Mahindra Off-Road Academy Experience – Learning 4×4

Our next obstacle was called ‘Zig Zag’ and this obstacle was all about reading the terrain and not driving in a straight line. As the name suggests, it’s a climb uphill with the surface offering little or no traction making it necessary for you to drive zig zag and letting the four-wheel drive system make the most of the traction provided to it, upon clearing this hill climb you’re greeted by a downhill decline that’s very bumpy and we were insisted to pick our lines of approach and ditch the zig-zag driving and focus more on clutch and steering control. This too was cleared by everyone and the only true obstacle turned out to be the sun setting and fog rolling in off the mountains making visibility a concern.

This led to us calling it a day and heading back to our hotel rooms and resting before we started early the next day with our next obstacle being ‘Pond Rush 1 & 2’. This one was fun with having us drive through water and hitting an incline and another water-body followed by a narrow tilted path that made you primarily focus on following your lines through tricky situations and narrow paths along with getting used to the splashes of water and the feeling of the car tilting and going sideways every time the terrain permitted it. We were beginning to get used to the constant fluctuation in weather and types of challenges the obstacles posed to us. Our next task was called ‘Sarpanch’.

The Sarpanch obstacle is named after Mahindra’s own line of tractors

The obstacle would earlier require you to tow a tractor up and around the hill to simulate what towing and off-roading feels but unfortunately some changes were made this year and this time around the course pretty much remains the same without having to drag a tractor. It was a steep incline followed by another even steeper incline helping us really focus and plan our approach angles in advance thereby learning the importance of momentum while off-roading.

We were warned about snakes being present at the course and to keep distance from tall grass as we moved onto our next obstacle called ‘Slush Pit’ that required us to cross a pond and follow the water downstream as the path got steeper and eventually left you in a tricky situation with a wheel up in the air as you slowly crawled out of that little man made ditch created with the intention to teach you to be patient and understand how a vehicle’s dynamics and weight distribution can play an important role in clearing technical sections.