The Earth shook as the 100-odd car convoy of the seventh Raid de Himalaya entered the stunning Kashmir valley for a ceremonial finish at Srinagar. It actually did! And when we ran out of our trembling Suzuki
Swift to the safety of an open space, we didn’t realise the trauma the deadly quake was etching on the face of thousands not so far away.
People woke up that Saturday morning only to fall victim to roofs that collapsed on them. I guess it is only right to pay our respects to those who lost their lives and a generation that will grow up without their dear ones next to them before we start this comparatively silly story.
One rider – this story is about the reliability trial part of the Raid, which is essentially a much tougher and more dangerous version of your average Lion’s Club treasure hunt – yet it won’t do justice to the ‘X-treme’ side of the event where the real daredevils in cars and on motorcycles brave sickening altitudes in an all-out rally. However, you might have already read about the extreme event in the previous pages.
The beginningI have a love-hate relationship with this part of the Raid. This involves rescheduling all your activities for eleven days, sorting out paper work, travelling to Delhi to pick up your car, driving to Shimla for the scrutiny, applying the decals, going through the briefing and finally, lining-up for the start. Since the only thing fixed in my calendar 12 months in advance is the Raid-de-Himalaya, the first part comes easily. This was my third event in a row and that meant I was very good with paper work. I had Param booked – he navigated me last year – to join me this year as well and he landed up just in time.
With two weeks to go we were informed by Maruti Suzuki, who generously part-sponsor auto magazine teams by providing the cars, that we would be blooding the Indian-made Swift into the harsh world of rallying. Sure, the Swift has a wild cousin in the Junior World Rally Championship, but the Indian version is a lovingly built, good looking machine that is best at commuting and the occasional family holiday. And it looked a bit too low for rally duty. But it is a new car and we were excited at the prospect of driving it into the mountains. Organisers had banned the use of GPS this year, but a rally computer was allowed. We shipped one into Motorcraft, a Maruti service station run efficiently by Jayesh Desai (JD to most of us) who would prepare the Swift for the event. Alas, the rally comp didn’t work since the Swift had an electric pick up and we couldn’t find a reliable probe for the same. Confused? So were we.
The Reliability Trial is meant for stock cars and the only mods allowed included installing a sump and fuel tank guard and an additional spare tyre. Suspension lifts were allowed, but we decided against tampering with the stock suspension system. Late on 28th September afternoon, our bright red Swift rolled out of Motorcraft and we pointed its rounded nose towards Shimla. We were off. Shimla was at its pleasant best – a nice nip in the air and the silence occasionally broken by a precision-tuned roar that can only emanate from a rally car or two in anger. Scrutiny was easy for us, but I did manage to embarrass myself as I knocked down a fire extinguisher on my way in. We cross-checked our odometer against the ‘rally km’ which the organisers had laid out since TSD (time, speed, distance) navigation now depended on our odo more than anything else. Emergency rations were procured (read lots of orange juice and chocolate that we would start consuming from day one), snow chains were tried on (mandatory this year after last year’s fiasco where two-wheel drivers had to be abandoned following heavy snowfall) and we were ready to rally.
Race on
Reliability trial cars, the slowest of the bunch, were flagged off after extreme cars and motorcycles. Our Swift must have made a pretty picture as we rolled out of Peterhoff Hotel, Shimla. The first destination was Manali, not via the touristy national highway, but through 311 arduous km that saw the cars passing through Jalori La, a mountain pass at 10,000 ft. We were, as usual, getting to grips with the event and TSD calculations yet managing to have a decent run.
Behind us there was total chaos as a bunch of cars took an alternative route which was supposed to be taken only on explicit instructions from the organisers. Those who took that route drove like maniacs trying to maintain insane speeds and wondering why they didn’t get any time controls on the way. There were crashes too – one Bolero retired and one Army Gypsy suffered severe front end damage.
The organisers, thankfully, were in a good mood and that meant those who took the wrong route (and missed five controls in the process) were allowed to compete the next day. Day one saw Team Motoring running third behind the Esteem of Ashok and Moosa and the other Swift manned by Sirish and Bertie (Team Overdrive). Not bad, we thought – Moosa was on his 100th rally as a navigator and Sirish had won the first ever reliability trial two years back.
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