Duster Border Challenge – Rann of Kutch
Words: Dipayan Dutta
Photography: Vikrant Date
There is a room called anechoic chamber at Orfield laboratories in South Minneapolis that holds the Guinness record for being the quietest place on earth. It is 99.9 per cent sound absorbing and the longest anyone has ever lasted in there with their sanity intact is 45 minutes. Abstract isn’t it? The thought of silence being maddening. I thought so too; thought being the operative word. Find yourself in the desert in the dead of the night and things change. Wildly. Which brings me to the mildly related topic of our Border Challenge series. For the third edition we decided to give the mountains a bit of a rest, turning our attention to the salty desolate marshes of Gujarat.
The Rann of Kutch is the single largest salt desert in the world, covering a massive 7500 square kilometers spanning from Dasada in Gujarat through Kutch and in to Pakistan. And because it’s said to have a large reserve of fossil fuels, it has been a bone of contention between the two countries. Oil, I tell you. Being the adventurous sort we decided to make our way across the little Rann, circumnavigate the Greater Rann and end our drive at Dholavira which is as close as you can get to the border. Without being shot at, that is.
The Rann of Kutch is divided into two parts, the first is the little Rann which is slightly more habitable, and is the only place in the world where one may find the Asiatic wild ass among other (endangered) mammals. We arrived at Dasada in the late hours of the evening and spent the rest of our evening at Rann Riders (the oldest and still the best hotel in Dasada) charting out the route for our drive. Which is all fine and dandy on paper, but in a desolate desert devoid of the smallest of bearings, things would get pretty tricky. Getting lost in the middle of a salt desert, where the most one could find in the form of nutrition is some form of bonsai cacti, was the last thing we wanted. Naturally Sirish – being Sirish – knew a guy.
Enter Juned Mullick. Juned is for all intents and purposes the Rann Whisperer. He has spent 18 years of his life on the Little and Greater Rann of Kutch and knows both a little better than most know the back of their hands. He suggested that we head out in the wee hours of the morning and try to cover a majority of the Little Rann by nightfall, and then get off the Little Rann on to a highway that would ultimately lead us to Dholavira. The only problem was that thanks to this year’s sporadic rainfall there was a high chance that some parts of the little Rann were still wet. Now this might seem like Idiot Talk 101, but the thing is, in the Rann, the surface dries almost instantaneously and looks like any other part of the dried sea bed that it is. But under that crusty surface lurks a saline mud-trap that can sink a competition-level 4×4 in less than a minute. And I had strict instructions not to come back with salt-encrusted axles on our lovely Renault Duster AWD. Thank the lord for Juned.
The next morning, Juned took the passenger seat and after a quick turn off the highway, we were on the Rann headed towards Dholavira. Incidentally Rann means desert in Gujarati and in a few minutes the road (which was actually a dirt track) had entirely disappeared and all we could see for miles on end was the horizon; I had even lost bearing of where we had started from. Every now and then Juned would raise the binoculars to his eyes, look at heaven knows what on the horizon and point left or right solemnly. When I asked him what he was looking at, he pointed out to small bearings like a patch of shrubs or a particular tree! Who remembers what trees look like and what’s so particular about a patch of shrubs growing in the middle of nowhere? I was beginning to feel that this man was either stark raving mad or a geological/navigational genius and it was only when he started calling herds of animals 4-5 kilometers before we even reached them, that my nerves settled down.
And what a sight those herds make for! Just imagine this, we are in the desert, there’s nothing, literally nothing for miles on end. It is stark and desolate, absolutely dry, and then you see these beautiful animals galloping in the distance. We saw a herd of Nilgai – t he largest of the Asian antelopes, but its ox-like size led to its name that translates to blue bull. And then we saw herds of the beautiful wild ass, its golden coat shimmering in the harsh sunlight, a species that is only found in the hot and dry deserts of the Rann and (in stark contrast) the cold, dry and high-altitude desert of Ladakh. To protect the wild ass, the Rann is designated as a wild ass wildlife sanctuary and it is the largest sanctuary in the country – so vast that you need the Rann Whisperer to guide you lest you get completely lost.
The Auto-AWD system on our Duster had decided that on the loose surface we were on, torque would be best sent to all four wheels and had switched itself into all-wheel drive mode. I knew this because the small light on the display that used to say 2WD Mode now said otherwise. The Duster AWD really is an impressive little thing; it’s low so it doesn’t have that ‘steering-a-boat-feel’ that most SUV get when the numbers climb on the speedo, yet there is an almost unbelievable ground clearance. Then, of course, there is that gem of an engine, the 1.5-litre K9K diesel that makes a rather cheeky 108bhp and 248Nm of torque. Peg it and it just goes, no drama, no noise, just strong acceleration. And it is backed up by electronics that are clever enough to deal with the limited traction that is on offer, keeping the Duster’s body movements in check without any heart-inmouth moments. Even the ABS – and this is something that we rarely comment about because it is just supposed to work unobtrusively in the background – is perfectly judged, even for surfaces that have less traction. I have driven SUVs where you brake in the dirt and the brake pedal just judders as the ABS kicks in and releases braking force, increasing braking distances alarmingly. This does not happen in the Duster, allowing you to drive with a lot of confidence. And, on another note, the eco-mode that I initially thought was nothing more than a publicity stunt, works wonders for your gas mileage. With a full tank of diesel there was no worry of running dry while we went round and round in circles, for hours, spotting wildlife, seeing some rare birds, and stopping off at the bets (elevated plateaus that used to be islands when the Rann was still part of the ocean) to collect some petrified wood as mementos. The scorching lifeless conditions were no match for our Duster!
“Turn left here and head straight.” We had covered the entirety of the Little Rann, kicking up huge rooster trails of dust and having an absolute blast driving an SUV in its natural habitat. This was working out to be a pretty good trip!
Dholavira was next on our agenda, a pretty interesting place or at least it must have been about two or three thousand years ago. It’s located right next to what was an active volcano and even today molten lava lines the surface of the island. There are almost intact meteoritic rocks scattered all over the island and then there is a tree that’s so old that its origins have been traced to Eurasia. To put that into perspective Europe and Asia were one about 50 million years ago. Let that sink in.
Dholavria is also home to one of the largest excavation sights for the Harrapan civilisation ever found. Things have slowed down significantly though and today Dholavira is just a slow moving village with nothing much to offer in the form of entertainment. We decided to try and see if us city slickers could keep up with laid back village life. Fifteen minutes later, we gave up on any such notion and decided to head back into the Raan to see what it would like to be in the middle of the night. Something we were told categorically not to do.
And that’s about where we got the brilliant idea of switching off the car, turning off the lights and sampling absolute silence. For the first two minutes, the stars had us enthralled; the milky way glowed like I had never seen before. Then, things started to fall apart, the silence was overpowering us. We were starting to hear things we’d never heard before, like the sound of our heart beat and that annoying high-pitched drone in your ear. We lasted another two minutes before we jumped into the Duster and turned the music up to full. Ah. Glorious cacophony. How I missed thee.
The next morning after all the required documents were sorted, we made a break for the border. Well not break per se, but I’ve always wanted to say that. India is set apart from Pakistan by a portion of the Greater Rann that was submerged in water as far as the eyes could see. Migratory birds of all shapes and sizes were in attendance and it was a magnificent sight. Pelicans, storks, cranes and everything in between brought contrast to the expanse of water like you wouldn’t believe. Our journey had been without incident, the perfect getaway from the humdrum of the office. I had fallen in love with our Duster which had effortlessly brought us through some of the most treacherous terrain in the world. Mission accomplished. We spent the rest of the morning staring out on to the lake, watching the birds do their thing. Somewhere in the background Vikrant was saying something about flamingos and Russia. I forget in what context. I was only glad that birds are beautiful beings that you can stare at for hours on end. And they make quite a racket.
