After a quick tour I climbed into the passenger seat of car number 121 of Sanjiv Singh, a veteran off-roader, who casually asked me to relax and enjoy the next 10 minutes as we approached the deep pit. Enjoy this? I asked myself when we came face to face with the pit. At first, I was anticipating to hear a heart-wrenching grinding sound when the components met the dirt followed by a somersaulting Gurkha. However, the approach and departure angles on this RFC Gurkha are so extreme that hardly any part of the vehicle touched the ground. Besides, the modified leaf-spring suspension with heavy-duty shock-absorbers, which have 400 mm of travel, provided the right ground clearance to get the Gurkha through the pit without any incident.
Next, it was the steep incline followed by a similarly sharp descent. Four low was already selected and all Sanjiv did was gently nudge the throttle to let the immense torque from the four-cylinder 2.2-litre CRDI engine propel the giant Gurkha to the top of the mountain. Getting down, however, made me extremely nervous as suddenly my eyes glided from a cloudy sky to the dirt and grass beneath. It was extremely nerve-racking, but for the Gurkha it was cakewalk.
After conquering the little mountain, we had to descend to what seemed like eternity – for the next few moments all I saw through the windscreen was mother earth. Here I experienced the superior articulation of the Gurkha. One wheel hanging in the air with the other three firmly on the loose soil showed how well the Gurkha can handle such situations without tripping.
