I am writing a précis of our trip to India, as much for myself as for anyone else who is interested in reading it. It was such a huge experience both culturally and car wise, that I don’t want to forget it!
We were away for 9 days altogether, including a day travelling each way. Our first taste of India was Chennai (previously Madras) airport, at past midnight. We slept out on the benches there till our connecting flight to Bangalore. After the deluxe KL airport, it was somewhat basic! Mostly bare concrete floors, but the seats were OK, and they even had toilet facilities for the physically challenged! The airport was much quieter than I expected. I suppose it was the middle of the night, but no touts or beggars were allowed in. To fly on to Bangalore, we had to go through multiple security checks! They were very fond of making you queue for ages just to stamp your boarding pass, for no particular reason. The X-ray machines were in the middle of the floor for hold baggage, so we had to put the cases through these before we checked in. It all seemed a bit hit and miss, and not very clear. We had body checks, and had to open our hand baggage.. All in all a lengthy experience. The most notable thing was the number of people it took to do one job. And there were countless people standing around and looking official, but not actually doing anything, it became clear that this was very normal for India! I have now seen my first khaki, security guard uniform Sari!!
We arrived in Bangalore at around 7am and were greeted by Anita, from the rally organisers, and 2 other beautiful Indian ladies in Saris, who welcomed us and adorned us with garlands of fresh Jasmine, and annointed us with red spots on our foreheads. We were then taken to the Grand Ashok Hotel with Anita and her driver in a 4wd Sumo. Outside the airport it was noisier and warm and humid. We got straight into the Indian driving techniques.. ie forget the road rules, and go for the weaving strategy and lots of honking!
It transpires that you have to use your horn continually because no-one looks in their mirrors. (In fact many cars have their mirrors folded back to avoid damage). They expect you to use your horn just to let them know that you are there, and that you are overtaking /undertaking. As our horn only worked intermittently, the liaison driving became extra hazardous! The roads are not just full of cars. There are vast numbers of bicycles, mopeds, autorickshaws, people, cows, ox carts, stray dogs, handcarts.! Even quite far into the centre of town. The roads are wide, with 2 lanes marked, but it is quite normal to have 4 or 5 vehicles abreast, all weaving in and out of one another, especially at the traffic lights. And of course all honking their horns madly.
The other noticeable thing was the litter.. large amounts of it,
particularly on the sides of the road. And browsing around in it would be cows and dogs, picking out the edible bits. Further into town there were numerous bent little ladies sweeping the roads with twig brooms. They would gather the rubbish into baskets and make piles on the side of the road, which they would then burn. The non-flammable rubbish just re-circulated And there were people everywhere milling around, walking down the pavements and roads. Some would be selling their wares, but mostly they were walking. Not carrying much, if anything at all. Walking on the pavements was fairly hazardous.. the roadside was not so bad, but the outside was the public latrine.
The hotel was nice enough by Australian standards, amazing luxury by Indian standards. 41/2 stars officially. The plumbing worked fine for us, though others lacked hot water. There was a café, 2 restaurants, a bar, and lounge, a swimming pool and gym facilities. It was in the middle of being renovated, so ½ of it was covered and there was a stream of men and women carrying sacks of building rubble on their heads, out of the side entrance and down to somewhere around the back. The men were apparently paid 50 rupee ($2) a day, and the ladies 30 rupee, and they seemed to get a meal included. Among them was one who was noticeably heavily pregnant. Poor woman. The saris would have hidden most pregnancies. Inside the hotel, was the usual multitude of staff. There would be one waiter for welcoming you, another for taking your order, another for delivering the food, another for delivering the drinks, and another standing around bossing his juniors around! Even so, they would get things wrong. They couldn’t possibly tell you they didn’t understand.. there was always a sideways wiggle of the head, and a smile.
The Indian people are just lovely. They are welcoming, always smiling and very gentle. There are no bumper stickers saying "shit happens" like over here. They say "God is good" or such like.
So, onto the rally. We had time to unpack our things, have a shower, have something to eat, and then go straight out on the road for recce. Our service crew Steve Brent and Nigel, and the other service crews had been there already for a few days, and as the cars had been delayed in customs, they had just been partying and having a great holiday. Steve had all our paperwork though, and the keys to our hire car which was to be used for recce. In fact we were the last ones to arrive. Everyone else was well settled in. All the international teams were staying at the Grand Ashok Hotel, and some of the Indian teams. There were 5 Australian cars in all (4 from WA and one from SA), one Kiwi car, one Indian car, and 2 Chinese cars in the international contingent, and the rest of the 27 cars were local Indian. They were all a great bunch of people. All very sociable.
So we grabbed our road books and headed out to recce the first stage! We were thrown headlong into driving in the Indian traffic. There were 3 legs to the rally, one for each day, and each in a different direction out of town. We headed off to recce the first leg. It took about 2 hours to do 61 km through town and out the other side with the hand on the horn most of the way! We followed the tulip map given to us. We had to get it right, as although we had a street map of Bangalore, there were hardly any street names, or place names written up so if we had got lost, we could have been lost for a long time! There were 2 stages on this leg: Red Hill which was 14.18km, and Brown Hill which was 8.95km,
and we were allowed 2 runs through each stage. We did our pace notes (a first for me!) and headed back to the hotel and collapsed. We did leg 2 on the next day, which was the Tuesday. That was over 2 hours drive out in a different direction and there were 3 stages, Minelines 7.80km, India mines, 12.50km, and Bharath mines 25.30km. I’m not sure what they were mining. Diamonds I think and something else, but there was no apparent mining activity on the bits we were on. Again we were allowed 2 runs through each stage. There were plenty of dips and crests and sharp turns, and the ground was like concrete. Very similar to WA actually, pretty arid with red dirt.
Parked outside of town were heaps of trucks.. Ashok Leyland’ mostly, and Tata.
They were all painted cheerfully and most had "OK Horn Please" written on the back! At night they were lit up like Christmas trees and very gay. The drivers and probably their families lived in them. Apparently the trucks had to wait outside the town until the 8pm curfew when they could come inside the ring-road. There seemed to be vast numbers of them lying idle. There were numerous trucks lying on their sides, on the side of the road, or in the middle of the road following collisions.
We also passed many areas mostly on the edge of town where people were living under tarpaulin tents. Further out of town, it all looked a bit cleaner and more cheerful. The villages obviously had no sanitation, but had communal water pumps. The number of people around compared to the number of visible dwellings was phenomenal! The locals were mostly fascinated by the high tech cars. Ox carts were much more familiar to them.
The third leg was shorter. It was just over an hour’s drive out to the stage. (24km !) and there was just one stage of 16.82 km.
By the end of the 3 days recce, the poor old hire cars were falling apart! We were relatively gentle on ours, and only cracked the exhaust, but one car lost its complete exhaust system, and most of them lost their silencers, and there was one flat tyre. One engine mount went.... And it was not just due to the stages. The roads themselves were appalling, there was just one big pothole after another! ( and our car had only 3,000km on the clock.!!) We did notice that our exhaust had been patched before, so we didn’t feel so bad about our car. But they were standard road cars and didn’t stand a chance! The recce was a little worrying, not due to the roads, but due to the stray people, bicycles, dogs, cows.!!!!! We were told that it would all be clear for the rally.. mmmm , we also heard how in the Thailand rally someone ran over a stray person.. not nice for anyone concerned. The instructions in the event of hitting someone are to continue to the next radio post and inform them there.
On to the rally itself. So far, by the way, the Australian rally cars were still held up in customs in Chennai, 12 hours drive away.. The organisers were working their hardest to get them out.. (and looking very stressed!)
Thursday. The first day of the rally and still there was no car for us. The other cars had arrived that morning, but ours was further delayed. Not quite sure why, as it was on the same paperwork as Gerry’s car which came through!! ( The bureaucracy is all blamed on the British by the way!!). We heard that the car was in town, and that Paul was driving it from the container.. (once he had worked out how to get the rally handbrake off, and negotiated driving without a horn!). It finally arrived about 4pm, which is when we were supposed to be leaving for the ceremonial start!! This was at the Vidhana Soudha, which is the enormous and impressive government office. ( sporting a large engraving "Government Work is God’s Work" !!) A very quick sticking on of stickers, and clean and we arrived only 45 mins late.
All of the cars were presented in turn to the crowds. We were given our instructions.Drive onto the podium.. get out of the car, take your hats off, and wave to the crowds, then talk to the MC!! on TV camera!!! What a hoot.! In fact the TV cameras kept popping up and interviewing us all the way through the rally. There was quite extensive Indian TV coverage of the Rally. Then we drove back to the hotel feeling like superstars.
Luckily our car was well prepped and only needed some new brake pads which could go on the next day. The service crews were up till 2.30am sorting out problems with the other cars. The crews had arrived a week early to do this but no cars!
So next day, at 7.46am, in Car 9, we were really off. We were all kitted up in our driving suits,( I was in John Winteringhams, which was about 5 sizes too big! Not so cool!) and driving boots, with fireproof balaclavas and helmets with intercoms at the ready, roadbooks, supplementary regulations, extra bulletins, and pencils and pens, and watches set to rally time.. we were all raring to go!
We were by far the novices of the pack. The others had all been rallying for years, so we were never in it to get a place. Our ambition was to complete the rally and have some fun. And we achieved both ambitions.
The stages on leg one were each repeated 3 times with a service between each, and we did OK . It was very satisfying when the pace notes worked smoothly and we were sailing. Occasionally we got a bit out of synch, but managed to get back on track again OK. So by the end of the day, we were in position 9 still which was fine. We came off the road a little at one stage, and and ploughed through some brush and then the car made a terrible racket. We made the mistake of stopping to see what was going on .. not the done thing as we found out. We lost lots of time, and it was only some branches which worked their way out. !! You live and learn. We lost a little of the body work on the side also but nothing significant. There was some confusion when the locals thought it would be funny to move some of the bunting which was showing the route.
At the end of the day there were other dramas. The villagers were picketing the front gate of the large private property we were racing on, and wanted money.. It took the organisers and the police 2 hrs to sort out the ruckus. Meanwhile we all waited out of sight, in the rain, as it got darker, with no food and no lights..
The first 3 stages of day 2 were cancelled for another reason! The radio operators had been given grotty accommodation, and were refusing to work even when the accommodation issue had been sorted. We had an extra 2 hours in the service park before we could start. Brent and Nigel started a game of cricket!! It was hilarious. They made a makeshift ball and bat, and subsequent improvements, and despite many language problems, the Aussies, the Chinese, and the Indians were all out there playing, right through the middle of the service area. The Indian helpers, and firemen, and everyone joined in, and it kept everyone occupied and laughing for a good hour and a half.
The stages were hard on the cars, and there were a few flat tyres, but not ours luckily. After his 2nd flat, Gerry McGroarty drove on to the end of the stage a further 7kms. He reckons that it is worth it for the time, for anything under 7-10km.
We held in there with no real problems till the second to last stage of the day, when we suddenly lost power and glided to a halt. Out we popped with the triangles, and the OK signs. The spectators converged on us en masse. Try as he might, Mike couldn’t get it to go. He thought it was the fuel pump. So with all our helpers we had to push the car off the road, with the other cars shrieking past us at 2 min intervals.
We had to be towed back to the service area, and ultimately back to the hotel that night, despite the boys working solidly on the car for hours. 2 other Aussie cars were out altogether by now with irretrievable problems, Ross McKenzie’s and Warren Tucket’s. Paul Willan, towed our car in the end with his 4WD, and Brent and Nigel offered to go in the car. It took them 3 3/4hrs to drive the 117km back to the hotel. The battery failed after the first hour, so there were no lights or indicators and the horn wasn’t working anyway. The 4WD got a flat, so they had to repair that en route. With the horrendous traffic, and people cutting in front.. a nightmare journey!!
The boys worked on the car till 2 am and finally fixed the problem. (Officially; the Harmonic Balancer belt had snapped, this had wrecked the Crank Shaft sensor, so stopping the engine!!) Their enthusiasm, and knowledge and perseverance were something else. They can party hard, but they certainly work hard.
Warren Tucket’s car died that day too (the engine had died in a major way!! A con-rod had managed to find a way through the engine block, whoops..), and they had to tow that one back as well. They were earlier so they were in daylight, but at one time they had cars cutting in on them from both left and right and were nudging them both along. Then a rickshaw ran over the tow rope and got stuck!!! They had to stop and try and disentangle everything!! Nightmare.!!
So, we got up on the Sunday not knowing if we were still in the rally or not. But we were, and we were off again. The service crew, after working till 2/2.30 each night, were off again at 5am each morning, as they had to be ready for the first service. All the service crews helped each other out and everyone borrowed spares off each other The teamwork was impressive, as was the enthusiasm and passion for motorsport. I was the only dud!!, but I did get into the spirit of it all. There was no point in me helping out till 2am, I had no idea what they were doing under the hoods! I was probably the only one who got a full nights sleep every night. The organisers were up all night trying to iron out multitudes of problems, and the drivers and co-drivers were mostly out helping the service crew.
But we were still in! And it was leg 3. We completed the first stage OK, and came into service, but the radiator was dripping and the car was overheating. We thought we were out for sure. BUT, we were lucky again.. the boys, after fiddling with the car for hours and hours the night before, at 2 am had forgotten to connect the fan.. so, we reconnected and we were off again.
This day was at Khodays, which is a brewery.
The owner had sponsored the day, and put on a fantastic food spread, with marquee and even portaloos! Luxury! He was so keen that he had just bought an extra enormous chunk of adjacent land so that next year he could add an extra 18km to the stage. Apparently locally there was a herd of 18 wild elephants, and if you were there at the right time of day there were wild leopards. Of course the cars would have frightened anything away.
After the first morning, the crowd control was sort of adequate. But on the first stages, there were people crowding just off the track, and on the track. There were about 8 spectator marshalls hanging around the start just looking, but out on the track, there were none! The people would stand on the track until you came around the corner, and jump out of the way at the last minute. They really had no idea of the danger they were putting everyone in. At one stage there was a guy riding his bicycle down the track, and at another there was a dog who kept sauntering off when a car came, and laying back down again in his spot after it had passed. All in all it was very lucky that no-one was injured. But the stages were slow as they were winding, with lots of crests and dips and sharp corners.
SO we made it to the end! We came 6th on timing in the end (unofficially as technically we were out as we didn’t finish stage 2 ) .
Stewart Warren and Darryl Judd (NZ but living in Aus) came first in their MRF set up car with all the bells and whistles. Kumar and someone, from India came 2nd, again in an MRF set up car (The rally was sponsored by MRF tyres), and a Chinese team came 3rd. Gerry McGroarty from WA
took out 4th and the team from SA, came 5th. Of the International teams, these were the only 5 cars to finish. Then the Indian 2WD cars took the remaining positions. There was nearly 50% attrition, which is normal. There were actually 2 rallies going on, one for the Indian championship, and one for the international rally.
So that was the end of the rallying. We got back to the hotel at 3pm and the boys started to party. And boy can they party! Bourbon and coke was mostly the go in Club 626, or the Sky-villa ( Brent and Nigel’s room)!! Everyone came through. The Chinese got into the swing, despite speaking hardly any English, and all the service crews and most of the international teams. Many, many, bottles were sunk that afternoon, and we left at 7pm when it was starting to get ugly.. there was sambucca on the walls, and things were starting to get broken. The official presentation ceremony was due at 8pm.. Mike and I were worried that the boys were going to do something highly embarrassing at the ceremony, but we couldn’t believe it. They scrubbed up and behaved and then carried on partying till 5am!!! We must be getting old. Can’t take the pace any more!
None of them looked quite so perky the next day as they were sorting out the cars and getting them packed into containers again. I decided I was car-ed out, and went for a massage and steam bath!! Very nice. Then headed into Commercial Street by rickshaw to do a bit of shopping.
At 6pm we headed off to the airport and home.
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