Autumn 2017: If road trips had beauty contests, this one would win by a mile

Getting from point A to point B is normally unworthy of so many words, but if A is in Switzerland, B is in Italy, and instead of a straight line it’s a gorgeous, winding autumn drive through the Alps, then burble on about it I shall.

The scenery along the way was showstopping: deep forest hues of moss and pine, beginning to lighten into the flame-colored foliage of fall. Bareheaded peaks, some adorned with a faint mantle of snow, glistened alabaster and gray against a warm blue sky.

As a Third World citizen, though, I was even more impressed by the quality of the roads.

We were on the French motorway A40, the Autoroute Blanche (White Highway, isn’t that pretty?) that forms part of the E25, the great European route that runs north-south; engineering marvels that eased through the spectacular Alps with nary a puddle or pothole in sight.

Why can’t we have nice things like these back home?

And as a girl of the islands, it fascinated me no end that we could enter the famed tunnel in Chamonix, France, where it was known as the Tunnel du Mont Blanc and a sign outside announced it would ferme le 9/10 de 22h a 6h00 pour travaux, and emerge at the other end in Courmayeur, Italy, where it was called the Traforo del Monte Bianco, and the signs now said things like dal 15 Ottobre al 15 Aprile obbligo di catene a bordo per gli automezzi privi di pneumatici da neve. Pretty exciting wintery stuff, that.

Back home, a three-hour drive would simply mean getting to one of the quiet coastal towns that weary urbanites like to run away to on long weekends – or more realistically, three hours were just how long one could expect to spend fuming in metropolitan traffic snarls most days.

Here, a three-hour drive had already taken us over 250 kilometers through three beautiful countries and one of the most picturesque mountain ranges in the world.

It had also taken us through the former Duchy of Savoy, a territory that had stretched from Piedmont in the north to the shores of Lake Geneva.

Once the noble seat of the kings of Italy, its capital had retained its regal composure over the centuries, and it was to be my final stop on this trip: Turin.