Rallying in the Hills

Words by Aniruddha Rangnekar

Photography by Krishanu Chatterjee

It’s 22 hours since I left home, six spent covering 170km in a loud, bumpy and rather uncomfortable rally car and eating enough dust kicked up from the car in front to not require any dinner. Rally in the exotic North East, said Sirish, before conveniently loaning his Rally Polo to Gaurav Gill and heading to Delhi for the Auto Expo. And so the three of us, Byram, Roshan from our service crew Chettinad Sporting and I find ourselves driving our Slideways Industries rally cars up from Tezpur on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border to Dirang for the Arunachal Festival of Speed (AFOS). The roads are so steep that our massive 8-car carrier that brought the cars up from Coimbatore couldn’t go any further and so instead of bouncing around in the back of a Scorpio we were bouncing around in the front of a rally car. And believe me the latter is far worse.

Forget cursing, if I had a voodoo doll Sirish would be experiencing pinpricks in the most uncomfortable places.

Of course I have only myself to blame, and it’s not like we don’t know the North East either. I’ve been rallying in the INRC for four years but owing to the championship being based mostly in the South I’ve never rallied in the mountains. So when the AFOS came up I jumped at the opportunity. Neither was this my first visit to the North East; four years ago Byram and I drove a Swift from Udaipur (in Rajasthan) to Udaipur (in Tripura) for a big magazine story and, after causing a mini riot in Tripura and dumping our cars and flying back, we should have known better. But the lure of rallying, and the promise of visiting a properly exotic part of the country (“It’s like Switzerland,” Sirish said) put a rose tint on our past experience.

Did I mention it was minus 4 degrees when we reached our hotel?

Two in the morning and we arrive at Dirang to a bear hug from Lakhpa Tsering, our good friend who has put this whole shindig together. Tells you something about North East hospitality – he was waiting at our hotel for us to arrive despite having a laundry list of things to do the next day as chief organiser. It might not be among the most accessible places in India but the people are among the friendliest and most hospitable, and I’m not just talking about the rallying crowd.

Rallying is always an adventure. Every event is in a different part of the country, you meet different people, you face different challenges but one thing remains the same – it is always immense fun. After spending a night under two layers of blankets and wearing everything I’d packed, I was beginning to have my doubts about the latter when I opened my eyes and was greeted by a view straight out of those Yash Chopra movies. With the snow-capped Eastern Himalayas on the (not so distant) horizon and the beautiful Kameng river gurgling through with water so clear you could see the rocks at the bottom, suddenly our journey (3,000 kilometres from home) began to make sense.

Google Dirang and you will find lines like ‘Reaching Dirang is not a problem as it is well connected with the rest of the main places in Arunachal Pradesh’. I’m here to tell you that isn’t strictly correct. But, and trust me on this, the natural beauty of the place, the serenity, the hospitality, it all makes the journey worthwhile. Alcohol is pretty cheap, which explains why the locals don’t drink too much water but I freaked out over the awesome local cuisine, I can also tell you the ladies are terrifically pretty. Tourists usually use this as a night break en route to Tawang but the town itself is a good destination with the monasteries, sheep farms, trekking and hiking trails and, for us, a hill climb and autocross.

Byram, as he always does before the rally, spent the rest of the day fine tuning the settings of the Reiger suspension on our Polos (this terrain was far bumpier than the regular INRC stages) and since we were at a high altitude, the Race Dynamics ECUs also needed re-programming to compensate. More importantly, we had APRC champion Gaurav Gill driving for us and the car obviously had to be worthy of his wheelsmanship.

The guy is also committed. The previous evening he was in Delhi to pick up yet another motorsport award and then travelled at unearthly hours to make sure he honoured his commitment to take part in the event (while the rumour in Dirang was that Gill had heard about how long we had taken to get here and decided it wasn’t worth the time of an APRC champion).

Anyway, we finished Gill’s documentation but what really surprised us was the number of entries. To give you some perspective, the best rallies on the national championship calendar attract around 45 entries – here there were 60! There were guys from all over the country – our three Polos, some autocross special Esteems from the South, the Delhi boys with their Vitaras and Gypsys, but the surprise package were the local entries. Guys from Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam and of course Arunachal, overflowing with enthusiasm, and in a range of cars like Zens, Swifts, City VTECs, Balenos, Cedias and even a Honda Civic.

The next day was recce of the hill climb and we woke up to find ice on the windscreens and Gaurav Gill demanding a tighter T-shirt. Now I’ve driven with a fair share of world class rally drivers over the years but riding shotgun with the best rally driver in India was something else. The precision with which he attacked blind corners (roads neither he nor me have seen before, with a huge drop if you get it an inch wrong) and carried speed and momentum through bends was almost unreal. Just sitting with him probably made me two seconds a kilometre quicker.

The format for the AFOS comprised three events – a six-kilometre hill climb, a four kilometre rally sprint and an autocross in Dirang stadium with the winner decided on cumulative points. The first event was the autocross which had a massive turnout of spectators, probably half the town was there hanging off every vantage point to see Gaurav Gill clock the fastest time. You would expect nothing less from the champ but unlike the INRC, here the competing cars included a 160bhp Esteem specially prepared for autocross events (our Polos make around 130bhp).

Next came the hill climb where the four-wheel drive Gypsys and Vitaras (the latter driven by multiple Raid de Himalaya champion Suresh Rana) would have an advantage, particularly since the stage was rather bumpy too. Yet, it was Gill in the Slideways Industries Polo who set a scorcher, a full 16 seconds quicker than Rana. The next fastest car was that mental Esteem, 35 seconds off Gill’s time. Gill was so quick he made me look like a monkey, being 50 seconds slower in an identically prepared car.

The stage running along the Kameng river was the venue for the final event, the rally sprint. The mental math started off to determine positions but everybody was counting from P2. Victory was a foregone conclusion as Gill set the fastest time yet again – not only did he reinforce the fact that he is head and shoulders above every rally driver in the country but also that in the right hands, the Polos prepared by Slideways Industries are untouchable.

Second overall was a tie between Rana in the Vitara and Philippos Mathai in the screaming Esteem. Dhruva from Bangalore took top honours in the 2000cc class. Byram and I took first and second in the 1600cc class (Team Slideways Industries walked away with seven trophies in total). And Gaurav Chirpal won the SUV class. The local hero was Kekhrignguzo winning the class comfortably but I must add here that these guys drive like mad, as if their brakes are disconnected and accelerators welded to the floor. In better cars and with some training, we could possibly be looking at top-flight rally drivers; they don’t lack courage, for sure.

That evening, there was more alcohol than water at Lakhpa’s house, which brings me back to what I said at the start – nothing beats the hospitality nor the spectacular beauty of the North East. And the return journey took only 19 hours!