You almost want to go to each machine and shoot them. You want to kind of admire details of each car.
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Its not often that one gets a lot of serendipity:
- Being able to spare two days
- Being invited to be part of an extreme 4X4 excursion
- Rooms available at a tried and trusted place
- The missus suddenly agreeing to be part of it
There has to be divine intervention, I say to myself.
So, when my good friend Robi messaged to ask if I wanted to ride with him at the annual Offroad event at Somwarpete and that he has booked rooms at Green Pastures, at Coorg and my wife says yes, it all comes together. I had two more good friends for company. Megazoid and Tilt.
Day 0 saw Tilt, Megazoid and Robi do a 4X4 event closer to Somwarpete. I wasnt able to participate that one. When I reached the resort, I already see 3 tired men wanting to hit the bed and get going the next morning for the main event at Somwarpete, a 6.30 am start off.
As always, the food at Green Pastures was fantastic, the conversations even better and we all hit the bed early and agreed to leave at 6.15 AM the following day.
The Pre-Kick off:
We got ready early, and we cranked up Robi’s lovely mean machine at 6.15 am, and we reach the kick-off point at 6.30 am. We finish the formalities of registration, tokens etc..collected the goodies that consisted of a half jacket, a black cap, a bag full of munchies (2 candies, 2 packets of biscuits, 1 moong dal packet, 1 chips packed, 1 frooti juice and 2 small peanut chikki).
The customary shot taken 1t 6.30 am above. You can notice the cap and the jacket that the organizers gave for all participants. Left most is Tilt, followed by myself, followed by Robi and the selfie being clicked by Megazoid.
Here’s our mean machine that we fully trust to get us back after this hard core offroad event.
And here is the Man and his machine, the Thar, Petrol AT, hard top.
I had parked my Jimny at the same place where the kick-off was scheduled to happen. We were all there early, and we slowly could see the machines and their owners arriving and lining up. We caught up with some known friends and we were also shooting some lovely beauties that were coming in and lining up.
The hard part of such events is to decide which one to spend more time and admire on. Each was looking better than the other. By and large, the machines were broadly into 4 types – The classic old jeeps, the Gypsies (who were already giving us notes of their exhaust while arriving itself), the old generation Thar’s and the new generation Thars. These 4 combined will be about 90% of the vehicles there. We did see one superbly done up Isuzu, a Fortuner and a cute looking yellow Jimny.
Prelude:
There is always a first time for something. Such an event at such an elaborate scale was something that I hadn’t seen prior. I might have enjoyed the odd videos that keep circulating or some friends who participate talk about it, but I had never had a first hand experience.
There is one more first that I was to go through, perhaps, not a very enjoyable one at that. I realised that I might end up sitting at the back seat of the Thar. Maybe, Megazoid was thinking the same, because, when we kept our bags and jackets and stuff into the car, we both being Jimny owners started talking about the lack of a door to enter the rear seat. . So, we had two Thar owners sitting front, and two Jimny owners occupying the rear seats.
The Pre-Kick off:
Around 7.30 am, the breakfast was ready. They had a nice buffet. We had a solid breakfast of Idly, Shavige Bhat, Vada, Kesari Bhat, Sambar, Chutney and a coffee to drown them in.
The conversations around breakfast turned to how the organisers are doing a fab job this year. The parking near the kick-off was just about right. The food was yum. The mechanism to register and collect goodies was perfect and quick. The cars were being made to park as and when they arrive, and therefore, if you are arriving early, you get off the blocks early too. Now, the scale of this event is a mind blowing 140 Cars. I would imagine about 300 People who are participants, about 50 odd people to ‘Help’ us at different spots, several Marshal cars, sweepers etc..Its no mean task to organise this at such scale and the organisers had done a really stupendous job at it.
The line up was super pretty. You almost want to go to each machine and shoot them. You want to kind of admire details of each car. You want to have conversations with the owners. But then, there are 100’s of cars and 100’s of owners and you are also waiting for the whistle to blow for the kick-off. which they did around 8.30 am.
We had almost a 12-15 km drive before we entered the trail. Mid-way, the entire line up was waiting for the lead marshal car to enter a temple and do a pooja to make sure we were all looked after.
All cars lined up adjacent to a temple (isnt visible in this picture)
We quickly entered into the trail. I think the organisers had divided these into blocks of 35-40 cars and therefore, we did not see too much of a crowd ahead or behind us when we entered the beginning of the trail.
Here’s our man thinking if we will need to switch to 4X4 at all, given the tarmac was like this for a considerable distance into the estates/forests.
Keyword: 4 men & a Mahindra Thar 4x4 go on a 2 day off-road expedition