Rally Updates

by Mohit Midha

1 day to go

It was an early start of waking up at 3am but there were no regrets. After endless weeks of meetings and planning, the day was finally here to leave for the starting point of the Saarc Car Rally at Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh. I had been waiting for this day ever since having received the first call telling me about the proposed journey. Having picked up Siddhraj, part of the Autocar team, en route, we reached the airport at 4:30am to meet the members of the CII team leaving on the same flight as us.

Having checked in ourselves and the immense amount of luggage, consisting of publicity material etc, the rapid progress received a slight setback. As we sat eagerly awaiting our boarding call, we heard an announcement of our flight being delayed due to fog at Kolkata. This began a chain of events, like our two further connecting flights actually waiting for us to arrive before taking off. Most of us expected to be doing the last sector by road but thankfully it all worked out thanks to the excellent assistance of the airport and airline staff in our first of many host countries.

On nearing Cox's Bazaar, I was amazed to see the beach while the pilot lined up for landing. It went on for miles and looked quite spotlessly clean from my viewpoint high above. I was told by Ishwar from Autocar Bombay, who hadn't slept for the last 40 hours preparing for the rally, that it was supposed to be the longest natural beach in the world. Excitement levels were now even higher. I could hardly wait to get started!

After not much work happening on the first day except planning the things to be done the next day and getting together all the material required, everyone was raring to go the next morning after a good and much needed sleep. The main work to be done leading up to arrival of the rest of the rally participants was to get all the stickers of the generous sponsors up on the vehicles. Although I was on the team mainly to photograph and write about the daily events and happenings as the rally progresses from country to country, it was irresistible to dive in and help with the work. I just love to get my hands dirty and I wasnt going to let this opportunity go by.

It was a tough day. The sun beat down relentlessly all day and left everyone dehydrated, tanned two shades darker and aching in muscles they'd forgotten they still had. I doubled my admiration for wicketkeepers like Dhoni with every squat I had to do in order to put one of the lower stickers. Although we thought of them as tormentors, ironically the very same creatures turned out to be our saviours and a pack up for the day was ordered at 6:30pm. These were swarms of mosquitoes that descended and besides stinging painfully, also entered every open mouth, stuck themselves to stickers before those could be stuck to the vehicle and buzzed unstoppably right inside every person's ear.

So putting away our tools - a spray bottle of cleaning liquid, a rubber wipe, a blade and a piece of cloth, we went happily back to our rooms to put up the tired legs and recuperate for more stickering planned for later that same night.

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