The Great India Offroad Challenge takes off

With the proliferation of SUVs in the Indian market these days, off-roading is becoming a rather desired activity for city folks looking to get their kicks battling rough terrain with their four-wheel drive machines. In fact, off-roading clubs have popped up all over the place, especially up north, where people who share the passion for some adventure with their SUVs can get together and spend a Sunday morning climbing steep, rocky inclines, driving through sand and slush, attempting water crossings and what have you not. So it was only a matter of time until such kind of shenanigans got competitive.

So at the end of last month, at the grounds of Leisure Valley, in Gurgaon, 4 GUNA 4 - The Great Indian Offroad Challenge kicked off with great pomp and circumstance. The event, organized by Northern Motorsport, the guys behind the Desert Storm, the Autocross and the Summer Sprint, saw a mix of participants which included everyone right from hardcore off-roaders with their tricked out, made-to-order, go-anywhere jeeps to city slickers and corporate yuppies with their off-the-showroom-floor soft roaders. This first of its kind timed trial off road event involved crossing obstacles on a specially designed off road course and a forest trail within a given time.

The Forest Trail, designed for the soft roaders and beginner off-road enthusiasts had two challenges which were designed to replicate real world obstacles which any off-roader would face. The water fording challenge involved fording a water-crossing in the form of a pond which was 1.4 meters deeps and 100 meters long with one’s SUV while the second challenge was driving through a rock quarry with huge boulder lined craters. The Obstacle Course on the other hand presented a more serious challenge which included difficult obstacles such as the ‘Camel Back’ which involved crossing steeply inclined double humps and the ‘Slush Pit’, which as the name suggests required drivers to drive through deep depressions filled with mud and slush. 

Each challenge had a maximum time allowed, while the faster cars were rewarded with lesser penalties. The participants had the option of choosing which obstacles/challenges they wished to attempt by taking a fixed time penalty on the ones they wished to pass. The mud hole obstacle in the Forest Trail proved a little too challenging from a few of the SUV Trail Blazer group, but the Xtreme Jeepers had not trouble whatsoever completing the entire Forest Trail. But even the most hardened Jeepers struggled to cross the two aforementioned obstacles in the Obstacle Course, the Camel Back and the Slush Pit. In the end it was Bobbie Bhogal who went through these to claim the champion's title in the Xtreme class and Sunny Sidhu who sailed through the much easier course for the trail blazers and took home the SUV Champions trophy.