From Dust to Roxx: What Fifteen Years on Himalayan Roads Taught Me

Fifteen years ago, I was driving up from Delhi to Leh via Manali. The best stretch of road I got was a 400-500m strip of pristine tarmac that started at Hotel Ibex in Jispa. Back then, it was either Ibex or Hotel Chandrataal by Himachal Tourism that you could stay in. I had tanked up in Tandi, as was the norm, driven through Jispa and come flying through that half a kilometre stretch at a decent clip. And then it ended. It was like someone had drawn a line with a ruler at the edge of the tarmac and decided, that's it.

The transition from smooth tarmac to a dry and dusty very bumpy surface brought me back to the reality of Himalayan roads in the 2010s with shocking clarity. I had rolled the windows down and dust came billowing into the cabin and within minutes I felt like someone who had crawled out of a subterranean cave-in. That is one of my earliest memories of the Thar. Not the suave and sophisticated Thar that I drove at the Trans Arunachal drive in 2022 or the Roxx that people have access to now, but the rugged old Thar with a soft top and bench seats.

The other memory I'll share is even older. I was still a few years away from voting age, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was the rage, and so was Lisa Ray. The song was a remixed version of Afreen Afreen and the music video ran on loop on TV screens that would now be considered retro and grainy. To the teenage delinquent, it was a tough choice. Stare at the svelte Lisa Ray walking about in a desert, or gawp at the stylish red Mahindra Classic. I knew I wanted one. Sadly, unlike my friend Vinod, I never got one. Seeing the Classic and the Thar together unlocks a bunch of memories, but more importantly, when put together with the Roxx, they show just how far down the path the whole notion of 4x4 lifestyle has travelled.