Volkswagen Virtus K2K to K2K special feature: Across the great arc Part 1

It was 4am on a mildly chilly morning. I found myself standing on a helipad made by the Indian military, silently absorbing the breathtaking scenery around. It was still dark with a glimmer of light starting to appear, drowning the sparkles in the sky. The scattered clouds began to change their colour from light grey to a light golden tinge. As I faced east, awaiting the imminent arrival of the sun, I couldn’t help but also take a long glance towards the left where the China territory begins, essentially a grasp away. We were standing at the army base of the easternmost village of India – Kibithu in Arunachal Pradesh to catch the first point of sunlight that India receives.

Sachin, evo India’s lead videographer, broke the silence by reminiscing about this very place as he stood here six years ago. “It is still as beautiful as it was that day – the stillness, the changing colours of nature around and the chill in the air”. I would imagine so, because this place is virtually untouched except by the army for border patrolling and training. “Last time we were here in a small SUV,” Sachin continued. “This time your journey will be much more comfortable – this time we are riding in a sedan” I assured him. Odd thing to say, you would think. Generally, the preferred choice of vehicle type for long and rigorous road trips in India is an SUV. But we are evo India, the purveyors of Thrill of Driving and we will not let the sedan clan die so easily. Especially if it is as well engineered as the one we had – a Volkswagen Virtus GT, also soaking up the scenery and looking part menacing and part graceful in its matte black paint.

Ours will be an approximately 3500km journey in the first leg of what we call K2K to K2K, which stands for Kibithu to Kashmir to Koteshwar to Kanyakumari. Going to all four corners of the country in one road trip in a sedan is something we haven’t attempted before. Along the way I also attempt to reincarnate the confidence of our beloved readers in sedans as an equal, if not better companion than SUVs on a cross-country road trip.

After we soaked up the morning sun and secured enough shots for Instagram, Sachin, the crew and I rolled out of Kibithu towards our first halt – Dibrugarh in Assam. If all went to plan, Kashmir’s Srinagar lay just seven days of driving ahead. The start, however, was far from straightforward. Arunachal’s road network has improved immensely in the past six years, yet long sections remain unpaved, littered with rocks and loose sand. This wasn’t a sedan's ideal territory. Luckily, Virtus took it in its stride. Its 179mm ground clearance matches that of many SUVs, while the 1.5-litre TSI EVO engine, producing 148bhp and 250Nm of torque, coupled with the 7-speed DSG gearbox had more than enough muscle to keep us pressing on. In fact, that engine quickly became my favourite part of the car – eager and powerful when you asked for it, yet silky and composed when you didn’t.

After nearly 12 hours of driving through winding roads (where they were available), we finally reached Dibrugarh city and were just 6km away from our hotel. I could smell dinner and couldn’t wait to get to a cosy bed for the night’s sleep. But alas. The city was amass with Durga Puja celebrations with pandals set up every few hundred metres. The whole city had descended to these celebrations and our progress ground to a literal halt. It wasn’t for another hour and a half that we finally reached our night stop. And next morning we were on the road again at 5am onto Guwahati.

That is what life can be like on these drives for us – long, rigorous and tiring. And that is another reason why I felt that the Virtus is an ideal car for this journey. The low centre of gravity and the build quality impart a smooth ride and superior handling making it more comfortable and fun to drive. Add to that the streamlined design which lowers the NVH levels further increasing cabin comfort, thus reducing the strain imparted on our bodies.

There was another thing that kept us all awake and excited for today. We would be crossing the Kaziranga Wildlife Sanctuary. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of Rhinos on our way. It wasn’t until afternoon that we reached the forest area and our eyes were peeled. Unlike big cats, Rhinos are conspicuous. They make their presence felt and can easily be spotted from a distance.

Soon, we found one gently feeding on the grass and the leaves of water lilies that had grown aplenty because of the recent rains. Then we saw another, and another – there was a whole family of them. These gentle giants can weigh anywhere between 2.5-3.2 tonnes in their adulthood and can take on a tiger if they feel the need to protect themselves. Armed with this fact, we kept our distance, took our photographs, admired their single horn and moved onwards.

After Guwahati, our next stop was Siliguri and we left the pleasant weather behind, which was swiftly replaced with intense lashes of thunderstorms and lightning. This slowed down our progress, but it wasn’t enough to halt it. Leaving Siliguri marked the last of the hills we had to cross in the Eastern Himalayas. And now our route takes us to Patna.

I personally wasn’t chuffed about the drive through Bihar; my experiences here have made my vary of the state’s renowned lawlessness. Once, while driving through, a group of villagers blocked all traffic on the highway and started hurling sticks and stones towards the car dwellers. Luckily my car then took only minor scratches and we were able to get through. Another time, while driving at night through the highway, the road suddenly disappeared in my headlights. This is a state still trying to build itself.

While no such incidents happened this time, the road condition was lamentable. It was impossible to drive in a straight line and even then, the car ended up in so many potholes that I was fearing tyre and suspension damage. At the odd stretch where the road did smoothen out and we built some speed; it didn’t last very long. But this did uncover something about the Virtus. The challenge that arises with potholes on highways is that we hit them at higher speed, generally making the car put a lot of load through the suspension components and monocoque.

On the Virtus, the suspension and chassis are designed to keep the car stable in the toughest of circumstances. Scratch what I said earlier about the engine being my favourite aspect of this car. Many car makers can plonk a powerful engine under the bonnet, but not many can imbibe stability and safety into a car from day 1 of its design stage. And VW has done that perfectly; a fact also reinforced by the 5-star Global NCAP safety rating of the car.

After Patna, UP’s expressways welcomed us with open arms. We stopped the next night in Agra, reaching the destination in about 10 hours, almost all of them on expressways. UP is a prime example of how a state can be transformed. Not very long ago, UP’s highways were not too different from Bihar’s. Today we covered the entirety of the state on expressways, with cruise control on all day. From Agra we headed to Ludhiana (also covered by expressways), which was our penultimate stop.

Ever since we had entered UP our journey became fast, smooth and unvaried. Leaving Punjab and entering Jammu would change that to a certain degree. The roads to Srinagar are largely well made with 4-lane highways and tunnels that carve through the western Himalayan mountains for an easy passage. Some bits are still under construction and they do slow down progress. As we reached Srinagar, I started to appreciate the difference between the western and the Eastern Himalayas.

The Himalayas rose from violent seismic collisions that fused the Indian subcontinent with the rest of Asia millions of years ago. Today, their character shifts dramatically from east to west. In the east, the mountains are tightly packed, their slopes rising steeply and their lands restless with seismic activity. This region is drenched in monsoon rains, even through summer, nurturing lush evergreen forests and an extraordinary biodiversity that paints the landscape a vivid green.

The Western Himalayas, by contrast, spread wider and appear more expansive, with gentler gradients and a calmer, drier temperament. Here, winter rains are more common, the snowline forms up in the higher altitude, and the forests are dominated by hardy conifers, well suited to the arid conditions. Together, these contrasts shape two faces of the same mountain range – one exuberantly green, the other stoic and imposing.

And uniting these two was our journey in the VW Virtus which looked its part in both contrasts and tackled everything this half of our country had to throw at it, with relative ease. The conclusion of the first half of our K2K to K2K ambition reinforced our confidence in- and soars our love for- sedans. Our next leg begins in Koteshwar, the western most point of India. Do watch out for that in our next issue.