Words: Dipayan Dutta
Photography: Vikrant Date
All we have to do now, is drive from Manali to Daman and i’m thinking it’s going to be a piece of cake. When this journey started in Leh, we had ahead of us five of the highest mountain passes on earth, unpredictable weather, landslides, black ice, nut-freezes and everything in between. The Hyundai Creta has cleared all that without a hiccup and now it’s a good road all the way to the west coast. I hate it when I start thinking things are going to be easy. With me, nothing ever is. As we left Manali, the weather is fine, but there are big grey clouds floating over my head. Nonetheless, there was a lot to look forward to on the road that lay ahead. For starters, the Himalayan expressway. It is one of the best driving roads I have been on in the subcontinent. That, followed by our jaunt to Daman over some truly world class four-lane highways. But, before we could get to the expressway there is a matter of a 200km run down the hills from Manali.
We had a fair distance to make on our way down from Manali and the leisurely breakfast that our lensman had planned for the morning had turned to breakfast in the car, out of a brown paper bag. Life, I tell you. We needed to up the pace and even with the sodden condition of the roads, the Creta was just as eager as it was up in the mountains. Courtesy our early head start, we even managed to beat the traffic returning to Delhi. As our lensman snored away in the passenger seat, I began to think about our Creta. The more I thought about it, somehow, the better it got. Think about it, here is a front-wheel drive automatic SUV – a soft roader for all intents and purposes – that had effortlessly driven its way through what can only be one of the toughest roads on earth. Add a snow storm, black ice and roads made of sharp rocks and I’m surprised the Creta didn’t so much as flinch. Best of all, neither me nor our shutterbug had any aches and pains. I was beginning to go much softer on our little SUV.
Before we knew it, the twisty ghats and terrible roads were a thing of the past and sighs of relief were let out as we turned onto the Himalayan expressway. The brilliant highway meant I could put my foot down and use all of the Creta’s 126 horses and. It turns out, the Creta enjoys fast-paced mile munching as much as it takes to the rocky mountainside.
After having spent the last three days on surfaces that could barely be called roads, the Himalayan Expressway was a breath of fresh air. Even though it’s just a four lane expressway, it’s straight as a dagger and traffic is conspicuous by its absence. What is even stranger is that despite this expressway already reducing travel time from Chandigarh to Shimla to just three hours, the government has proposed to build another expressway on the same route which will start from Banasar village near Parwanoo and terminate at the Mashobra-Kufri junction near Dhalli in Shimla. It will have four rail-overhead bridges to bypass rail tracks and five tunnels. It will even have a 1.4km long tunnel, which will be the longest on the route. Obviously people in Chandigarh really like Shimla! For now we were more than happy with what we had. Next stop Daman. Pedal to the metal, then. Well, except for the stop at Chandigarh for some delicious butter-soaked paranthas.
If you’re in the neighbourhood and clogged arteries are not an issue, there’s this place called Khalsa dhaba that makes the best aloo paranthas I have ever tasted. Judging by the amount of butter on them, one estimates about a year in loss of life expectancy and maybe a slight dent in the Creta’s power-to-weight ratio but it’s worth every morsel.
Chandigarh, Delhi and Haryana pass under the Creta’s tyres uneventfully and we finally get to the brilliant highways of Rajasthan. Driving through these highways is a spectacle – hillocks merge into sandy plains and shrubbery and every now and then a tribe of nomads and their camels would appear by the side of the road. It is amazing to see that even in this day and age where you can do everything from buying groceries to holding a business meeting out of your cellphone, so much of our history and culture has managed to survive. With black top surfaced like glazed marble and encouraging big speeds, my biggest worry was the expansion joints on bridges over rivulets. I’d been warned to watch out for uneven expansion joints that could take out a tyre and I’m not sure if I missed something, but the Creta’s suspension took everything in its stride.
Travelling through an entire state like that, especially if you are used to Indian roads, messes with your brain. I found myself slowing down expecting that one nasty bump to be lurking somewhere, exactly when I stopped looking. Nothing. Not one. Somehow that made it worse.
Gujarat is a stark contrast. As you drive through you begin to notice that even the most obscure of villages are no longer what you’d pictured them to be – brightly painted in slightly disturbing colours and gone are the mud houses with thatched roofs. Everything is concrete; the development is truly astounding. But then the piéce de resistance is National Expressway 1. It is near 100km of six-laned fenced expressway sans cattle, wayward people and most importantly annoying two wheeled traffic. Word on the vine has it that that this same expressway will be extended all the way to Mumbai. Too bad it wasn’t done in time for us to get through. Nonetheless, the expressway had cut our total journey time by almost two and a half hours which, generally, is a good thing. Especially if you’ve already got a thousand kilometres plus in seat time.
Two and half extra hours meant that we could turn off the highway just outside Surat for a short gallavant on some slightly less straight roads. Our main man, Google, suggested that we check out Navsari. Thank god we took his advice because Navsari’s coconut tree-lined twisty narrow village roads were a welcome break from the tarmac monotony. We even stopped off to partake in some tom foolery with some children, who were taking turns at making the most extravagant dive in to a small rivulet.
Oh the simple joys of being a child. The road ended at a small temple, which had a board that read something – languages and religion are far from my thing – so while our pious photo-taker went in, I plopped down under a coconut tree and took a well deserved laze in the shade. It was hard to believe that our journey was coming to an end. From tenting at twelve below in Sarchu, shovelling snow at Baralacha-La to the arid deserts of Rajasthan and whole lot of food, it had been an array of awesome memories.
It was beginning to get late as we entered Daman. As we turned off the highway, we realised we were in for a disappointment. Up ahead idols as tall as buildings had been lined up. We’d miscalculated and landed up in Daman on Ganesh Visarjan. We were beginning to wish we hadn’t used those two and a half hours. Murphy’s law – gets you every time. Nonetheless, we endured while traffic moved half an inch at a time. Eventually we did make it to the port. And what a time to make it. We sat on the port while the sun set on the horizon. And then we turned our attention to the Creta. When the road was rough it didn’t make much of a fuss, when the road was smooth it drove like it was made for it. No wobble, none of that annoying SUV body-roll, which is strange because the Creta is by no measure short or small on space. Maybe it’s that fluidic design that Hyundai keep on about.
What a drive it had been. Perfect in every way. We had driven almost entirely across the length of the country and not faced one single bit of car trouble, even when the terrain got slightly worse for wear. We’d seen panoramas of mountains and deserts and even a desert in the mountains! It was one of those trips you are likely to remember for a long time and the Creta, on its stock tyres and supension, had proven itself a more than worthy companion. And now TN 21 BZ 0769 starts an even sterner test – one year on the evo India long-term test fleet. Stay tuned for more.