The Great Escape - Day 1

When you know that to reach your place of stay you need to go through the woods where elephants take their evening walk, pass a couple of streams and finally stay in the middle of the elephant corridor, then you should know one thing. That this will be interesting. And an interesting adventure it was.

For this edition of Mahindra Great Escape, the cool breezes and drizzles of Sakleshpur laid the welcome address while the Kadumane Estate proved to be the perfect place to escape to. And when the place makes you forget the absence of the sounds of Facebook pings or the Whatsapp tings, you know you are hooked.

The day started early on day 1 of the Mahindra Great Escape, which was a free ride event. Customers with Mahindra vehicles can come and register themselves for the off-roading free ride in a planned route.

The off-roading route took them through the beautiful stretches of tea plantations, streams, lemon grass populated grasslands, muddy terrains and especially though roads where they have to make one.

The route was carefully planned so that the participants will enjoy the experience of off-roading and at the same time can hone their skills at it.

The obstacles, which were planned meticulously, were not so easy to make any effort and not so hard that they are impossible.

Speaking about the event, Mr. Venkatesh, Manager, Mahindra Adventure, said “Mahindra Great Escape has been happening for the past 20 years now and when we started Mahindra Adventure four years before, we wanted to not only engage our customers but also future potential customers. So we expanded the portfolio of Great Escape and made it the Mahindra Adventure.”

Mr. Venkatesh also said, “Apart from expeditions such as this, we also started TSD (Time-Speed-Distance) rallies to encourage motorsport at the grass root level. We want to refine the sport and make it popular. We will continue to do the expeditions, great escape editions and rallies to reach out to people. “

Mr. Ashok Tiwari, who has been associating with IMSC Motorsport for promoting motorsports, says that this year’s Mahindra Great Escape is special as the heavy rains added to the fun. He said, “Out of the 26 km drive, nearly 15 km were planned as hectic off-roading and the rest were divided between gravel and mud.” About the participants, he said that the response has been very good always in this part of the country for off-roading and the participants were a good mix of beginners and old timers.

Be it going steadily through wet and thick mud, or climbing up an incline with the mud-thickened tyres searching for the last straw of grip, the cars and the participants sweated it out in every obstacle and some came smiling happily and some in vain.

From the stock-speced cars to the heavily modified ones, the day saw customers bringing their cars to be a part of it.

For this edition, the Mahindra Great Escape saw close to 70 participants, which seems to grow every time proving a successful campaign. As the ride came to a close, the participants were tired, covered in mud, some bitten by leeches and almost all of them hungry. But all of them were smiling broadly, well, except for the gentleman who burned his car’s clutch plate and has to leave the car in the unknown terrain.