Bhalinder Singh Sangha, Harinder Singh & Karanbir Singh Bedi keep their promise - they’ve broken the Limca Book World Record of Fastest Drive

It took them a while to register the massive expanse of the river. This was not a road which they could swerve through. This was the mighty Brahmaputra, and no one has a clue of the storms that brew under its calm surface. 3,811 km had been covered, and the boys were inching towards their destination till they reached a point where the river was the only substitute for a road. “We had to cross the Lohith river, and the only way was through a ferry,” Harinder Singh ‘Rana Sidhu’ recalls the biggest adventure of their record breaking West to East drive. The ferry, pens Bhalinder Singh Sangha in his diary, was a “jugaad”. “They had these wooden planks tied together, the exact size of our tyre surface, and it was powered by an old Leyland truck engine, and we had to balance our Xylo onto it!” with Harinder on the wheel, and Sangha and Karanbir Singh Bedi literally on the edge, the ferry floated slowly and 45 minutes later touched land. As the squeaks and groans from the wooden platform increased, the three mulled which bank to swim for in case something went wrong. Nothing did, and at 1900 hours that day, they entered Arunachal Pradesh, and finally made the record at Tezu.

From the lone dust-laden roads of the Rann of Kutch to the lush green rain forest of Tezu, the western most tip of the country to the eastern, three adventurers - Sangha, Sidhu and Bedi kept their promise - of breaking the Limca Book World Record of Fastest Drive. With a budget of lakh and a half, they covered a a distance of approximately 3,941 km in just 85 hours, breaking the previous record of 119 hours, by a good 34 hours. “The only change due to bad weather conditions was that we started from the western tip, Koteshwar in Gujarat to Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh, the eastern most tip of India,” tells avid mountaineer and Tech Mahindra staffer, Harinder. Congratulations are certainly in order, especially for their vehicle, Mahindra Xylo (sponsors too) who braved the route with the trio. As for the record, it will appear in the 2010 edition of the book.

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