An angel at Tabo

And four other stories from the 9th Raid de Himalaya.

The art of being Vijay Parmar
Now, there is no taking anything away from the man. He runs the finest motorsport event in the country and despite the obvious issues, has managed to keep it going for the last nine-odd years.

As a person, he comes across as cold and calculative, with a fair dressing of cunning. Now you have to be all that and cold-blooded too to run an event of this magnitude and danger... er, which he is. If he himself were to participate in the Raid, we asked him once, would it be in the Extreme car or bike category or in the Reliability trial? His retort was that he "always swam with the sharks". You get the point "" he is never short of one-liners either.

So why can't he make the Raid any safer? Perhaps park a helicopter or two at strategic locations so that injured participants can be airlifted out? Well, it is expensive, and according to Parmar, no one wants to foot the bill, though everyone would like to be airlifted.

Which means you get to sign a sheet of paper that essentially says that the organisers are not responsible for whatever happens to you up there. And Parmar will simply tell you to take a running jump if you are worried about air evacuation "" "please come for the event only if you know the risks."

It is working, going by the number of participants "" 49 cars for the Reliability trial this year and a grand total of 110 vehicles taking the start! The Raid de Himalaya is growing and how.

As this year's Raid got snowed-out at Patseo, we asked him whether we could join the convoy headed to Keylong and thereafter civilisation. There, in the middle of the snowstorm, came his reply, "The first convoy is for women and families... you can join, I guess." We took it on our chin. After all, someone needs to organise the event every year.

Chai, omelettes and semi-clad women
Patseo, at around 11,000 ft, is on the way to Leh and it is a very cold place. The army has a permanent transit camp there which is frequented by jawans acclimatising their way up or down and by truckers looking for a place to park and sleep.

It is way better than what it was a couple of years back "" the metal structures now feature attached toilets and some sort of insulating material. Yet it is very cold and more so when the weather gods get funny and start playing with snow guns. But there are warm spots "" the kitchen is one, as long as you don't mind watching how your dinner is being made, and then there is the canteen.

The canteen is an oasis of sorts and is the most well-stocked place this side of Leh and that side of Keylong. It is just a 100 sq foot room, but throbs with warmth and life. Piping hot tea is available as if by magic almost all the time ""you walk in, and before you know it, you will be burning your tongue.

The place stocks biscuits of all hues, many packets of Maggi noodles, colas, cigarettes, Sai Baba charms and more biscuits. Two kerosene stoves work overtime to ensure that you get an omelette or bread pakodas in less than three minutes.

When it is minus one out there, let me tell you that an omelette wrapped in newsprint is the best fluffy form an egg can take anywhere in the world. The idea is to gobble it up the very next minute since it gets cold all too quickly. So you juggle the tea, omelette and take in the strangely comfortable cigarette and kerosene fumes as you share space with 56 others doing the same.

Since truckers and jawans who stop by usually have not seen women in ages, the canteen provides a bit of entertainment in the form of movie magazine centre-spreads on the walls showing some cleavage here and a thunder thigh there. What else could a tired trucker hope for?

An angel at Tabo
I know Malayalees are everywhere, but this was ridiculous. Imagine meeting a fellow Mallu at Tabo, a place which will be considered back of beyond by those who actually live in the back of beyond.

Angel, a Kerala-born Jew, was brought up in Tel Aviv and drifted his way around till he settled down at Tabo, where he owns a small hotel with six rooms and a beautifully done up cafe.

Tabo, a spiritual destination thankfully devoid of network connections even now (it won't last long, neighbouring Kaza already has BSNL), has less than 400 people.

During the peak tourist season, Tata Sumo loads of foreigners land up here in search of the monastery, the magnificent night sky (ever so often you'll see a meteorite crashing into the Earth's atmosphere) and the elusive snow leopard. Angel insists that they don't come to smoke "stuff", but I do have my doubts.

And such influx has already left its mark. So you get the Third Eye Cafe, Terrace Cafe, the World's Highest Billiards Room and yes, Angel. Angel looks a bit smoked out all right, but he shared black coffee with me and talked about life in his cafe, now devoid of foreigners.

The hired hands who work for Angel were not pleased to see Indian tourists or for that matter, rally drivers. It was a bit like visiting Goa or Leh during off-season. They know that we don't tip in dollars. Angel played Dire Straits for me in his mini system. The boys, after a meal of meat curry and rice, danced for a while "" their moves obviously copied from the tourists who were dancing in the same room not so long ago. Angel knows his music as he works as a DJ in pubs in Kovalam and Pattaya. There he was, enjoying a cigarette and moving to music in his low-slungers. I knew Tabo wasn't the same place I visited two years back. I knew Tabo wouldn't be the same place two years down the line. And achingly, I couldn't escape the fact that Angel, who was disappearing in smoke in front of me, and who was extremely nice to me, was one of the prime catalysts of the change.

Five motoring journalists and a doctor
Tabo has a helipad, constructed with help from the Japanese. That was the place allotted for the Raid de Himalaya cars to be parked overnight "" parc ferme in rally terms. Suzuki had entrusted four spanking new SX4s to motoring journalists to drive in the "Adventure trial" category of the Raid and all of us had reached Tabo safely after two days of gruelling action.

While the cars were running fine, their rubber was not. Those poor tubeless radials got the shock of their life as the cars pounded through the rocky Gramphoo-Batal stretch leading to Kaza and then Tabo. Punctures were the toast of the day. We had one that day and another one the previous day.

Since raiding without spare tyres is not advisable, we decided to put a spare tube into the tubeless radials and do a bit of jugaad. We had the equipment in the form of spare tube, a lighter operated compressor and so on.

But we still had to get the tyre off the rim and put the tube in. An activity that should take barely a minute or so for a local tyre boy. We were a bunch of five motoring journalists and a doctor (who was driving for Autocar magazine) struggling in the cold to get the tyre out.

We had part success when Rohin, my navigator, managed to wedge his hand between the tyre and the rim, Harman from Autocar wielding two tyre rods into the setup, Muntaser of Car magazine lending weight to one side of the tyre and me standing on the tyre for good measure. It was the turn of the doctor to use a set of pliers to pull the nozzle of the tube out and he did it as if he were using a pair of forceps to pull a baby out.

"Push, Rohin!," he said, "Push," and I could barely control my laughter and there ended our two-hour struggle to get the tyre out, as we started rolling all over the helipad laughing. It was indeed a classic Raid moment. Different teams trying to help out a struggling competitor. Dismissing the fact that the same guys, armed with a fresh tyre, can prove to be their nemesis the next day. So what if the tyre was never repaired?

The road to destruction
We had lost serious time on Day One thanks to a wrong turn and the sightseeing trip that followed. That meant trying our best to "zero" the stages over the coming days and hoping against odds that others falter or face mechanical trouble.

So we drove like men possessed and the Suzuki SX4 made brilliant time on the first stage of Day Two "" only to hear, as we reached the time control, that the stage was cancelled due to traffic jams and inclement weather at the top of Rohtang pass.

The second stage started from Gramphoo, a turn-off from the Manali-Leh road and one that would lead us to Tabo via Kaza. Now, calling this stretch a road will amount to a lie. It is loose gravel, horrible rocks and even more horrible rocks strewn across a 60-odd km stage which rally organisers love.

After that you get to encounter Kunzum La, a mountain pass as treacherous as it can get. Actually, it is a very large heap of gravel where the children of the gods made tracks using their fingertips long ago. The falls are deep and falling off does not need any spectacular deed of stupidity from your end. A set of locked wheels and bingo, your final words will echo in the snow-clad peaks in the distance.

Well, as I said, we were on a little mission on this stage. Driving flat out from Gramphoo, we knew we were doing well halfway through the stage.

Yet we still had to reach a time control. Crossing the bridge at Batal, we eased off a bit (in TSD rallying, you get too many penalties for coming in early). And that is when the rear tyre of the SX4 decided to deflate. The pounding we were inflicting on the tyre had to reward us. The choice was to drive with the flat or stop and change. We decided to do the latter and it proved to be a rather wrong decision.

To begin with, the traditional jack wouldn't work (it took three turns to realise that) and then we had to read up the instruction manual of a spanking new hydraulic jack we had brought along.

In short, another 35 minutes gone with the wind. But that is not the point. When things do go right, the stretch from Gramphoo to Kunzum-la is a rally driver's dream come true. Sure you need hardware, rubber and the will power to get it all right, but when you do, you will tick it off as an achievement in your life. Like your first successful date.