Terratigers Offroad for beginners- Final part

Please read Part 1 and part 2 and 3 of the Terratigers offroad experience here.

A Kannada article I wrote about offroad for beginners, published in VijayaNext can be read below.

The next challenge was again a rock- a bigger one at that. This was twice as challenging as the first one we’d climbed in the morning. The inclinations at which vehicles climbed the rock and got down was pretty steep. Nischal did the first demo and others followed suite, one by one. Spotters ensured that climb and descent is precise and ensured that no vehicle lost balance in the process.

Watch it in action in a video below:

Adjacent to the giant rock was another challenge which involved half sand and half rock. Vehicles were to first clear the sandy approach and then negotiate the rocks. Most of the vehicles took 2-3 attempts to clear the sand part of it. One trick I observed was to keep steering left and right, so that wheels don’t dig deep into sand. Another trick was NOT to max out on power initially and retain some grunt for the final stretch.

The rock negotiation was tricky, because unlike previous 2 rocks, this one needed perfect placing. There was a small valley inbetween 2 rocky paths, so vehicles need to move with their wheels on 2 rocks in perfect balance. Little extra to the left or right, underbody scrapping is guaranteed. Vishnu guided all vehicles one by one, but one guided by Arka did have a scrap, as the approach line was not correct and underbody scraped through the rock. Hope damage was minimal.

Above picture shows the rocky path- in below picture, approach line was wrong, resulting in Thar's bottom scraping the rock.

Watch the above in action below

Next  bit was the sand dune. One by one jeeps and thars climbed mighty sand dune. Some needed second attempt, many drivers enjoyed it immensely and drove multiple times. In some challenges like this, drivers often needed to start in the right gear. Starting in first gear and then changing to higher won’t work, as we won’t have enough time to change gears or we’ll lose momentum if we keep changing gears. So drivers need to start in second/third gear and dash towards the dune. One should not max out before hitting the beginning of sand- keep some power left to be released during the ascend. Even with half the wheels in sand, jeeps managed to come out and move ahead.

Watch it in action

At this point I opted to return to Chennai in one of the participating vehicles. Overall it was a good experience observing, unfortunately I don’t own a car and couldn’t try it out myself.

I have one final bit of video editing pending- trying to make a summary video including best bits from each challenge and some interview bits. As that it is taking even more time, decided to go ahead with this post. Stay tuned to my youtube channel (subscribe) to watch it as soon as it goes live.