Offroading with the Jeep Thrills team

It was around mid-September and there was a half day event organized by the Jeep Thrills group. Now, I'd never say no for an offroad get together and the half day events are the most non-disruptive events from a weekend perspective. The only thing I have to take care is to get home before evening and take the two lovely ladies out.



Unlike most of the other events, the meeting spot for this one was quite close by for me since we were all meeting up at Marathahalli bridge and then heading towards Hoskote. The spot we finally found was beyond Hoskote, somewhere near Tekal. The only issue was that it was almost past 11.30 by the time we started the trail and that meant I had to wrap up early to get back home and avoid trouble.



The terrain was all rocks and that meant that I had to make sure there's no underbody damage at the end of the event. The first obstacle was a nice 4ft climb on a boulder that was nearly vertical. There was a small ramp at the bottom that assisted the launch, but post that it was only about holding your nerves and not letting go of the throttle until you are on top. Once at the top, there was just enough place for a jeep before hitting the rocks at the front so one had to be careful not to roll it forward once the climbing was done.



The gypsies are always the more dramatic ones in such obstacles since they can only climb with a good amount of throttle to build the torque, unlike the jeeps which can crawl up at fairly slower speeds.



The longer wheel base Bolero Invader had a bit of a struggle to get up but he finally made it with a few attempts. I also needed a second attempt to make it since the initial line of approach wasn't proper and the jeep was skidding to the left instead of climbing up.





The next obstacle was even more tricky as it required careful negotiation through the rocky steps and then exit towards right with an awkwardly tilted jeep for about 10 meters. Underbody scrapes were unavoidable, but I just didn't want to hit anything too hard. Looking at everyone else's attempt, there wasn't a soul who came through without any clanking noises but thankfully there were no breakages.



Again the gypsies made it out, but the lack of articulation makes them very vulnerable to a rollover. Add to that the fact that they have to always throttle their way out makes it even more scarier. But although it seemed dangerous, we didn't have any incidents.



I had initially gotten my wheel stuck as I got down the first rocky step, but then with a little bit of cajoling and reversing I managed to squeeze the jeep out from the obstacle. There were surely some thuds that could be heard, but nothing serious.



The right turn exit was quite tricky and most of the guys got an extra helping hand to shift the center of gravity and make it through.



By the time everyone made it though this obstacle, it was already past 2PM and given that we had to stop for lunch before we get home, it was time for us to pack up. The JeepThrills team with Dwarak, Vivek and MP Sreenivas continued ahead for a little more I guess while we took leave and headed back home after a quick photoshoot.



PS: Images that are not watermarked are sourced from the JoB and JT facebook group. Copyrights belong to their respective owners.

A 4x4 Trip to Yercaud with Jeepers of Bangalore

I've always traveled to and through remote places in all my trips, but since the jeep has come in, life's gotten even more interesting. Off-beat trails are now a norm and every jeep trip feels incomplete if the 4x4 low range gearbox doesn't see any action.



After the family trip to Sakleshpur, it was time for all the boys to head out to Yercaud for an overnight trip. Although, I had not been to Yercaud until now, what I had heard about the place was nothing great and so it always got skipped from our travel list. It seemed like a typical hill station with a lake and a couple of view points, which honestly we wouldn't care much about. But this trip was going to be different, we weren't going as tourists, but rather as adventurists in search of a good trail.



The jeeper buddies from Salem helped in arranging a reasonable dorm style accommodation which had some open area in case we wanted to camp out. Since we were a big group, we had the whole place to ourselves which was good. There were a couple of trails planned so that we could have some fun with the jeeps and there was a camp out dinner as well.



In spite of some minor technical difficulties on the way, we all made it in one piece and all machines were still running as we climbed the twisty ghats to get to the top. We reached post lunch and quickly headed out to our first trail, which unfortunately didn't really materialize since we didn't get the permission to go in.



But that didn't dampen our spirits, we managed to find another spot where we happily crawled over some rocky obstacles to make it to a hill top for a photo opportunity.





The evening was filled with some music and laughter as the whole group sat together and discussed a lot of jeep stuff. We also had a rather unusual "ice-breaking" session by our sooper admin KVK, nobody can ever forget that!



Next day began with a drive up through mountains but was briefly interrupted by a sensational recovery that had to be done for one of the jeeps. Sometimes, jeepers underestimate the power bestowed upon them by the jeeps and that can lead to some serious situations both on-road and off-road. Anyway, after the successful recovery of the vehicle, we all had a hearty laugh about what mistakes to avoid.



Next up we were all on a rather off-beat trail that leads to a waterfall and this time we made sure we had the required permissions etc.



The trail hadn't been used in a while and was full with overgrown vegetation all around. It wasn't a very difficult trail since it was mostly dry, but had it rained, it would have transformed into something totally different. We were back around lunch time and by now it was also time for us to head back.



Our friends from Salem made sure that our way back was more interesting than the way up. It was through some really scenic track which had zero traffic, more so because there wasn't a road to begin with. It was like one of those estate trails with just gravel at most places. Good thing was we bypassed Salem completely and exited out somewhere on the highway towards Bangalore. Rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, but we had loads of memories to take back and most importantly it changed my perception about what Yercaud had to offer. Just goes to show that life's completely different when you drive a jeep!

PS: The non-watermarked pics are from the JoB FB group and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

Jeepers of Bangalore - Offroading, Camping & Barbeque Night

A small apolitical jeep owners Whatsapp group that had started back in Aug/Sep 2013 with just a few of us had slowly and steadily grown in a much larger group, there was even a Facebook group by now. After a few rounds of discussion on the name for the group, we had settled down on calling it "Jeepers of Bangalore" a.k.a JoB. Using my limited photoshop skills, I got a logo design for the group and thus we were now bonded together with the JoB stickers on our jeeps.

As JoB, we intend to enjoy some off-roading fun without bringing in any commercial interests and keep it as simple as we can. The group was aimed to create a platform for the newbies and veterans to interact and share views and knowledge about 4x4s and offroading. The members come from various backgrounds and the diversity helps in connecting with folks who are very resourceful in areas where you may not have any knowledge. There isn’t any joining formality other than having a 4x4 and passion for offroading.

Everyday conversations in the group vary from technical discussions about engines, gearboxes and transmissions to which color looks the best or what new accessories someone has added on their jeep. About 400-500 messages a day is a norm and sometimes we hit that mark even in 3-4 hours if there was some interesting topic being discussed. A lot of members are now carrying portable battery packs and/or recharging their phones by twice a day, some even bought new phones with higher battery capacity just to be able to survive through the resource intensive conversations.

Now, we had done a camping trip sometime in January that was super fun event with the tiring offroad trail and evening barbeque with beverages. Everyone felt that it was time to do it again before the summer set in and the days became unbearably hot (yes, it happens even in Bangalore nowadays). A quick show of hands revealed that there was a lot many interested participants this time around. It was going to be a much bigger event than we’ve had before. It made us happy and anxious about how it was all going to get managed considering that we hadn’t dealt with more than 10 jeep convoys so far. Plus, with about 20 odd jeeps turning up for the event there were going to be more than 40 people at the campsite for the night. We had to make sure everyone made through the trail safe and sound in time for the evening activities to setup their tents and fired up their barbeques. The Whatsapp interactions were further intensified, you could literally feel the excitement in the group.

Some of us already had camping gear, but there were a few who were buying stuff especially for this event. At the previous camping event, we were just about a dozen guys and we had volunteers who had brought food, beverages etc for the whole group, but this time it was going to be impossible to do that because of the size of the group. So a decision was made to have everyone do a potpourri of sorts and individually bring in stuff for the barbeque. We also needed more grills and luckily we had about 6 grills between all of us which was good. This actually proved to be a really good idea since we had a lot of choice once the grills were fired up.

The day began with a 7AM customary breakfast meeting at the New Agarwal Bhavan on Tumkur road post which the convoy proceeded towards the trail with packed lunch of Idli-vadas. I had Yatin join me for the event, it was going to be his maiden off-road trip so he was rather excited to be there.

A quick briefing session before we began helped in making sure everyone knew who the spotters were going to be and some other basic rules to be followed on the trail. Basically we wanted to make sure that people don’t go wandering off the trail on their own and/or take unnecessary risks and compromise safety in any way. There were quite a few newbies as well who were going to slot into 4L for the first time. As a group, we needed to give them enough support and encouragement to handle the stress on both man and machine. Our objective was very clear, the OTR was all about having fun, we weren’t out there to prove a point about anybody’s driving skill or capability of their machine. A successful day would be to complete the trail and return back safely without any major damage to any of the machines.

The trail is a rocky canal bed near a friend’s farm on the outskirts of Bangalore and has obstacles of varying degree of difficulty. We had done a part of the same trail last time, but no matter how many times you've done an offroad trail, there's always some new surprise waiting for you each time you visit.

There are various opportunities to make steep gradient climbs like this one.

Or get tested for articulation on rocks like this.

or like this.

Get stuck and be winched out in some places.

Or take the dare for some underbody damage and make it out in style like ThunderBolt

There are rock faces that make you skid all the way down till you hit the bumper on the ground.

And places where you can slide and ride through the slushy pits

There’s also enough for the SUVs to try out even if they can’t risk the rocky obstacles.

Most of the times, all you need is a good spotter to take you over those rocks without hitting anything underneath.

End of the day, you know it’s all worth the effort when everyone makes it through the trail without any major breakdown.

But this isn’t the end of the story - the actual party starts after the jeeps are parked. There’s a flurry of activities going around and people are busy pitching their tents, checking/fixing stuff on the jeep, setting up their barbeque grills and finally opening up their chiller boxes for refreshments. What follows is a lot of cooking, both food and stories until it’s time for people to crash into their tents (literally).

PS> Most of the images used here are from other participants and sourced from the JoB FB group. Copyrights belong to the respective owners.