will use for our decision to move or not and then confer together to make the final decision. Like any loving husband would do, I let my wife tackle most of the tricky topics like career, house, family, finances etc, while I completely focused myself on the most important question for a petrolhead.

“What do we do with our precious garage?”

As you can see, it included a mix of workhorses and keepers for life. This one was a deal-breaker for me, and we needed to be fully convinced that we could and should move away from what was now a perfect arsenal.

Two clear options emerged:

• Option 1: Don’t do anything, just park everything and leave. Keeping in mind that the move was long but temporary, this way we could come back and decide on what we want to do. I already had several parking spots at my disposal so it was already one issue sorted. This was the easiest option, but I just couldn’t convince myself to keep the vehicles standing for 2-3 years without use. For me its super important that I can trust my vehicles because we’ve often done trips where breaking down could have had serious complications especially when we’re traveling alone in remote places. I wasn’t sure I could regain the confidence after such a long downtime. Moreover, it would have also eroded their financial value in those years so it wouldn’t help if we chose to recondition everything and sell it at that time.
• Option 2: Sell everything and rip off the band-aid before we leave. It was the painful option to consider, both financially and emotionally. However, this way we cut our losses and opened the door for new beginnings when we return. This was easier said than done, because it meant finding the right buyers at the right price for several enthusiast type vehicles that won’t all be the fastest moving commodities in the market with the pressure of a clock that was already ticking. It also had to be sequenced right in terms of sale, for example so we couldn’t have sold the Isuzu before the bikes were gone etc.

Armed with enough bullet points to make the for and against arguments, I was now fully confident that this was the most pressing debate topic of all.

Soon it was the day of the joint meeting where we had to make a decision on how we will shape our near future. There were no real debates on the topics that my wife had worked on,

• Family: We both agreed that we were going to be just 11 hours away from the family in Mumbai which was the same time it took for us from Bangalore by car.
• House: A dear friend agreed to rent our fully furnished house and take care of it.
• School: This was the easy part, we explained to our daughter that we firmly believed in her capacity to learn and adapt and that no institution alone can anyway guarantee success.
• Career: This was definitely a hot topic, given that my wife’s career would be put on hold after more than 2 decades of working as a corporate slave. But she agreed to look at it as a forced vacation in Europe to give it a positive spin.
• Friends: This one was tough, we have a lot of friends that are now like family and moving away from them was hard.

So everything else sorted, we were now down to the most important topic – the garage!

We spent hours on what should be done, but it kept becoming increasingly complex to decide if we park or sell everything in the garage. At the end, it came down to a very scientific method for decision making, coin toss! After a few spins, it was decided not to look back and just go ahead with putting things on sale immediately to try and dispose everything before we shut shop in India.

Now that we had made a decision, I quickly got into action with my fingers typing as fast as they could to put the details and pictures on several Whatsapp groups. I must admit that it’s an efficient way to connect with several enthusiast communities and advertise what you’re selling. It is however always the friends of such enthusiasts who get forwarded your messages which starts this cycle of questions for information that were already in your original post. You end up spending hours discussing with people you don’t know and who have no clue on why they should buy or not the vehicle you intend to sell. This can go on to a point where you now start to know these people quite well but still haven’t made a sale.

Victory comes to only those who persevere in this game, and that’s what I kept telling myself to stay motivated through the process. Soon the enquiries started turning into real buying actions, I was closing deals with a strange feeling that we were losing a lot of money in the process, but with a satisfaction that the new owners were indeed going to take good care of our rides. One golden rule I have lived by, is never tally what you spend or lose on your vehicles. Its stupid but it works and has given me a lot of peace in all these years!

The plan was for me to move earlier and my wife and daughter were supposed to arrive a few months later at the end of the school year. By the time I moved, most of the arsenal was either sold or pledged. So it gave me enough time to close all the transactions and get ready to open a chapter in France in parallel.

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