Rallying around

The "Chalo ASEAN” car rally was intended as a curtain raiser to the first ever India-ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) rally of November 2004. Among the 40 participants in 12 vehicles at the Chalo ASEAN were four Parsis — Bombay’s Shiruy Vazifdar, Fili Bhathena and Zarin Havewala and Hyderabad’s Maz­dayar Vatcha, all motoring and motorsports enthusiasts. Starting off from four locations — Kanya-kumari, Goa, Ahmedabad and Simla — on November 14, the cars traversed a total distance of 14,000 km, through 20 Indian states, as per a communiqué from Firoza and Shrikant Karani of Sportscraft.

Tata Motors were the official suppliers of the 12 vehi­cles — nine Safaris and an Indica, Indigo and Marina each. It was a great experience, enthuses Havewala who was part of an all ladies team in a Safari. "Each morning, we were flagged off by ministers and dignitaries. There were flowers and felicitations. We were interviewed by television news and sports channels. There was a tremendous welcome at Gauhati where the rally ended on November 21. School children were waiting on the road with gifts, we received a police escort,” says the lady who loves driving and can happily sit behind the wheel all day!

Organized by the Government of India, Ministry of Exter­nal Affairs (MEA) and the Confederation of Indian Industry to highlight the scope for socioeconomic regional cooperation along an existing land route, Chalo ASEAN was a non-competitive event, with daredevil maneuvers arising only in Bihar! "The roads there were undrivable! The terrain was so bad that you needed an army tank to go over them!” jests Vatcha who was supposed to drive from Kanyakumari but who joined the team in Hyderabad as he was away in Calcutta for a go-karting meet. Vatcha is into racing as well as the design and manufacture, he says, of go-karts and go-karting tracks and has been a motorsports enthusiast for the past 15 years.

"Chalo ASEAN” convoy and (clockwise from top left) Havewala, Bhathena, Vatcha and Vazifdar

With certain segments requiring rerouting due to politi­cal and local problems in states like West Bengal, drivers could not always anticipate what they were going to face. "Bihar was the most difficult section, definitely,” says 22-year-old Vazi­fdar, the youngest of the four who also assisted Sportscraft in the planning of the event in terms of team participation and route. "The planning was done in one month flat! When MEA ap­proached us saying ‘can you do it?’ we did!” With Vazifdar in the convoy which started from Simla was Bhathena who says he has been organizing rallies for the past 22 years. "Chalo ASEAN was a fun event. Everyone was taking turns behind the wheel,” adds Bhathena who runs a car rental business. Gujarat and Ra-jasthan had excellent roads, Madhya Pradesh not so good, while in Bihar the joke going around was that they had been built in Sher Shah’s time and remained so, chuckles Havewala.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flagged off the India-ASEAN rally from Gauhati on November 22, traversing Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia, states Sportscraft.