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River bed, water wading & off-roading with 9 Mahindra Thars

12th January 2022, 20:54 by Dev Shah

All the water crossings were done by engaging 4L and 2nd gear with minimal throttle response.

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Our TCOG (Thar Club of Gujarat) guys had a fun filled OTR session at the Vatrak River bed. Slowly and gradually the group is growing with more and more people joining in to explore the path less taken.

The Thars: 7 Thar 2020 and 2 Thar CRDe:

The pack ranged from all types of variants of Thar 2020, right from the Petrol AT to the Diesel Manual with Convertible top, we had all range of beauties. Even the pair of CRDe were two different ones, a 2018 black Thar CRDe and my 2019 Thar CRDe 700 edition.

Location:

We had been to famous OTR locations like Ambod and Amrapur a lot many times, hence this time we thought of picking a spot less chosen. A bit of surfing here and there on Google Maps, we finalized a location on the banks of Vatrak River bed near Kheda. This location was about 50 kms from Ahmedabad.

The trail:

This was a complete river bed drive with many water wading portions hence, strictly a 4L terrain.

Bhpians on the pack: AnishD and Khalil_khan

The drive:

Based on the convenience of the maximum people participating, we decided to gather post lunch i.e. around 2pm from Ahmedabad, we assembled at Bopal cross roads near IOCL petrol pump.

At 2:30 pm we started our journey towards this unknown destination, it was pretty much clear that this location was either going to be downer or a fun filling one. We drove in convoy style along the SP ring road and then onto the NH48 old Ahmedabad-Vadodara highway. After driving for about a hour we reached to a location where the river was running in parallel but we were unable to trace the route to the river bed.

Couple of us got down and inquired with the locals, they suggested to take a kaccha road next to under construction railway bridge till the river bed. It was a dust blast drive till we reached on the banks of the river. Any normal person from that point would have thought that the trail further into the river is next to impossible, but when you have different types of itching to try new things no trail seems impossible.

The first river crossing:

BHPian Khalil_Khan the most passionate and dedicated one amongst us went walking into the river to check the depth and surface beneath it.

We sent one pilot vehicle behind him while he did the introspection, once the track was decided, the pilot vehicle made it onto the other side of the river bank. The other Thars one by one followed the same track and made their way onto the other side of the river bank.

This required going down a steep decline in 4L 1st gear and then into the river and drive towards the other side of the river bank. A point of observation is such that we tried going down with a couple of Thars in 4H, 1st gear with hill hold assist on but it still didn’t have the control which you get in 4L, 1st gear.

While Khalil did the spotters work standing in knee deep water half way, me and a few others were guiding the drivers at the start points.

As all 8 Thars made their way out, it was my turn to take the same route and make my way to the other side of the river bank. At this very moment, Khalil told me to try a different track into the river which was a steep decline with boggy sand and even the depth of the water was little high. Anyhow I took the other route, Khalil being an experienced off-roader did the spotters job pretty well, what happened next can be seen in the video pretty clearly in next post.

The second river crossing:

Once all the Thars had crossed the first obstacle, it was time to go for the second crossing, as usual BHPian Khalil_Khan again went knee deep inside water followed by a pilot vehicle into a ditch inside the river. This time the ditch made the pilot vehicle tilt towards the left and bonnet deep into the water.

We followed the same pattern as we did during the first obstacle, one by one all went in and came out without any fuss.

By this time, lot many locals and villagers thronged to that place in amusement, few of them came up to us and asked “Is this some sort of vehicle testing going on?” We said “Yes, these are Mahindra vehicles getting tested” to avoid any issues from them. Then another one came up after sometime to ask “Which movie shooting is this?”

The third river crossing:

This time we came up with the idea to drive in parallel with 4-5 Thars in water. While there was no water ingress in both the CRDe, it did happen in the Thar 2020, a few of them though. The Thar 2020 gets drain plugs at the floor board, open them and the water drains. Good thought put in place I must say.

Once the third river crossing was clear, we lined up and chit chatted for a while on the river bank. As the sun started to set, it was time to go along the river bank and then go back the same track we took during the first river crossing.

The steep incline required 4L, 1st gear to climb even though few of us struggled to climb, all of us made out with the sunset in the background.

All the water crossings were done by engaging 4L and 2nd gear with minimal throttle response. Any 4X4 vehicle will simply crawl in 4L without any throttle input and that’s the best part of it, on a river obstacle you can easily glide over it without having the fear of getting stuck.

The drive back:

Once we were back on main road, we decided to stop by for some tea and refreshments, it was post 6 in the evening and was getting dark by the time we were sipping on the much needed roadside tea with some snacks.

By 7pm, we disbursed from the tea point and started our drive back home. Took us about 1.5 hours to drive back through the Ahmedabad-Vadodara old national highway (NH48).