Pemba Tamang (Pemba Tamang) always had a cheerful smile on his face. Obviously, he enjoyed the driving process like a duck to water, but I was a little bit suffering in the passenger seat.
We set off from Manibanjan, a small mountain town in India, to a trekking site in Sandakphu on the border with Nepal.
Pemba’s Land Rover Series 1 has long been weather-beaten, and at the moment it is driving us along the mountain roads of the Himalayas. In the first 5 miles of the trip, we had driven up 2,000 feet. Over the next 15 miles, we’ll reach an altitude of 13,000 feet.
And in the process of going up the mountain, we all use the 1st gear . The roar of the diesel engines made conversation almost impossible, so we had to smile at each other instead.
This mountain road is not only very narrow, but also full of successive hairpin turns.
We watched Nepal appear on our left for a while, and flashed to our right for a while.
Usually, when a novice driving a Land Rover Series 1 without electronic power steering system through a hairpin corner, it is likely that due to a misjudgment, he has to reverse the car in a hurry, causing the clutch to burn.
But Pemba is different. While he chooses to use his well-trained muscle memory to pass this test, he also devoutly believes that the small statue of Buddha stuck on the dashboard will guide his Land Rover out of danger .
After about 13 miles, the concrete road started to deteriorate, with rocks the size of footballs everywhere.
This old car has to transport goods weighing up to 800 kilograms every day, so the leaf springs on the car have been strengthened.
So it’s like a kangaroo jumping – yet even so, I’m a little surprised that it barely makes any noise.
Instead, it was my teeth that kept chattering and chattering as we bumped over what could barely be called a road.
We emerged from the dense fog and passed a forest full of rhododendrons.
The four-wheel-drive Land Rover carried us along with the same poise and composure .
It’s a pity that the dense and damp fog prevented us from seeing the original appearance of the world’s third highest peak, Kanchenjunga.
However, for the Himalayas, what Land Rover has done is not only to show its prestige on the mountain roads, but also left a more significant contribution. It dawned on me that no car that was longer or less durable than a Series 1 could have taken the bumps and made it through this road as easily as it did.
No wonder, for decades, the only vehicles on this ancient mountain road have been the Land Rover Series 1 and Series 2.
Of these hardworking Land Rovers, 42 have survived to this day. And that’s exactly what I came here for.
I took a 75-minute flight from Kolkata to the nearest small airport, Bagdogra.
It took another 3 hours to drive from the airport to this remote place in the Himalayas. My mission here is to find out how these simple but beautiful Land Rovers changed the fate of a small Indian town forever.
To be continued…
Text: OUSEPH CHACKO
Image: SAM BARKER
