Freedom...

......is what a road trip in a great car can make you feel.

Sometimes it just gets to you, doesn’t it? The routine of your daily life, the pressure of merely existing as the world comes at you with its burden of expectations. Oh, it just stifles the life out of you. At a point, you want out. Not abandon everything, just let go for sometime. Escape to your own space. Which brings me to Rajasthan, a region that’s steeped in history, culture and tradition, that runs through generations. And I wanted to experience this in a way unlike regular tourists. There are, after all, other sides to Rajasthan, that’ll also prove to be a challenge for the new Jeep Compass Limited Plus. Is this it? We’ll see.

I began by exploring Udaipur, the city of lakes, as it’s called. Bustling, busy and exploding with energy, Udaipur is transforming into a modern city with its upbeat cafes and what have you. But amidst all of this modernisation, the old city seems to have stopped in time.

Navigating the Compass through its narrow bylanes was easy in some places but hairy while negotiating oncoming traffic, with centimetres to spare. At some point, I had to reverse and slot into a corner to let traffic go by. Thankfully, the new infotainment system in the Compass Limited Plus with an 8.4-inch display showed what the reverse camera captured, in enough detail, to make it through without a scratch.

And it was all worth it, because as I sat by the shore of Lake Pichola at Gangaur ghat and watched the sun drench the old buildings in its warm glow, I got that feeling of slowly leaving all my worries behind. And we’d only just begun.