When the co-director of your company owns a lovely resort in Rishikesh, and every director’s schedule only allows a weekend meeting, you head to the Himalayas for a business-cum-pleasure break. In a Honda WR-V, with a friend who happens to be a yoga teacher. You’ll see why this is important.
We started off from Delhi a bit grumpy, my companion, because of our “unearthly hour” of departure at 4.45 a.m.; me, because I had actually wanted to leave at 4 a.m., but was faced with delays of the refusing-to-wake-up type!
The 1.5-litre engine of the WR-V diesel, that is rated at 100PS, was quite the eager beaver when it came to overhauling HMV traffic that rumbles on Delhi’s road during the pre-dawn hours. I realised that even though there is a fair bit of diesel clatter, the engine is quite good, as long as it is kept near the 3000rpm mark, and to keep it there the gearbox needs to be worked often.
Minor irregularities on the road are soaked up quite admirably by the suspension, though the diesel clatter does come into the cabin at times. While the power surge all but completely disappears past 4000 rpm, the added sixth gear keeps the rpm down, so that the engine ticks along nicely at 100 kph and has the grunt to go to 120 too, without downshifting. This is also what gives the car its great fuel economy.
At this speed, we were soon past Ghaziabad and Meerut, and on the Muzaffarnagar Bypass. Here, we came across a huge cattle-fair, where bullocks and buffaloes were being auctioned.
In a world where everyone is trying to find a niche on social media, my yoga friend’s thing is to do headstands at interesting places. So amidst the bargaining and bartering, she did one. I am sure that for years to come, as they pull at their hookahs under the village tree, the cattlemen reverently talk about that city girl in track pants and how she turned their world upside down.
The raspy little WR-V was on song all the way to Roorkee and past Haridwar. When I say little, I mean that its dimensions are perfect for that nip and tuck on single-lane roads. But the WR-V is quite the roomy car inside. The seats are well contoured, firm and generous enough so you don’t keep bumping shoulders with the passenger when there’s a rough patch.
On the twisty road to the Bull’s Retreat, where my meeting was, the WR-V did feel a little out of its depth for quick overtaking, but again working the gearbox vigorously to keep the rpm needle between 2,000 and 4,000 made the car a little more eager.
Meeting and brainstorming out of the way, the next day all of us decided to do a spot of white water rafting with me racing them downhill in the car.
The put-in point was at Shivpuri, where the Ganga actually breaks into numerous streams as it rushes towards Rishikesh. This meant that we had to cross a few of them to get to the beach where we’d get into the rafts. And with its 188mm ground clearance, handling minor streams wasn’t a hassle at all.
In fact, true to the active-lifestyle image the Honda portrays with the WR-V, the car crossed the streams with aplomb.
Once the rafters were on board, it was a race against the river to get to the Golf Course, as one of the rapids that has many hydro holes, is named.
Now, I needed to drive there before the rafts got there, and the current of the river, of course, helped them along. I, on the other hand, had to drive downstream, cross a bridge and back-track upstream to find the narrow broken road going down to the river bank, park and then scramble over boulders to get my photo by way of proof! By now, I knew exactly how to make every single horse that resided in the crankcase run at full gallop.
That afternoon, after some quick headstands alongside a mildly surprised sadhu and an impatient scooterist on the Laxman Jhula, we headed back towards Delhi. After I had parked, I was pleasantly surprised to find that even with all my hard driving, the WR-V had delivered a very pocket-pleasing 18.5 kpl to a litre of diesel.
