Blowin' In The Wind

When the GLA 45 AMG turns into a rally car…

- Anand Mohan

THE ONLY TIME I’VE BEEN RALLYING WAS OVER half a decade ago. I got a crash course in reading tulips on the first day of the Raid-de-Himalaya, lost over two hours trying to get us to the end of the stage and that was that. My career as a navigator never took off once we crawled past the finish line. I’m happy because I hate reading a book in a car when I’d rather grab it by the scruff of its neck. But I should have brushed up on my navigation skills anyway because we were going to drive the GLA 45 AMG on one of the stages for this month’s Rally of Maharashtra. And I am the driver-cum-navigator. Oh, well!

So we set off from Pune, get to Nashik by late evening and catch up with Ashwin Pandit, the man behind the Nashik round of the Indian rally championship. He is about to hand me the tulip chart to get to 'Windmill stage' when he sees my puzzled eyes, and instead draws the route on a blank piece of paper to this picturesque location. We leave early the next day from our hotel off the Mumbai- Nashik highway, flat out over crests, cautious through a few hairpins, sharp left up the hill, flying past a small lake on the left to our starting point. Alright, I’ve overdone the rally talk.