Nine small cars and one tall order: Drive up into the snowy altitudes across dizzy mountain passes. Crazy? You bet!
Five in the evening, 15 km to Rohtang top, six hours spent more or less stationary and this story almost gets canned. The radio crackles: “Shall we turn back?” Usually that’d be welcomed with howls and noooos. After all we’re heading for Ladakh, remote, inhospitable, but still the most heart-achingly beautiful part of the country.
The cabin is good in parts, acceptable in most and shocking in a few areas, particularly in the panel gaps. But you get lots of equipment: Airbags (only the i20 gets six airbags), ABS, alloys, Bluetooth connectivity, even iPod compatibility (but the system refused to read our iPod Touch or USB sticks which made me quite angry).
(This story appears in the 06 November, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)