Woke up early to take in the sunrise over breakfast. A quick checkout and loaded the bags into the Bolero Neo followed by a customary man and machine photo. The convoy for this year’s expedition comprised of the new kid on the block, the XUV700, almost a dozen of them, new Thars, the Getaway service vehicle and of course our Bolero Neo. The drive was flagged off by His Highness Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar of Udaipur, who also spent some time talking to the participants and clicking a few photos as well. The customary radio check done, music playlist checked and there came Vinod on the radio with “Convoy rolling” as he led us in a white XUV700. Our destination for the first day would be Kumbhalgarh.

Udaipur had just woken up as our convoy hit the streets. Bad patches of road, stray animals and people coming the wrong way, it took a while to hit the highway but once we did, we finally got onto the fantastic roads of Rajasthan. While the XUVs were outright quicker, our Bolero Neo was no slouch. The engine is quite tractable and cruising in the 6th gear was a breeze. Add to that some fantastic music playing. What also helped was that me and Rohit shared similar taste in music and that made the drive even better.

We took a detour off the highway to head to the Jawai Leopard Sanctuary where we would spend a few hours. We came across our first hill climb and the reward was hot lunch waiting at the top. The Bolero Neo climbed up without a sweat, the diesel engine is quite torquey and the Mechanical Locking Differential (MLD) also helps despite being a rear wheel drive. There is nothing like having lunch on the bonnet of a car and that’s exactly what I did. Post lunch lunch, we rolled down hill and drove though some fields to end up at other hill climb, this time it was tea time and a samosa break. The Bolero Neo once again quickly gobbled up the incline and I was soon sipping a hot cuppa tea with my mates and watching the sunset.

A surreal experience to say the least. And while I wanted to stay longer it was time to head down again and proceed towards The Aodhi Hotel at Kumbhalgarh, our night halt. We rolled into the parking lot of the hotel just before dinner time. A traditional welcome and hot shower later, it was time to unwind over dinner and some traditional dances. Hit the sack soon after as the next day was going to be a long one.