Our first stretch of travel took us from Pune to Mumbai, starting off in the early hours of the morning when the sun was yet to rise and the sky was still fraught in darkness. None of this bothered me as I piloted the Fortuner, though, because the projector headlamps had amazing spread and reach, allowing me to see things clearly regardless of the blackness that enveloped everything but the car. Slam the accelerator down and the Fortuner pushes forward with a deep grunt from that turbocharged 3.0-litre, 171-PS engine that unleashes all its horses at an early 3,600 RPM, and a riveting 343 Nm of torque spread across 1,400-3,400 revs. All this culminates into a deceptively quick car, particularly considering its massive proportions, and you feel like an absolute king sitting high up in the saddle, the whole road opening up before you.
The run to Mumbai was easily achieved and we immediately headed to Bandra for some photo-ops while the traffic (or lack thereof) still co-operated. First stop – the Bandra Worli Sea Link. The four-lane cable-stayed bridge stretches across 5.6 km and is a wondrous feat of modern Indian engineering. Next up we turned away from the sea and towards the interior, visiting the magnificent Mount Mary Church whose origins can be traced to as far back as AD 1570, even though the structure you see today took its final shape just over a century ago. After a brief visit to the Basilica, we headed out towards Carter Road to check out what some local graffiti taggers had done to beautify (or deface, depending on where you stand on the street-art argument) the walls of the lane there. We then visited Candies for a quick bite before making our way towards Gujarat, the land that both the current Prime Minister and my ancestors come from.
