Syd Stelvio, Pearl of India - Day 17 – Hampi to Goa – 366km

Day 17 contained some of the best driving roads yet seen on the Pearl of India, if not the best. But like all good things, some patience was required before we could all enjoy them, with the standard run along the highway to begin the day.

What would we do without our morning constitutional, though, fighting through the morning traffic, scrapping our way between the mopeds and ancient Mahindra trucks. This has become as routine as a cup of coffee. To be fair though, it didn’t take too long before we were speeding along empty highway, with every kilometre propelling us closer to the jungle covered slopes of the Western Ghats, the barrier between us and the Goan coast, our target for the day.

Unfortunately, despite the last report singing their praises, the Fitzcharles in Car 10 would not be joining us on the road. News filtered through almost immediately after going to press that the Mercedes was on a flat bed, to compete in this event no more. The commentators curse perhaps, or in this instance, correspondents curse. A real shame for them and us, and scant reward for the couple’s perseverance.

There were plenty of kilometres to cover on day 17 before we could begin to play, nearly 200 of them in fact, almost two thirds of the days total. But as the cars turned off onto the small road that would host the first regularity, there were signs that it would be worth it. It wasn’t a tricky navigational exercise to kick things off, indeed there were no junctions on the road that meandered between the fields that grew a mixture of crops, flanked by palms and ancient Banyan trees. The road was rough in places though, and care was needed not to ground out cars on the larger potholes. There was only one timing point to worry about on the 6km reg, and three cars judged their speed seamlessly across the reg, achieving the magic zero for a perfect run. One of the crews who secured a zero was car 17, the boys in the Escort pushing hard to topple the Hunts from top spot. The other two top achievers were lower down the order, with Mike Dreelan and Bob Pybus doing well in the Lagonda and Mark and Loes Thieme also scoring zero in the Bentley Derby.

Almost immediately after the reg there was a run through a typical small village, but with an arrowed re-route through the even tinier back streets of the settlement due to a wedding blocking the main road. As the cars scuttled between the tightly packed houses there was a good gaggle of onlookers, sari clad ladies waving at the drivers and excited schoolboys hoping for selfies. This kind of welcome from the locals has become a real hallmark of our time here, and for this enthusiasm we owe the people of India a great deal of thanks.

A run through the ever-thickening vegetation followed, and the road also began to climb as we headed into the Ghats. The second regularity of the day was an even steeper climb, and in terms of this event it was also a long one, at 14km. There were three timing points to keep on top of, and with the climbing involved it had the potential to do a bit of sorting out. Irrespective of any results, we must take a moment to appreciate the sound of a well sorted internal combustion engine, propelling a car up a mountainside. The engines were singing, particularly the big Ford of Andy and Roy Buchan, rip-snorting its way up the regularity fully on the pipe, with the din reverberating off the steep walls of the mountainside. Andy may have been pressing a bit too hard on the loud pedal, though, arriving 36 seconds early into the final time control on the reg, a mistake that would allow the Fangio of Tommy Dreelan and George Barrack to leapfrog them into fourth place overall and first in class when the days results were released. Tommy and George, along with the Watts in car 19, were best on the reg overall, racking up just three seconds of penalty across the timing points, with the Fangio hitting a zero on the first part of the reg, a performance that would help the green Chevy to the best performance on the day.