Well, here goes my report:
We were supposed to meet at McDonald's at Panvel at 7:00am. Everyone got delayed by 15-20 minutes. Arpan and his boss (4x2 Scorpio) were first to arrive at the spot and Gogi (with Viper and Maddy) & Me arrived there soon after. As soon as we reached, we realized that Gogi's jeep was dangerously low on oil and viper went in the scorpio in search of oil.
For some reason McD was shut and we were told that it would take 20 minutes to open and we should wait outside. Within 5 minutes a car came with 4 foreigners and they were let inside and serve. I lost my head completely at the manager and accused him of racism. This is a sad truth in India... the fair skin always gets better treatment.
Soon we get a call from Soumya that his fan belt has broken and he manages to get slowly to McDs. In the meanwhile Nishanth (MudSlinger) and Dad Kishor (Tigerranch) arrive with their Classic (with driver in the back seat). Soumya's jeep is repaired using Gogi's spare fan belt and also topped up with oil. Soon David arrives in his mm550 and we head off towards the resort by 830.
Ibrahim has already left from pune to rendezvous with us.
We finally reach the resort meeting point at around 930 (on the way we manage to pick up two new thars which were hopelessly lost). As we enter the resort, we see a huge number of cars and our car numbers are 82 and above.
I had hoped to see a lot of superbly modified jeeps, however, it so happens that my jeep was the star attraction! We saw a couple of very nicely made Cj340s, however, on close inspection they all turned out to be 4x2s!
We park and head for breakfast. Our extreme offroader stickers are distributed to our group and soon we are inundated with requests from others for stickers.
Ibrahim meanwhile reaches sawarsi and we tell him to come to the resort since it will take time to leave.
After registration (we get a kit bag containing white t-shirts, caps, scorpio music cd and great escape game and our car number stickers) we are called for the briefing.
It was a pleasant surprise that the VP sales specially mentioned that "We are glad that the extreme offroaders are with us and you should listen to their instructions and ask them for help also". Vinod, we are touched by that gesture!
Following that, further instructions are given by Vinod, Mr. Nene, Mr. Bhosle, etc regarding safety, etc.
Two all women teams driving 4x2 scorpios are introduced.
Ibrahim arrives and his gypsy is strictly not allowed into the resort compound!
He hops into my jeep as passenger.
We meet up with steiger there as well.
We then head out to the flag off.
Here, we decide that us staying at positions 82 and above is not a good idea. A quick conference with the organizers and we break convoy and head out to the front.
Mahindra had a deal with the toll naka and all cars with mahindra stickers were exempt from paying toll both ways.
A lot of scorpio and pick up drivers were driving horribly and we literally had to reprimand a few of them saying that we won't let you do the trail if this is the way you will drive. You can see me talk to one of the pick up drivers in the pic below.
We reach the turn into sawarsi. All directions are nicely marked by the mahindra team.
Here we let Vinod (pilot car - Scorpio 4x4) go ahead and we join the convoy at approx position 20.
Meet up with mohan and his gang there (he was responsible for arranging for permissions at sawarsi for mahindra). Good job doc!