Just over a year ago, I was laying in my bath as I always do catching up on world affairs with my regular Time magazine – toes already well wrinkled after already having dealt with my weekly fix of overseas motor mag reading. Sorry if that’s a bit too much info, but it’s all part of my story…

Anyway, Time has a few never-miss features and one of them is its Milestones – the section that tells you who has gone to jail, who died or who’s done something else significant, and one particular story caught my eye. This one wasn’t about a person but about an old mountain pass that’d opened up a week before after being closed for almost half a century.

What got me going was that the pass up through Sust Port topped an elevation of well over 5000 metres on the Himalayan frontier between Pakistan and China. ‘Hell, that’s somewhere I really want to go,’ I thought…

Strange how life works – I keep on repeating those words these days and the next day at lunch proved to be another of the reasons for my thinking that so often. It was my first meeting with my old pal in his new role of Chang An (that’s Chana, by the way) marketing man Christo Kruger and we were discussing how we were going to introduce those little bakkies – SA’s first Chinese cars – in the issue that’d eventually be branded ‘Howzit Chana’.

Then Christo spilled the beans on his ‘Chana Trax’ idea – to drive a Chana bakkie or two across China, through Pakistan and India, via the Middle East and down Africa to Jo’burg. How strange – firstly we’d just helped put together and run the MINI expedition up to Oxford and then such a trip could so easily be tailored to meet my very tub-induced want of the night before…

“Do you know about that pass they opened up last week between China and Pakistan?” was my lightning quick retort. “No, why?” I explained and then quickly made my participation in his epic conditional to my being on the newly included leg through Sust Port…

Anyway, that route is now part of the plan and I will drive a Chana Star double cab from Kashgar, China over Sust Port to Islamabad in Pakistan. But that’s but a small part of the expedition led by veteran adventurer and motoring journo ‘Who’s Geoff’ Dalglish and comprising a four-car convoy including a single cab Chana Star bakkie like we introduced you to a year ago, that Chana Star Double Cab I mention above and due for local launch in June, the forthcoming Chana Benni passenger car due later this year and a people carrying Chana prototype codenamed CM8.

So Chana Trax is a road journey departing Chana’s Changan Industries Head Office in Chongqing, China on 11 May and running all the way to Johannesburg. The four standard production Chanas will take in China, Pakistan, Dubai, Oman, Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana and finally, good old sunny South Africa.

Chana Trax won’t be a gimme in anyone’s book, either. Certain legs will need extensive daily distances to be covered in order reach the evening’s hotel accommodation and most of the roads are unfamiliar and strewn with unexpected obstacles. Then as the seasons change, roads may be damaged or debris littered and snow is a prospect on our leg across mountainous Northwestern China crossing into Pakistan, so while the journey has been planned for a year now, we’ll just have to deal with some things as they happen – it’s all part of the adventure…

“Our aim with Chana Trax is to underscore the quality, durability and reliability inherent in every Chana product while offering an awesome adventure taking in the remotest regions on the globe,” My pal Mr. Kruger confessed. “We are using standard production vehicles, not modified rally cars and yes, while we have taken some extra precautions like fitting sump protection plates, all the Trax Chanas are in fact identical to those you and yours would buy from any of our friendly Chana Dealers…”

Should we believe Christo? I think so. Any way, just in case we didn’t, Christo added: “I believe that Chana Trax will be remembered for many years, and those who have participated will have been part of a unique experience in 1.3-litre engine capacity, four-by-two vehicles.”

Now, to see if that all pans out, don’t miss the regular Chana Trax updates from 11 May on www.chanatrax.co.za and come back here next month to find out exactly how our high-altitude Chana exploits went over Sust Port. I can’t wait…