Some manufacturers have started rolling out a concept that’s a bit new to India – a combination of an SUV and sedan in a single package. They’ve given it a weird term too – crossover. To me, the entire concept seems like it’s the bastard love child of a three-way between marketing, accounts, and engineering.

Coincidently, Skoda launched an example belonging to this segment recently – the Yeti. So it made perfect sense. Also, the B-segment has been witnessing extremely strong growth, and has been the fastest money spinner in India. So, it was decided unanimously that we’d take the diesel-powered Micra along too. It had quite a few things going for it – I’d never driven it, my friends from the motoring industry said it had a cracking little engine, and I wanted to see how much of that truck-like diesel clatter made it into the cabin. But, mainly we wanted to see if a small car makes sense for long distance travel.

However, two cars and a superbike was hardly an appetite quencher for us. So we thought – if we’re taking a crossover and a small car, why not compare their capability against the most hardcore SUV this side of the 20 lakh bracket? The natural choice was the Ford Endeavour 4X4. And then we got greedy for more – a sedan of course. A quick call to Volkswagen did the trick. The kind chaps at VW made frantic calls and a few hours later got back with a confirmation call for the Vento.

Here we have it then, 4 four-wheeled machines and a superbike – an SUV, a crossover, sedan, small car, and superbike – the perfect collective for an evaluative understanding of whether it is absolutely necessary to have a full-blown SUV to travel in India, or can it be accomplished by other forms as well?

There were four States on the list of places to go to, of which two were shortlisted. We’d recently driven to Rajasthan, so that was out. Plus, we had to calculate very precisely, as we needed to be back in town in three days owing to our prior commitments. There wasn’t enough time to drive too far out and get back in time, so we – with much reluctance – decided to brave the weather and go to the mountains. In winter – damn!

I’ve been to Mussoorie a couple of times before, and, to many, Mussoorie is a romantic hill station at an altitude of two thousand meters with a fantastic mall-road to explore. To me, it’s a land of impossibly infinite charm and beauty. It’s a wonderland located on a horseshoe shaped ridge, sitting in the lap of the Himalayas. Also, there’s a lot of pre-independence political drama associated with this sleepy hill town – and that’s actually of huge interest to me. But I’ll refrain from giving you lessons, lest you boycott me in the manner in which you would aim paper pellets at your high-school history teacher.

The start to the journey was pathetic, to say the least. Our departure was late by almost two hours, and we feared that we’d be faced with illogically shambolic and confused motorists causing traffic bedlam, as is the way of life here. Come Meerut, and our fears came true. People there seem to be inspired from extremists and human bombs – they move about on the road without any fear whatsoever. If you’re on the right side of the road, and encounter a U.P. bhaiya coming blasting at you, exercising his vocal chords with a colourful chorus, just accept that you’re wrong.

The stretch leading up to Muzzffarnagar, thankfully, is perfectly paved and the broad roads make movement crisp and swift. But, as you enter the district zone of Muzzaffarnagar, all hell breaks loose. The roads there are destroyed, and potholes are as frequent as a stand-off between two political parties. In Roorkee and Dehradun, the roads are fine, but narrow, and the vehicles move at a snails pace – which is annoying. And then there are the brilliantly involving bits of blacktop beyond Dehrarun and in between Mussoorie and Dhanaulti. So, we really had a mix of all sort of roads – we even ventured down on a dried-up riverbed, just to throw in the off-road angle as well. And that’s where the real understanding of our repertoire of machine came to the fore.