NANO road trip: Amritsar to Trafalgar Square

There have been road trips aplenty, but there are some which are special indeed. The Ideals Nano Challenge was just that with a bunch of blokes travelling from Amritsar to Trafalgar Square, London

The little Nano has been creating waves the world over ever since its inception. This time, Richard Lawson Cruttendon, a UK based chartered shipbroker and his son Jack Lawson along with D.K Gandhi, who works as a postmaster in the Indian Postal Department, took the little wonder all the way across from Amritsar to Trafalgar Square in London as a part of the IDEALS Nano Challenge 2010 all in the name of charity.

The eventful journey embarked from Amritsar after a quick visit to the Golden temple. The cars checked, sponsor stickers on and the cars were ready. The departure was on time and the Nano's hummed along nicely and despite the small wheels handled the road conditions with ease. Delhi was finally reached. Heading towards Jaipur, Jack was finally in the driver's seat and found the Nano just like any other car to drive. No struggle at all with acceleration on par with his Diesel Peugeot 406 and cruising comfortably at 85 km/h. With open roads all throughout, Jaipur was reached in good time.

Driving to Ahemdabad, the team encountered the worst roads yet with mountain stretches, overtaking on blind corners and the usual run of the mill stuff. Amongst all the chaos, they also managed to lose a wing mirror. Next big destination was Mumbai where the Nano's would finally receive their service. 

Heading out from the Turkey into Greece, the roads were fantastic. A good night's rest later, it was off to Paynesfield in Sussex. The road was fantastic, taking them up high where the mountain peaks covered in snow could be easily seen. Also the roads were so new, that there were no petrol pumps open. Post the fill up, the roads were covered nice and fast and Switzerland had already arrived. On through the French Customs, there were a lot of questions about the cars registration but there were no problems whatsoever. Finally the cars were on British soil. It had been 7 days 6 hours and 34 minutes in actual time since Bandar Abbas. 6870 km from Bandar Abbas and if one adds the Indian leg of 2128 km it adds upto all of 8998 km.

The IDEALS challenge had finally come to an end and it definitely proved to be the ideal way to prove the little cars mettle and raise money for charity while at it as well.