I get the telegram late in the evening. Doordarshan wants to cover the Himalayan Rally for a National telecast. Motor rallies have been covered for news but a full programme on a rally of this magnitude has never been tried before for National telecast. It is one thing to participate and a different ambition altogether to try to cover a rally with the limited resources we have at our disposal. I go to Delhi only to realise that Delhi expects me to cover the rally alone. This happens because no one fully knows what a car rally entails. I try to impress on them the difficulties. They are adamant. You are a rally champion and you say you cannot? I tell them I need 10 camera teams. A chopper would be very helpful. I am talking to a wall. 'You just cannot cover this rally with one camera team.' After a two-hour long struggle, I manage three camera teams. 'I need rally drivers and excellent rally-prepared cars'. 'Stop dreaming!' I am told. I now have to make do with my friends. I call my rally partner Ravi Singhania. I get Adil Darukhanawala from Poona. Ravi is assigned to the team from Doordarshan Chennai. The camera crew arrives in shirts, oblivious of the snow terrain they will need to go through. Adil gets the team from Delhi.

For my team, I get Biman Sinha and Santanu Majumder from Calcutta. Both are no more. The best we can get are jeeps or Jongas. Those who have participated in the Himalayan Rally will know how difficult it can be to shoot and then overtake rally cars to take another vantage position. Being a rally driver, I think it is a greater challenge covering a rally keeping pace with rally prepared cars. To add to the injury, ITDC decides to sponsor the program and insists that scenic areas be promoted too with a bit of local history. It is so difficult to explain that the two are different audiences. Colour TV has just arrived and the equipment has many limitations. The three colour tubes need alignment after every bumpy ride. The pre-roll time is ten seconds before the image stabilises. And the camera unit is heavy and bulky. Editing is a challenge with cuts varying on the mood of the machine.

We planned segments each team would cover, crisscrossing the rougher roads to try to take advantage of short cuts… if any. The Himalayan Rally traverses 3800 km of mud, forest tracks, river crossings, arid stretches, high-altitude snow passes. Covering such a stretch with three camera units is a nightmare. On 23rd October, 1983 the event gets the blessings of the Vice-president of India, Justice Mohammad Hidayatullah. If India's F1 event could get such blessings!

Lopes in their Opel Ascona 400. Last year's winner Kenyan Jayant Shah and Aslam Khan, a FISA B seed, follows them in a Nissan 240 RS. Car 5 is a German entry but the crew comprises the very Indian Harvijay Singh Bahia and Rajan Sayal. We catch a glimpse of the wife of Phillip Young in Car 11 giving it a last minute polish! After re-grouping at Dehra Dun the rallyists navigate the wooded slopes and mountain loops of the Teheri Pouri Road, situated at an altitude of around 4500 ft. For the coverage team, it is already a challenge. The tube cameras cannot have proper pictures in low lights and expose huge 'lags', with a long streak of light following any light source. The first leg of the rally finishes at Nainital. Jayant Shah and Aslam Khan check-in first, rather late in the evening. Time for the night workers to tabulate fresh starting positions. The second leg starts. Of the original 66 only 48 competitors line up. Guy Colsoul, the highest rated in this event, suffers starter problems and needs to push his car. For the next bunching control at Ranikhet the maximum permitted lateness is 7 hours 30 minutes. This will give the readers of today an idea of how scattered the competitors can be. It makes our life miserable. 

The route for a rally driver cannot be the ideal road for a TV coverage team to reach on time to cover the best competitors from strategic points. After a few cars we need to push to reach the next vantage point well before the next best lot arrives. The HAM amateur radio team helps us. The route covers Rudraprayag, Nandaprayag, Chamoli and proceeds to Gopeshwar and Chaupta. By the time the rally reaches Jaripani after Tehri, twenty-four more cars have dropped out.

To add to our distress, is the 'camera to the video recorder' connecting multicore cable snaps. There is no way we can get a spare. If we fail to reconnect, the rally coverage will end! We stop at a roadside dhaba. Santanu keeps the heavy high band U-matic recorder on the bonnet of the jeep. A barber provides his razor. A cycle mechanic comes with a gas-heating soldering iron. A Sony engineer would have collapsed seeing this. Time for me to cover lost time. This is not the only time that I need to drive for Doordarshan's coverages. We reach the next check post to cover a few Indian cars. Dr Ravi Prakash meets with an accident. The Army and a local farmer with his tractor hauls the Fiat up. He has the resilience to continue to the finish, though technically he is now out of the rally.

Besides Indian sporting nuts like Vicky Chandhok (15); Dyarus Bathena (20); Arindam Ghosh (24); Partha Sadhan Bose (25); Prasanta Paul (29), there are teams of the Indian Army, Indian Navy and of course the Mahindra. The spirit of motor sports is very different from other sports. Here you compete with speed and time, over an unknown terrain, with varying weather and temperatures. The Himalayan Rally is 'tougher than the East African Safari' remarks Jayant Shah at the finish point. Ravi asks how many tyres he had burnt out. '10 sets,' he smilingly replies. Guy Colsoul says 'both way traffic is too risky'. Niaz didn't care about traffic - he loved the Fiats.

Some countries have really benefitted from motor sports. Kenya earns about 5 million pounds and the Acropolis Rally in Greece earns so much for the country that a documentary has been made on that aspect alone. At the National stadium in Delhi on 29th October there are 31 finishers, 21 of which are Indian vehicles.

Jayant Shah of Kenya wins this rally for the second consecutive year closely followed by the Belgian Guy Colsoul. Rajiv Rai in his Premier and Dharamvir in his Mahendra claim berths amongst the first ten. It is a first of sorts for TV in India. One can only pray that the TV teams of today are given the facilities required for a successful rally coverage.