GREAT DRIVING ROADS
Lost in this day and age of G-Quads and expressways is a hidden piece of tarmac connecting the town of Bhor and Wai
Driving the Hyundai Verna to an undiscovered gem of a road with great views, tucked away deep in the Maharashtrian countryside between Bhor and Wai
THE JOURNEY IS MORE REWARDING than the destination, right? The feeling of going somewhere is actually more exciting than the ‘somewhere’. But this was not a journey that was particularly rewarding, let me tell you that. The destination in question was Bhor, a town perched on the Western Ghats not too far from our home base in Pune. We’d been tipped off by a friend of evo India, Ajay Adiya, that Bhor was surrounded not just by incredible views with lakes and lush greenery but also equally incredible roads to drive on. And unlike the roads previously featured in the series, it isn’t a popular weekend getaway for hot blooded petrolheads. It’s more old school in that sense. It’s a road that was travelled upon before our highways nerved into every nook and corner of India.
Coming along with us was something suitably old school — the Hyundai Verna. Okay, with ventilated seats, an 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system, a sunroof, wireless charging and lots more kit, it isn’t old school in the traditional sense. But with SUVs taking over the world, a proper three-box sedan felt like it would be more at home on this road. The Verna is also a car that has been around in Hyundai India’s portfolio for a while now, much before we started lapping up SUVs like we do today.
To get there we’d hopped on to the NH48, which is a wonderful six-laned playground for the Hyundai Verna that we’d taken with us. The 1.5-litre naturallyaspirated engine stays eerily silent at the typical 80100kmph highway speeds and while it may not pack the outright punch of a turbo-petrol, the 113bhp and 144Nm introduce themselves in a more polite fashion. I switched on cruise control and before we knew it, we’d
reached the district of Satara which is where Ajay had told us to turn off the highway, dip below the underpass and cross over to the other side onto the road that leads to Bhor. At this point I must tell you that the road to Bhor doesn’t initially identify itself as a great driving road. It is quite narrow and the road surface is bumpy. Ajay had warned us about this and told us to carry on until we saw a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the legendary Maratha king. The statue sits at a crossroad, and we had to hang a left here. The road ran along the base of some hills and while the surface of the road wasn’t much of an improvement, the lack of people on it was. The hill climb itself lay ahead and started about 10km from the crossroad. A sign of good things to come?
If only someone had told us that. The road did not look promising. We passed a bike once a minute, a car every five minutes. It felt like a world very different from the crowded tarmac heading up to Lavasa or Lonavala, and if anything, the surface got even more uneven. Although the Verna’s soft ride did a great job
IT FELT LIKE A WORLD VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE CROWDED TARMAC HEADING UP TO LAVASA
at ironing out the bumps, this wasn’t a ‘great driving road’. Don’t tell this to Ajay but we actually stopped and debated whether we should drive ahead or turn back. And to be honest, if it weren’t for Rohit finding a breakfast spot further down the road, we’d have picked the latter.
But as we climbed up the ghat and headed towards the town of Wai, the bumps smoothened out, the road got more interesting with some corners that looked like they’d been picked right from the Nürburgring. It got a bit more wild too. Five-foot-tall grass arched over onto the road and there was a gang of langurs harassing us to stop. In hindsight, I’d like to thank them because only as we stopped and got a bird’s eye view did we realise what a gem Ajay had helped us discover.
The entire area looked untouched by humans. There wasn’t construction on any of the mountain faces for some distance and with the monsoon in full swing, the hills which are usually a shade of brown were bright green as far as the eye could see. And things only got better. The road got twistier with more dips, more level changes and the lack of blind turns meant that we could put the Verna through its paces. We’ve been very vocal about our love for Hyundai’s new-gen automatic transmissions and the Verna’s IVT is no different. It felt like it was pre-empting the power I needed for the corner before I even swung the ’wheel. Speaking of the steering, the Verna isn’t actually relaying a lot of feedback through your fingers and the steering feels light, but it is accurate. On the flipside, it makes longer drives less of an arm workout and to be frank, that goes with the Verna’s character. Don’t get me wrong, the Verna will move if you ask it to. But the comfortable ride, the smooth powertrain, even the plush seats all guide you towards taking it a little easy. And that’s all the better because the road to Wai isn’t very pleasurable for pushing the limits of your car. There are some off camber corners that can catch you out and this is a public road after all. Let off the throttle just a little, brake just a few metres earlier. Settle into a rhythm, and then the road starts to make sense. The surface quality is rather good, there are very few potholes and the only speed breakers we encountered were when passing through small villages where it is safer to slow down in any case. The Verna, even though it looks like a low-slung sedan, has great ground clearance and while the speed breakers here were no challenge for it, even some of the more pointier ones in Pune couldn’t scrape its underbelly. Even so, you get to sit nice and low in the cabin and it is easy to find a comfortable, enthusiastic driving position.
THE VERNA, EVEN THOUGH IT LOOKS LIKE A LOW-SLUNG SEDAN, HAS GREAT GROUND
CLEARANCE
After ignoring Rohit’s pleas for a breakfast stop for an hour or so, we finally decided to turn back and head towards Pune. But as soon as we’d made the U-turn, we spotted a steep, narrow road going up the hill. I nudged Rohit, made a puppy face and his hunger to find new locations to shoot at meant that I was cleared to climb. And boy are we glad we did. The tarmac seemed freshly laid, there was almost nothing at the top and it seemed the road had just been made to connect the farms up on the hill to the ones below. But if the view on the rest of the drive was spectacular, this was the icing on the cake. We could see our start point in the distance, rolling hills covered most of the foreground with a lake in the back. It looked like one of my childhood drawings of a
AT NO POINT DID IT FEEL LIKE WE WERE JUST A FEW HOURS AWAY FROM PUNE
landscape had come alive. The clouds were all around us, covering the vistas one moment and then receding to take our breath away the next. It was the perfect climax. We could even spot the road we’d just driven on and trace it all the way back to the start. I’d love to tell you how to get to this view point but to be honest we didn’t know where we were either. There wasn’t a soul around. Light rain and a cold morning meant that the farmers had gone into their shelters and Google Maps couldn’t get going due to poor network connectivity.
We did find our way back though thanks to the Verna’s offline navigation. I nudged the sunroof open, and we took it slow on the way back. Some of the driving roads that we’ve covered have been just that
— great roads. But the road from Bhor to Wai is more than just that. Yes, it is fun but it is also an escape. At no point did it feel like we were just a couple of hours away from the hustle and bustle of Pune. A picture taken from the top of that hill wouldn’t look out of place in a travel brochure for Europe. The approach is a bit dull, I’ll give you that. But that’s what makes this road so good. It is tucked away. You wouldn’t think a nondescript, narrow road with a surface that could be a great rattle test for cars would lead to one of the best weekend destinations that we’ve come across. And to think that it’s right here in our backyard is liberating. Maybe sometimes the destination is more rewarding than the journey after all. ⌧