Friends, In some of my threads I have shared about the off-roading scene in India. I thought of starting a separate thread where I can add details about the various 4x4 events that happen in India.

In India, 4x4 is a very very niche activity and a small but dedicated group of off-roaders in various parts of the country go out near their cities to do off-roading. There are online forums whereby all 4x4/off roaders interact together. The number of off-roaders is so less (~100-150) that almost everyone knows everyone else in the country.

Here is one thread that talks about a 4x4 event that happened on a dry river bed. The terrain was sandy and was competition based.

here is the link: Read more here and enjoy.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-excursions/63720-palar-challenge-2009-event-report.html

The below ones were the mud/slush fest ones. The trail here runs through private coffee estates and the local clubs there make arrangements for the event to happen. This is pure slush heaven.

The pictures don't actually convey how beautiful this terrain is

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-excursions/63717-munzerabad-off-beat-drive-2009-a.html

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-excursions/63020-4th-escape-nature-offroading-somwarpet-coorg-8th-aug2009.html

Interesting combination of vehicles.  Do you know how the Vitara performed other than the mud hill?  Also it looks like a lot of 50's era Jeeps. Have they made something like that recently in India?  I find it refreshing that the vehicles are mostly stock.  Here it seems everyone builds the heck out of their vehicles.  I like seeing what a stock vehicles with decent tires can do.  Maybe because that's essentially what my Trackers have been.

Thank you very much for sharing with us your experiences there in India.

I'm going to move this to the more appropriate section of our forum.

Please continue to update as things happen.

-Eric

Interesting combination of vehicles.  Do you know how the Vitara performed other than the mud hill?  Also it looks like a lot of 50's era Jeeps. Have they made something like that recently in India?  I find it refreshing that the vehicles are mostly stock.  Here it seems everyone builds the heck out of their vehicles.  I like seeing what a stock vehicles with decent tires can do.  Maybe because that's essentially what my Trackers have been.

Hi Keith, The Vitara is not often used for off-roading and did not perform well. It had not so good tires and also not good ground clearance.

The jeeps are made in India. Actually Willys/Ford jeeps were made in India till the 80's under license from JEEP. Then later the company started making different vehicles based on that platform. All diesel and 60-70% of off-roaders are based on the Jeep platform and rest 30-40% are Suzuki SJ410/413. A minuscule % is rest of vehicles.

Well, stock vehicles are able to do a lot with good tires

|removethispart|@ebewley: Thanks for the comments & also for moving it to the correct section. Will be more careful in future about posting in the correct sections :-)

Great looking shots as always.  it is a shame you had to work during the competition, it would have been great to watch your Spider running around.

Are they going to put a new engine in that bright green Jeep that was underpowered?

Great looking shots as always.  it is a shame you had to work during the competition, it would have been great to watch your Spider running around.

Are they going to put a new engine in that bright green Jeep that was underpowered?

Yeah, too bad I had to miss some of the recent off-road adventures coz of work. The Green jeep is more of a looker/poser and not much of a performer. Lots of people here at times go this route  and out in bigger whatever :-)

Meanwhile, this is another interesting thread for you all off-road enthusiasts. This is from the Mumbai off-road gang of India. Mumbai is the financial capital of India, the Hollywood Equivalent of India, the business capital and is in the western part of India.

The off-road gang there goes offroading some ~100 miles away from city. This place is ~800 miles from Bangalore so we can't go there for a weekend and come back -- it's kind of far for a weekend.

have a look at what crazy things they do. The gang there is mostly folks in their early/mid 20's. (while in rest of India it is folks in early 30's)

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-excursions/60762-mumbai-off-roading-season-2009-its-officially-announced-4.html

Ok, I really like the look of that Yellow SJ Gypsy with the fold down seats from a Toyota in the back. 

We in southern part of India are having a GREAT monsoon and lots of rains. That makes for a great off-roading adventure time and last weekend I and some friends went off roading.

The place is a hilly coffee growing region where some of the worlds best coffee is grown. The hills are pristine green, lush and very beautiful.

The complete writeup is here over several pages.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-excursions/64899-monsoon-otr-hill-climbings-stream-crossing-rain-lots-pain.html

Few pictures I am attaching from that writeup:


Hope you all like it and enjoy reading..

Nice! Icould only voew a couple of the pictures due to our server at work. But I will re-visit wien I get my computer at home unpacked from the move....

I did spot the ZUKIWORLD.COM window sticker 


Zig

Here are some more pictures of that trail

That is real wheeling!  None of this running in circles around an offroad park we have in the midwest USA.  I'd love to have a trail that actually went somewhere to go on.

More pictures & writeup can be seen here

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-excursions/65163-monsoon-offroading-trail-driving-sakleshpur-bisle-ghat-3.html

Is English the primary language of the posters on that forum?  If not I'm very impressed with the quality of their English.

Is English the primary language of the posters on that forum?  If not I'm very impressed with the quality of their English.

Hi Keith, Thanks.

English is not the primary language for people in India, but for people in that forum, English would be the primary language during education (but not in social circles, family etc).