Hyundai Great India Drive PART 1: We took the Venue from Mumbai to Pokhran – CarWale

When you are younger, a highway journey across three states and over 3000kms is like a rather fast and blurry long-distance marathon. You just want to drive till you furiously rub your tired eyes at night, look at the odo and exclaim “never again” only to repeat the process all over the next day. 

However, with age comes responsibility and an urge to go everywhere at a sane speed while taking in the sights and sounds just a little bit more. Our first day saw us just inch over the 350km mark but it was rather a colourful drive interspersed with good highways, bad highways and what could optimistically be described as forged pathways in the dirt. 

Club this with troves of stray bovines, misspelt roads signs (No U-trun, Shout-Indian food, weight for saide) and the constant voice of our camera crews directing us for various shots…makes for one hell of a day doesn’t it?

And then there were Theplas! Oh, how could we forget those lifesavers? At our first food halt and once we had dug in after many hours of driving, we truly understood why it was such a popular item for vegetarian Indians to carry abroad on their European or American tours.

 Every place we stopped for a bite in Gujrat served fresh Theplas made right in front of us and we could see the glee (of sorts) in the eyes of restaurant employees as we kept eating plate after plate well into the double-digit mark. 

Our unrelenting pace hardly phased the Venue though. We were driving the 1.4-litre diesel with a six-speed manual and I could best describe this a yummy combination (Team bhi khush, wallet bhi khush). No matter what we experienced, the real-time fuel consumption gauge refused to show a number less than 19.4kmpl. 

With its futuristic looks, low set headlamps and “Great India Drive” stickers pasted on the sides, the Venue turned heads repeatedly and this set the stage for what we could expect in the sparseness rural Rajasthan.