Part 1
A monsoon rally, almost. With just a few hundred kilometres scheduled for each day, we expected it to be a dawdle. However all that changed for the Indian monsoons had wreaked havoc on the country's roads. AUTO BILD INDIA's discoveries on Honda's Drive to Discover road trip...
We love driving at AUTO BILD INDIA, especially road trips. For not only do we get to drive a lot (our primary interest) we also get to see parts of the country that we have not seen before. Or, as in the case of the Drive to Discover tour, organised by Honda, we get the chance to revisit places.
So we took the short flight to Chandigarh, from where we would take over the car and drive till Jaipur before handing it over to another team. They would then drive the car which had started from srinagar, south towards the final destination, Trivandrum.
From Chandigarh we headed for Barwala, hoping to reach the Corbett National Park by evening. But the moment we turned off the national highway onto state highway 1, the tarmac started disappearing. Instead we crossed waterlogged sections, driving through pools of water in a car that is not only named City but is also meant for urban climes.
The City in question though came out unscathed, which is indeed a feat for to make it through we had to negotiate under a bridge, after Lawpura, where the potholes were large enough to have damaged the car. Back on the national highway to Sarsawa, we were delighted to see fresh tarmac. After the harrowing SH1, this was our first opportunity to explore the potential of the City's 118bhp i-VTEC engine. And this we did, so that the car was touching three-digit speeds until we reached Roorkee.
Our next stopover point was Hardwar, where, just a few kilometres ahead of the Har ki Pouri (the principal bathing ghat on the Ganga), we turned off the main highway to cross the river. I’ve passed this section before but never have I seen the Ganga to be the raging torrent that it was, swollen by the abundant monsoon showers this year.
We crossed the Hardwar range, with frequent road signs cautioning us that we were likely to encounter animals, and on to the Shyampur range. At this point our sat-nav displayed a distance of 35km to Ramnagar, where we would halt for the night.
Part 2
The City has a refined engine and a good gearbox, making for enjoyable driving, even for long hours.
Following its able guidance we turned off the main highway and took a narrow broken lane and soon enough reached the gates to Corbett. But the sentry there informed us that the road passes through the park’s core area and that we would not be allowed inside. So, we turned the car around and headed back the way we had come to take the highway from where our destination was a further 116km away.
The following day we started from Ramnagar and headed for the Dhangari gate, one of five of Corbett's main gates. But to get there we would have to pass a section that is best described as an off-road section. Naturally we were a little apprehensive but again the City’s 160mm ground clearance proved adequate for the job at hand.
The way to Bharatpur, our stopover for the night, saw us cutting across western Uttar Pradesh. While most of UP is blissfully ignorant of traffic rules, it is Bareilly that takes the cake away with its lawless traffic. Small wonder that it took unnaturally long to get past this town in the heart of UP’s wild west.
Past Bareilly we had to take another detour through Kachla where the narrow village road went through a bustling market, and was filled deep with mud. But the car’s Michelin tyres managed to grip and got us past. By the time we reached Bharatpur and called it a day it was late in the night.
On the third and our last day we explored Bharatpur’s bird sanctuary before heading off to Ranthambore. Rajasthan's roads were brilliant and we made good time but past Ranthambore we again found roads that had been mauled by the rains. Soon we were forced to take a detour. By the time we reached Jaipur we were exhausted but our wanderlust had been satiated.
