Great India Drive: Hyundai Creta in Ladakh

Words: Dipayan Dutta

Photography: Sachin Kawankar

One a.m. Sarchu valley, Jammu and Kashmir. There are a billion stars in the sky; the moon bathes the snowcapped mountains in her silver rays, a bone-chilling breeze passes through Sarchu Valley, and it’s so quiet you can hear your heart beat. This is the kind of place that makes you feel like you’re a part of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. We should’ve been ecstatic; the sheer spectacle that is the Himalayan ranges bathed in moonlight is something that etches itself in to your brain for life. Yet for some reason this was getting me really miffed. For one, had the weather been eager to cooperate, we wouldn’t have been stuck in Sarchu with the mercury touching fifteen below. I could have been in Manali with a glass of warm apple cider and a wood-fired pizza at Johnson’s Cafe. Yet, here I was in the middle of nowhere, with a bucket to pee in, and some warm water bags to spoon with. Silver rays on white peaks. Humbug.

At this point you’re probably thinking, what the hell am I ranting about. So let’s turn the clock back by about 24 hours. Our adventure begins in Leh, which is where we kick-started our Great India Drive from Leh to Pune, via Daman, in the newest addition to Hyundai India’s line up, the Creta. Half asleep and thoroughly discombobulated from spending the night on a chair at the Delhi airport, my eyes struggled to focus. We were descending on Leh. Now for those of you who have never taken a flight to Leh before, the landing can be quite distressing.

From the moment the descent begins, all you can see is the plane rushing straight for a range of  mountains and you get the distinct impression the pilot’s GPS has made a terrible boo-boo. This continues until, at the very last second you spot a glimpse of tarmac and there’s touchdown followed by g-forces as the plane struggles to pull to a halt on the miniscule black top. Exhale and unclench your sphincter. Welcome to Leh. As it would turn out, we weren’t the only thing that landed in Leh that morning. As we reached the hotel, dark clouds loitered ominously across the sky. It had been raining all night in the passes, some of which were closed and information was scarce. We spent our off-day gathering intel on the passes and stocking up on supplies; the mountain in all its glory can be a fickle mistress. Especially in this weather, the last thing you want is to be stuck in a snow storm, at sub-zero temperatures without proper rations. The next morning word came in that the passes had been cleared. Which meant we could begin our run to Manali.

With the weather the way it was, we figured we best seek some divine intervention and ask the rain  gods to be nice to us. We decided to start our cross-country expedition from the Karma Dupgyud Choeling monastery at Leh. After a few turns of the prayer wheel and some earnest prayers to the gods, we set off deep in to the Himalayan range. First stop, Thicksey. Why? Well because all that praying and holiness had made me hungry and Cafe Cloud in Thicksey serves the most delicious English breakfast and milkshakes in this part of the country. Also because the Lonely Planet guide book says that when in the Himalayas, stock up on carbs. It’s not all fun and games, you know?

The road had been surprisingly good from Leh; one really needs to hand it to the men at the BRO who work tirelessly through the year to keep these roads up to spec. Time was being made much faster than we had estimated and it looked like we might even make it in to Manali, in time for happy hours … erm … I mean, tea-time.

As we ascended Tanglang La, signs that our journey may not be as simple as we’d previously thought began to show. The previous night’s rains had meant snowfall all along the mountainside. Now snow per se isn’t much of an issue, the real issue is when it packs itself in to the cracks on the tarmac forming a layer of sleet known as black ice, one of the most dangerous facets of mountain motoring. The biggest problem with black ice is that it looks perfectly like tarmac until your wheels are on them and you lose all traction, skidding locked up and powerless towards the edge. For once in my miserable existence I decided to exercise caution.

The More plains lay ahead of us; the only thing between us and our planned afternoon lunch spot at Sarchu. (or so we thought). Driving through the More (pronounced Mo-ray) plains, you begin to appreciate the extent of the anomalies locked inside the heart of the Himalayas; the plains are a desert! Golden brown sand flanks the narrow road straight road. Every now and then, we’d see a lone campsite, embers from last nights fires still glowing. They say the night sky in the plains makes life worth living. Too bad we didn’t have time, or tenting equipment, or for that matter any idea of how to survive in the wilderness.

The black ice had slowed our progress considerably; it was 3pm by the time we reached Sarchu. Surprisingly, the Creta despite being a front-wheel drive automatic, had traction in abundance and stayed plastered to the road and kept trudging along while some of the other more rugged 4x4s started slipping and sliding. Maybe I should’ve bought snow chains. Too late for that now. I would die in the wild in 24 hours.

The Creta showed no signs of relent, all you had to do is think a little ahead of the effortless automatic gearbox and the Creta would quite easily do the rest. No histrionics, no slipping, no sliding, just efficient usage of torque. Admittedly, I was a little apprehensive at first about the automatic in the hills, but after having crossed some of the worst roads the Himalayan range had offer without so as much as a fumble, every sense of doubt had been dispelled. I had fallen a little in love with the St.Benard of a Hyundai.

Bad news. Bara-lacha La was closed. There had been no vehicles from Rohtang in 12 hours. Between heavy snowfall and landslides, the road was entirely un-motorable and would remain so until further notice. Slurping down hot Maggi and a cup of chai, I began to contemplate what they meant by “further notice”. No one around was willing to offer an estimation, “they could be closed for days”, said one of the people manning the drawbridge.

Me: “Is there a hotel nearby ?”

Drawbridge: “No but there are some tents, a few kilometres down the road”

Me: “Whooppie!”

And that’s how we landed up in a tent at Sarchu. And that also probably explains my rant. The next morning things got even more interesting, considering that Bara-lacha La is the primary lifeline of Himalayan Kashmir. The fact that it had been closed for the last 48 hours meant that there would be a tremendous amount of traffic on the narrow mountain roads. The pass was opened at six the next morning and we decided to get a head start on the traffic and hit the road as soon as possible.

Task one. Defrost car. Oh. Joy.

After scraping the frost off the glass with our credit cards, we realised that if the diesel had frozen in the tank we were properly screwed. Again the Creta showed us up. One quick thumb on the starter and she fired away, purring happily. We started on towards Bara-lacha La and from there on, to Manali.

Even our early jump start hadn’t helped much; the roads were full of overladen trucks, clumsily making their way down. The passes were choked with traffic, and even more so with trucks whose diesel tanks had frozen over in the night. We found ourselves shovelling snow off the road to make enough space for both lanes to move. At this altitude even walking is a task, and there we were, shoveling away to make place for ourselves to move ahead. Physical labour is not so much my thing, I make every attempt to  avoid such tedious wastage of my precious energy. Nonetheless, with my brain set on that delicious wood-fired pizza, we shovelled on. After 4 hours of hard labour (which involved about 3 hours and 55 minutes worth of breaks) we were free to continue our journey.

We were late, really late; Rohtang pass at night can be a dangerous affair, plus we had a happy hour, erm, tea appointment at Manali. Caution to the wind, then. Right foot, meet floor. Our Creta seemed eager-er than her occupants. What took me by surprise is the Creta’s agility, even on the narrow mountain passes with all its bulk, it attacked the corners and stayed planted throughout.

Our drive to Manali was rather eventful. We even caught sight of the rare Himalayan wolf on the way. We also almost got killed by the good people at BRO, when they were blasting away a landslide just ahead of Rohtang. Everything else seemed to be under control. We reached Manali and made a beeline for those pizzas and hot chocolate at Johnson’s cafe.

Amazingly we had made it through the Himalayas, without snow chains and snow specific tyres; we hadn’t even got a flat. The Creta had been thoroughly impressive. Even the automatic gear box didn’t need more than a little bit of a nudge to get with the program and climb the steepest of inclines. We suspected it had something to do with the gorgeous 1.6-litre power plant. For me, the icing on the cake as I got out of the car at Manali, was the fact that even after some 300km of roads that could barely be called so, there were no aches or pains. The Creta had been wonderfully comfortable and had kept as us fresh as daisies. We sipped slowly on our hot chocolates, the daunting part of our journey behind us. Tomorrow we set off for Delhi – stay tuned for that leg next month.