But all things considered, it went quite well. For one, we completed the event in one piece, and even better, we came back with a trophy in recognition of our efforts. And I never thought I'd say this, because it was incredibly cold on those early morning starts, but the weather held up nicely and didn't play spoilsport like it had done in the past – and would do in the future as well, as we'd find out.

I fell in love with the Raid-de-Himalaya, or even just the thought of the Raid, when I first heard about the event in 2004. It took a few years of waiting – of salivating – before the opportunity arose to actually participate in the Raid. Right after the 2005 event, I could no longer take the thought of missing another Himalayan Raid, and decided to buy a Gypsy and prep the car for rallying. This was done well in time for the 2006 event – in fact, so much in advance that we were even able to participate in the 2005 Delhi round of the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC).

Rallying is an expensive sport, but the allure of the Raid is too strong for practical constraints to get in the way of impulsive, and perhaps questionable, judgment. The thought of being able to explore some of the most beautiful parts of this country while attempting to traverse some of the harshest terrain on the planet is too tempting a challenge to turn a blind eye. The fact that it's a race, and it tests your driving skills to the absolute limit is just icing on the cake.

The Raid is all about its spectacular setting – its incredible landscape, or moonscape, which is a much more appropriate phrase to describe the high altitude deserts of the Himalayas. It's truly a landscape that's out of this world – both in the literal and figurative sense of the phrase.

If you even attempt to think about the Raid logically, and participating in the Xtreme category especially, it doesn't really make a great deal of sense – it's irrational, it's very hard on the equipment, it takes a massive amount of time, effort and money – not to mention that it can be dangerous as well. But it's not meant to be rational – it's meant to be adventurous, it's meant to test your ability and resolve in the most transparent way. Frankly, rationality doesn't really come into the picture when you're in the middle of a competitive section (a closed stage) crossing the Tanglang La (Pass) at 17,500 feet, trying your utmost to make up ground on your fellow, and also irrational, competitors. And quite honestly, rationality gets well and truly thrown out the window as you attempt to block thoughts of the 3,000-foot drop below while cutting a corner to shave valuable seconds.

rationality gets well and truly thrown out the window as you attempt to block thoughts of the 3,000 foot drop below while cutting a corner to shave valuable seconds
Now if all that sounds a tad too adventurous – there's now a much more sensible way of enjoying what the Raid has to offer. At first, the Raid was only for the die-hard rally participant – but its taken on much more accessible proportions since the addition of the reliability or adventure trial over the past few years. This part of the rally follows the time-speed-distance (TSD) format and covers ground at much more reasonable speeds – moreover, it doesn't require a fully prepped rally car either. On the other hand, if both these options sound a little tame for your liking, and you're the sort of person who falls asleep while skydiving, there's also the option of entering the Raid on a bike. These men (and a woman – there was a lady biker from Austria this year) take no prisoners, and compete the hard way – regardless of the conditions, which can get quite tricky at times. For the Xtreme cars and bikes, the rally is divided into transport and competitive sections. The competitive sections are closed stretches of road ranging from 20 to 120 kilometers where competitors are flagged off individually at intervals of one to two minutes. Needless to say, on these sections, you're expected to go as fast as possible while attempting to stay on the mountain at the same time. The transport sections, as you'd imagine, are open to traffic and lead to the all important competitive stages. For the Adventure trial, the entire route is a transport and competitive stage combined, which means that your ability to calculate on the move needs to be second to none. This year, like in 2004, things didn't go exactly as planned. The weather was drastically different as compared with last year, and the snow greeted us much sooner than expected. So much so that the rally had to be cut short after just three legs (of a total of seven), and we had to turn back for the Lahaul valley, and thereafter Manali, as opposed to continuing on the road to Leh, and onwards to Kargil and Srinagar. The snow came as early as the second day of the rally. We set off from Manali early in the morning in the middle of a rain shower. The rain had been coming down for a while, and you had a sense that things probably weren't as good higher up – at the Rohtang Pass for instance. As expected, there was fresh snow at Rohtang, and after a slight delay we were lucky to make it through. This was a transport section and all the cars and bikes were in convoy to ensure safe passage for all the competitors.

This was Day 2 of the rally, which took participants from the bustle of Manali to the desolate and wide-open expanse of the Spiti Valley. There was only one competitive section on the day, almost 80 kilometers through the Kunzum Pass, and some of the most seemingly inhospitable terrain you can imagine – as we'd find out first hand on the reverse run through the same stage on Day 3.

We lost precious time on Day 1 – the run from Shimla to Manali, which was bisected by four stages that ran through thick forest, apple orchards and small villages – as we had a puncture on the fourth and final stage of the day.

The stage itself was more of an obstacle course rather than a rally stage and claimed more than one victim. In fact, of the 32 cars that started the rally in the Xtreme category, only 16 took the start on Day 2. In our case, our problems were far from terminal but were extremely frustrating nonetheless. We were staying out of trouble as best we could when a right rear puncture occurred. If Raid-de-Himalaya rule # 1 is that the mountain always wins, then rule # 2 is check and double check every single part on the car. We bought a new jack before the start of the rally but never tested it. We also decided not to carry a pressure jack in the car because we didn't have any punctures on competitive stages the previous year. Rule # 3: always expect the unexpected. As you've probably guessed by now, we struggled to get the jack to work and lost a great deal of time in the process.





Our plan for Day 3 was simple, try and make up for lost time. In doing so, on hostile terrain, we blew the radiator. The mystery, through not a conspiracy theory by any stretch, was that the radiator broke from on top and not from the bottom, as you'd expect if it were the result of a direct impact. You have to look on the bright side though, because even the most unfortunate circumstances have silver linings – we broke down not far from a river. We could practically hear the crews in the cars that passed us by chuckle as they saw us trying our hand at rock climbing in an attempt to reach the stream. Needless to say, we were now out of contention and should have probably headed for home. But being in contention isn't always the point, especially in the case of the Raid – finishing is.

We struggled to make it to the end of the day, stopping for water at every given opportunity. But, in the end we found ourselves at the less than luxurious, but still hospitable, Patseo Army camp, which was the night halt for the day.

We swapped our mangled radiator for a shiny new one, made sure everything else was in order, and were willing and ready for the assault towards Leh the next morning. The car was still fast, and unlike what we had experienced for the past three days, we were looking forward to some of the smooth tarmac that lay ahead. Having put all our bad luck behind us, perhaps wishful thinking, we were ready to start making up time in earnest, and fighting our way back up the field. But it wasn't to be.

The snowfall started early in the evening, in fact it seemed to be precipitated by the installation of the new radiator as it came right on cue. Needless to say, it continued all night, and we awoke the next morning to find that the running water was now frozen, as was everything else in sight – its ramifications notwithstanding, it was a spectacular sight indeed. That, I'm afraid, was that – there was no sign of the snow letting up and the passes that lay ahead were blocked. In an instant, well, over a night of snowfall anyway, our rally was truly over. Our efforts had been in vain – but in keeping with our irrational approach, we'll be back next year and we'll take on the mountain in earnest once again. It's not irrational, it's just spectacular.

The autoXchange Gypsy was much better prepared for its onslaught on the Raid-de-Himalaya this year than last. The car notwithstanding, we had previously seen the terrain and knew what to expect – even through we hadn't done a pre-event recee like several others. The Gypsy itself was fitted with a header (free flow exhaust right from the manifold), a K&N conical intake, and our secret weapon, a custom ECU. Well, we thought it would be a secret weapon but found that it was fitted onto several other cars as well – two of which were much more powerful anyway because they were running 1600cc Baleno engine blocks in addition.

The ECU's were flown up from Bangalore, and custom built by a very enterprising entrepreneur, Karthik Reddy – founder of a company named Race Dynamics. At first glance, this unassuming, mild mannered, young man doesn't seem to be the kind of person who's the harbinger of horsepower, but rest assured he delivered on his promise. Race Dynamics has been providing ECU's to several teams in the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC), where its been used successfully, and tested over the past few seasons under the most extreme conditions.

The Race Dynamics ECU quite literally provides performance at the press of a button, or in this case the flick of a switch, as it comes with a dash-mounted switch that activates the ECU. When activated, the Race Dynamics ECU controls all engine parameters such as air/fuel mixture, ignition timing, rev-limit, etc., while the stock ECU controls secondary functions such as the AC, power steering, etc. Each ECU is custom tuned on the car for optimum results based on type of use, driving style, etc. When deactivated, the engine reverts to stock ECU settings.

After installation, we did a few test runs during which Karthik was able to tune the engine parameters in real time. The end result was a very real and discernable increase in power with the ECU activated. The beauty of this system is that you're able to turn the ECU on and off while on the move, and can therefore get a real sense of the power gain. Anyone expecting earth-shattering increases in horsepower will be disappointed however. In reality, the increase is linear and across the rev range, which itself is extended as the rev-limit can be increased. As Karthik said, in typical Yoda fashion, horsepower increases don't come easy.

If you're able to get a 10% increase in power, which is good, in a 100 bhp engine, you're getting an increase of just 10 bhp – so the car doesn't exactly behave like a caged monster that’s just been set free. Nevertheless, what you do get is a very real increase, unlike a lot of aftermarket performance products that promise earth-shattering performance while only delivering slightly higher decibel levels and little else. The downside is that it does affect fuel economy by about 10% because you're running a richer air/fuel mixture, and therefore using more fuel.

According to Karthik, in testing on their bone-stock swift, there were able to cut the 0-100 acceleration times down by a whole second, and 20 to 80 roll-on times by almost 2 seconds.