The year is 1980. The place – the mighty Himalayas. A lone man waits on the craggy edge of a peak overlooking a strip of road that snakes its way between snow covered mountain tops. Then, breaking the silence of the mountains comes the shriek of a car that thunders past, leaving in its wake a slight shiver in the air. It’s not just the cold, the mountains have been injected with a surge of adrenaline. The man picks up his radio, and transmits a message to the next marshal post. For now, his work here is done.
It might sound like the beginning of a John Le Carre novel, but the goings-on in the Himalayas every October for the 10 years between 1980 and 1990 were anything but sinister. It was, in fact, a celebration of motorsport, motoring spirit and the love of adventure – it was the Himalayan Rally. And the very name evokes at once both a feeling of nostalgia in people fortunate enough to have been part of and witnessed the event, and regret in those who missed that era. This is part of that story....
‘It started when the chairman of the East African Safari Rally, a gentleman called Dr Bharat Bharadwaj came to visit India in 1976, and suggested we run an equivalent event here,’ says Nazir Hoosein, chairman of the Himalayan Rally Association. And while he might have been apprehensive at first about the potential of running an international event in India at the time, the wheels had been set in motion. Hoosein then began visiting and studying the Safari Rally from 1977 to 1980. In 1980, a team from India was sent to Kenya to be a part of the Safari Rally itself, and later that very year, the first ever Himalayan Rally was flagged off with an excellent grid and world class drivers.
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