My delight however soon turned to rage, because all of a sudden and without even letting the song reach mid-way, a woman with the sort of voice you hear in a daytime advertisement for banks, announcing their deposit schemes interrupted to ‘remind’ the listeners about the hazards of drug abuse.[break] How dare she? What gives her the right to barge in on one of my favorite songs, a song which is played on the radio only once every 25 years, to tell me about the effects of drug abuse, a subject I’m sure no one’s interested in including the drug addicts. I mean, listening to her repeat the same thing at least once every half an hour actually makes you want to try that stuff if you already haven’t!
Local radio stations all do this. They have the power to interrupt your listening pleasure with their irrelevant traffic reports, and none of them bother to turn off the ‘interrupt’ button when the announcement is over. They hope, of course, that you’ll be so impressed with their regular programming that you’ll continue to listen for the rest of your life. What you actually desire to do is drive over and ram your car into their reception desk.
As I write this article, inside a candle lit cafe, a light drizzle and an eerie softness has descended on Lakeside, Pokhara. It is beautiful out there. Absolutely beautiful. There are children running about with red noses and rosy cheeks, along with bewildered-looking men hunched over a ‘baag chal’ game, oblivious to all the roadside shopping, not knowing how much anything costs or what’s suitable. The street is filled with people wearing bright coloured t-shirts going back to their hotels. It’s like a holiday scene from the years, before the climate started to change. No, that’s not right but it makes me feel all gooey, warm and well disposed towards my fellow man.
And this gooiness is why I didn’t actually empty all the swear words in my vocabulary (and I can swear pretty well both in Nepali and Hindi) towards the driver of the Kia Piccanto that obstructed my way for what seemed like 15 kms on the way to Pokhara. The driver looked old, and it was pretty hot. So although the road was smooth and empty, no more slippery than a sheet of salty sandpaper, I knew his reflexes were not as they had always been and therefore, 30 kms an hour on an empty highway made sense! In case you’re wondering, I’m being sarcastic. All the more so because I was comfortably cruising in a Chevrolet Captiva which has enough torque in the 2.4 litres engine to reach 100 km/hr in 11 seconds. Stuck on a relatively empty highway behind a lame driver is equivalent to being gifted a powerful hunting rifle and forced to turn into a vegetarian. We see evidence of this intelligence everywhere we turn. Of course, there are still idiots who drive through single lanes at 100 km/hr on their stupid ‘modified’ bikes, and there those that still defy logic and buy cheap Chinese imitations, but for most part, all of humankind is bright, sassy and clever. Then again, not really.
For many travelers, Pokhara is an opportunity to take a quite, relaxed break before and/or after hitting the mountain trails. For others, it’s a place to savor steaks for dinner along with cold beer after “weeks” of dal bhat during the trek. The place has museums, caves, waterfalls and Tibetan villages in its surrounding hills. And then there is Dhampus, a place at the foothill of the mountain range with roads dusty enough to dare any young driver with an SUV (I’m automatically assuming elder drivers are more mature. Read: boring). And if you have the keys to a Chevrolet Captiva, reasons galore why you should proceed to drive an hour into the bumpy and extremely dusty road. An introduction to this place: Dhampus is a gateway to Annapurna Conservation Area. The place serves as one of the main entry points to Annapurna Base Camp and to other trekking trails of the Annapurna Region. The village ranges from an altitude of 800m at the base to 1600m. Journey to the village begins from Phedi village, a 15 minutes drive from Pokhara. From here, it’s an hour’s drive through magnificent forest nesting various species of birds to the village of Chandrakot, inhabited by warm-hearted, hospitable Gurung people. The overwhelming altitude differences between the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges make Dhampus a vantage spot to observe the mountains with Tukuche Peak (6,920 m.) and Dhaulagiri (8,167 m.) incredibly close to you, not to forget Pokhara’s favourite Mt. Machhapuchhre.
With the Chevrolet Captiva however, driving to Dhampus was hardly a challenge. Rather there were a lot of ‘can your SUV do this?’ moments. The ground clearance of 197.0 mm was large enough to avoid boulders on the way and the SUV’s weight of 1,820.0 kgs was just enough for the vehicle to hug the ground as you exercise the freedom to accelerate even though you’re going uphill for most part of the drive. The front brakes are ventilated, the rear ones are disk, and even the automatic version has an option for the five manual gear system in case you don’t rely on the instincts of the vehicle to get you through the rocky climb. There’s plenty of adjustment space for the seat and steering wheel, allowing you the elevation of the high driving position that makes the 4x4 owners feel, rather strangely, empowered. Also, visibility wasn’t bad at the front of the car, but the thick window pillars at the back meant the view to the rear wasn’t as clear as it could be. And I simply loved its music system.
I’m intrigued by all kinds of good music systems. My obsession with good sound whilst driving probably dates back to my first car during college days, a worn down Toyota Datsun, that barely made it from one end to the other. Somehow I scraped enough money to install two speakers and a Chinese player; all I could afford then. I’ll tell you how bad this stereo was. Once some thieves broke into it, stole a rear light and some clothes lying on the back seat, but didn’t even bother stealing the music system!
A loud and clear contrast, the Chevrolet Captiva, comes with six optimum quality speakers that absorb the loudness so well largely because of its huge sub-woofers. With more consumers today switching to digital audio downloads over CD purchases, Chevrolet has cleverly designed the music system with options that increase its compatibility with an array of portable digital audio players and formats. Chevrolet has stuck to the standard auxiliary input whilst cleverly allowing a provision for iPod users who like to tune into the FM station via their Belkin connectors. If the sound system impressed me with its clarity and near perfectness, the seats blew me off. The rear seat offers a lot of space and comfort and the front seats are equally luxurious. There’s a sense of a big occasion when you get into the driver’s seat as you’re greeted by a wide array of “empowering” switches. You can change the music stations, fiddle with the volume and the modes, all while you drive without having to bat an eyelid as the controls are conveniently placed on the steering wheel.
Such has been the pace of progress that the SUVs of today, the really good ones, are so well designed and created that there’s very little room left for the upcoming models to improvise on. The Chevrolet Captiva wasn’t expected to change this script either. The Captiva therefore may not necessarily be the best SUV available in the market, but its price and detail improvements have definitely nudged it closer to being one of the best.
Note: To dispel any conspiracy theories that may arise from this article, please note that the author drove to Dhampus and back, with a neat little stop for a few days at the bars in Pokhara to wet his beak. And the author is a pretty accomplished driver. However, should you agree to this note, you should also know that – there are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.
The next few years are going to be terrible. There will be hardships not really seen in this country for 40 years. Unemployment will go through the roof, companies will fail. And to keep the battered banks afloat, more and more money we simply don’t have will need to be scrounged from the Chinese. It’ll be hell, no matter which party wins the election in March.
But we, as a nation, do have a wit that bubbles to the surface at times like this. And I’d like to see it being applied on the motorway signs. This is why I’d like to finish with a suggestion. As the recession bites, people will be unable to afford to go out very much. This means there will be many stand-up comedians struggling to pay mortgages on the lovely homes they bought when times were good.
Surely, these comedians could be used to keep the nation amused as property prices tumble and jobs are lost. And what better outlet is there than the overhead gantry? We could give Jimmy Carr the M1 and Stephen Fry the M4. Maybe Stan Boardman could get a Northern motorway like the M62 and Billy Connolly the M8. I quite fancy reserving Michael McIntyre for my run home on the M40.
“Checking out at Argos is like bingo where you win what you’ve already paid for”.
I’d slow down to read that. And then everyone would win. The fun-suckers and the rest of us, who know that the only way to get through the months that lie ahead is to have a good laugh.
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