TRAVELOGUE Hyundai Santa Fe
THE SUN, THE SEA
AND THE SANTA FE
We went city hopping across southern India – from
Kanyakumari all the way to Goa – in the new Hyundai Santa Fe,
and here’s the first leg of that journey
Story: Harket Suchde Photography: Sanjay Raikar
OOTY
Munnar
Thekkady
KANYAKUMARI
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TRAVELOGUE Hyundai Santa Fe
T
HE SUN’S FIERY EMBERS MELD
with the endless ocean, shining its last light
upon a lone sentinel of stone keeping a silent
watch on liquid expanse that surrounds it.
The sounds of waves crashing and breaking across a
coastline of ragged rocks and the calls of a street hawker
selling her wares make for an oddly soothing symphony
as I stare into the distance, leaning against our ‘stardust’
grey Santa Fe, just taking it all in. My shirt collar flutters
as a soft wind carrying the scent of the ocean wafts past
me. I’m standing at the southern most tip of the Indian
mainland, the quaint little town of Kanyakumari – the
starting point of our drive across southern India.
Before I go any further with the actual trip, some
introductions are in order. Car India’s team of four
included Jim, Piyush, Sanjay (the man behind the lens)
and yours truly, and our chariot for this escapade would
be the new 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe. For those who aren’t
familiar with it, the Santa Fe is one of the newer big cars
to make its way to the Indian market, and is one of the
prominent products from Hyundai’s stable. We had the
top-end 2.2-litre CRDi 4X4 Automatic, and as soon as I
discovered this fact I was stoked! For a trip like this,
comfort and convenience were what I was looking for,
and the automatic gearbox would be a great boon in that
respect. Plus this chariot is drawn by 197 horses, and
produces 436 Nm of torque between 1,800 and 2,500
RPM, all of which translated into me straining at the bit
to get behind the wheel.
Back to Kanyakumari, having arrived at the Tamil
Nadu Hotel replete with pet peacocks frolicking around
the garden, and with the keys to this intriguing car in our
possession we knew we just had to explore the area a
little. Our first stop: the coast overlooking the
Vivekananda Rock Memorial which was built in 1970 on
an island just off the coast. This spot was chosen for the
memorial because legend has it that Swami Vivekananda
swam from the coast to this rocky isle to meditate in the
late 1800s. This island is flanked by another outcropping
of rock that plays host to a mammoth 133-foot-high statue
of the famous Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar – a silent
guardian watching over the Indian mainland, positioned
at the confluence point of the Bay of Bengal and the
Arabian Sea with the Indian Ocean. After we were done
gazing upon the magnificence that is the statue, we
headed down along the coast and towards a local beach.
The roads were sparse, narrow, and not at all conducive
to a car of the girth and sheer presence of the Santa Fe,
but with the steering as light as it is, manoeuvrability
within even a small town like Kanyakumari was not
much of a problem. The beach, when we got there, was
spectacular! Clean, pristine, breathtaking – the way the
sunlight played off the deep blue sea, the contrast of
white and dark sand, a sea bird flying by with a trill and a
flutter – the very embodiment of the word ‘serenity’.
After having our fill of that postcard moment, we moved
on. Next stop: Thekkady, a hill station in Kerela.
With our smart phones charged and navigation apps
pulled up, we were ready for the journey to finally begin.
The route we picked out to help us traverse the distance
between Kanyakumari and Thekkady was a Pandora’s
box of scenic locations. Straight off the bat were the wind
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farms. As soon as we exited Kanyakumari, there were
these massive windmills that even dwarfed the imposing
figure that is the Santa Fe, and it wasn’t just one or two
either, but hundreds upon hundreds of windmills dotting
the landscape on either side for as far as the eye could see.
No one can accuse the State of Tamil Nadu of suffering
from power shortage after beholding that particular sight.
An accusation, I soon found out, that can’t be levelled at
the Santa Fe either. As soon as we hit the windmillflanked highway, I floored the accelerator to see what it
was capable of, and for a car its size, the Santa Fe can go
pretty fast. When you put the pedal to the metal, there’s
the minutest delay, a half-a-second to catch your breath
before the turbocharger kicks in and that 2.2-litre diesel
engine roars into life. It evokes echoes of a raging bull,
pawing at the ground one last time before it charges full
pelt. As the miles seemed to melt away and we settled into
a steady rhythm, I realised there was another kind of
rhythm missing from the scenario. You can’t be ‘driving
down a highway’ without some AC/DC to keep you
Car India boys enjoying
the fresh air
Sunrise point at
Kanyakumari
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TRAVELOGUE Hyundai Santa Fe
company, so I plugged in my pen drive (another
connectivity option is Bluetooth, and there’s an Aux input
available too – for those of you who like kicking it old
school) used the touch console to quickly locate some of
Brain Johnson’s best work, and turned the volume up.
The sound system in the Santa Fe is banging, although I
turned off the virtual surround sound and the bass boost
because I like my music to sound natural.
With the music thumping and a flat, empty expanse of
road unwinding ahead of us, we started pushing the
Santa Fe again, testing its mettle. While the car handled
adequately at high speeds, it felt like there was slight
room for improvement, and the suspension while great
on rougher terrain (more on that later) could have done
with a slight stiffening up on the highway too.
Soon enough, we crossed State borders into Kerala. The
road narrowed, the shrubbery hedging the road evolved
PLACES OF INTEREST
KANYAKUMARI
Kanyakumari
Temple
Vivekananda Rock
Memorial
Thiruvalluvar statue
Gandhi Memorial
into full-blown trees, and the Santa Fe puttered on without
a single hitch. We crossed Nagercoil, Nedumangad, and
Punalur in this stretch, and entered the extremely scenic
Thenmala Reserve Forest for the latter part of it. Kerela is
famous for its tropical temperature, and outside the car,
the afternoon was sweltering. Sit inside, however, and the
air-con with climate control made sure the heat didn’t
bother us one bit, and individual vents for all three rows,
plus the option to adjust the temperature of the driver’s
side and passenger’s side separately meant we never
argued about the car being too hot or too cold; instead we
only ever fought about what music to play! The area is
flush with foliage and the roads were proper black-top for
the most part, except for one exceedingly rough patch.
The Santa Fe, however, wasn’t fazed by off-roading
situations, and absorbed the bumps and troughs with
aplomb. The suspension really came into its own when
asked to tackle an unconventional path.
We stopped to stretch our limbs at this juncture, and
the feeling was just surreal. The air was hot, but we were
standing under a shady canopy of leaves from trees that
were centuries old. The silence, once we turned the
ignition off, was deafening. Not a soul in sight, every
rustle of a leaf, every crack of a twig was strangely
amplified. Our voices, so loud and robust within the safe
confines of the car, suddenly dropped down to a quiet
murmur. I felt as if we didn’t belong, like we were
trespassing, and a sense of foreboding crept up among our
motley crew. Shaking the feeling off, we got back into the
car and drove on, inching ever closer to Thekkady.
The closer we got to the hill-station, the more winding
the roads became. Usually, being in a big, beefy
automobile of this stature would mean an immediate drop
in speed. Steep inclines, rapid turns, and heavy
PLACES OF INTEREST
THEKKADY
Periyar Tiger
Reserve
Thekkady Lake
Tusker Trails
Elephant Park
automobiles don’t usually go hand in hand; with this car,
though, no such problems. The aforementioned nimbleness
came to the fore, and we made decent progress, despite the
slopes’ best efforts. Even though we did make good time off
the hairpins and bends that made up the final leg of that
day’s journey, we still reached our destination well into the
night. We stayed at an old favourite, the Coffee Inn, and
set our alarms for early morning so that we could go check
out the Periyar Tiger Reserve which was just minutes away
from our rest stop for the night.
The morning came bright and sunny, as I looked out
from my room’s balcony and at a view that depicted a
portion of the reserve itself. Despite the sun, a chill that
can only be described as ‘hill-station weather’ permeated
through the air. As my need for a cup of coffee grew
stronger, I urged my colleagues to get going. We stopped
at the aptly named Thekkady Café where a wide range
Welcome to the jungle!
Jim gives the Santa Fe
some much-needed TLC
On-road or off-road,
the journey never stops
Give that primate
a subscription
More monkey
business
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TRAVELOGUE Hyundai Santa Fe
of orders included everything from pancakes to vadasambar was quickly polished off, and washed down with
copious amounts of coffee, of course. You should drop in
if you’re in the area, the menu has an alluring spectrum of
options available, the food is delicious, and you can’t go
wrong with the filter coffee. After a satiating meal was
consumed, the Santa Fe was given a thorough clean up,
and then we headed towards the crown jewel of
Thekkady – Periyar Tiger Reserve.
The Periyar Tiger Reserve was established along the
banks of the Periyar River across 350 sq km of land in
1982, however, the area under the reserve has now been
expanded to 777 sq km and, as the name suggests, is
famed for its tigers. Being in Kerela it also lives up to the
whole pachyderm haven stereotype, because another
highlight of Periyar is its elephant sanctuary. We sadly
didn’t get to see either during our brief sojourn inside the
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PLACES OF INTEREST
DEVIKULAM
Tea Gardens
Devikulam Lake
Bison Valley
reserve, but we did find some unwelcome guests using the
Santa Fe as a playground on our return to the parking lot.
A bunch of chattering monkeys were using our car as a
springboard for easier access to a nearby tree. One
particular critter from this band of miscreants seemed a
proper Car India fan, though, because we caught him
red-handed trying to peel the Car India sticker off the
Santa Fe’s hood! The Santa Fe’s tough shell meant they
didn’t do any damage, though. We thought they’d scatter
as we approached, but they didn’t even bat an eyelid as
we walked right up to them and into the car. Careful to
edge away at a paltry one km/h so that the monkeys
could get well clear of the car we headed out of the scenic
hill station of Thekkady and towards the equally scenic
hill station of Ooty. And since we were on a hat-trick
anyway, we thought ‘what the heck, we’ll go via Munnar’
and complete the hill station jamboree.
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That meant more winding road fun, although we had to
maintain a sedate pace in the beginning as the ‘highway’
that led out of Thekkady barely qualified as a two-lane
road. Although the fact that it was pothole-free for the most
part, and flanked by bungalows with design elements,
colours, and especially gates that covered the whole
spectrum from beautiful to outright bizarre and everything
else in between, did slightly make up for its lack of width.
As we moved out of the tiny roads and headed closer to
Munnar, we passed through the famed tea plantations of
Chinnakanal and Devikulam. The transition from dense
forest to cultivated terraces of tea was so sudden that I was
left astounded, having to lift may jaw off the floor after the
sheer magnitude of the plantations and how splendid they
looked had registered in my brain. Some of you might
think this is an overreaction, but I had never ever seen a
tea plantation before, and whatever I had imagined it
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PLACES OF INTEREST
MUNNAR
Eravikulam
National Park
Attukal Falls
Pothamedu View
Point
Anamudi Peak
Mattupetty Dam
Top Station
Pampadum Shola
National Park
would be like, I had never imagined it like this. Standing
in the middle of the road, everywhere I looked there was
tea – from the top of the hill on my left to the bottom most
point of the valley to my right. Tea as far as the eye could
see. Thankfully, the Santa Fe, being an automatic, allowed
me to keep one eye on the road and the other on the
scenery rather than having to worry about shifting
smoothly on roads that were full of crests and dips.
After stopping for a few minutes to enjoy the fresh air,
during which time I tried to capture a permanent imprint
of the stunning visuals around me in my head, and failing
which I remembered I had a smart phone and promptly
put it to use instead, we set off again, our destination
now very, very close. Munnar was also quite unexpected,
but in a way that was entirely different to the tea
plantations that came before it.
When you think of a hill station, you think of quiet,
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Praying for some
empty roads
Looking at the past,
moving forward
out of the corner
of the eye
calm, soothing places full of peace and leafy greens,
right? Munnar was the exact opposite. The traffic was
chaotic, the place was loud, and the people were
boisterous. Luckily, the Santa Fe’s cabin was relative
quiet, allowing one to hear the tooting of the horn behind
you, but not much else, which went a long way towards
helping me maintain a calm disposition when navigating
through the reams of traffic and pedestrians that seemed
to pour out of every nook and cranny. After a long search
for parking, we finally made our way to the marketplace
and found a spot to grab a quick bite of lunch at. After
wolfing down my meal I was ready to leave this quirky,
totally hipster (because living up to the hill station cliché
is too mainstream) hill station behind me. So we set off
for Ooty in mid-afternoon, hoping we’d make good time.
By this point in time we had stopped looking to
winding roads as even slightly challenging, because we
had become so accustomed to them. Although, every
once in a while one would still look out of the window
and see the sheer drop of the valley and let out an
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involuntary gasp. The road was narrow and not very
good, which meant the suspension was working overtime
to keep us comfortable, but we were comfortable, no
doubt about that. Out of the blue, up ahead we saw a
sign that indicated that wildlife was abound and that we
should proceed with caution, which could only mean one
thing – we had reached the Chinnar wildlife sanctuary.
Well, maybe not the actual sanctuary, but the road that
led to Ooty passed by the entrance to the sanctuary and
allowed us to traverse through a portion of the forest
reserve. A flat, empty, smooth road with forests on either
side? Of course, I put my foot down and gunned it,
although I was on high alert, making sure to slow down
every time I caught even the slightest signs of movement
out the corner of my eye. The brakes responded
fabulously, although there wasn’t much that caught the
eye apart from a lone deer standing a few feet away from
the road, grazing peacefully.
Thank god I was on constant vigilance mode too,
because I found out later that Chinnar plays home to the
endangered Grizzled Giant Squirrel, and running it over
by mistake would have led to no small amount of guilt on
my part and a nasty situation all round. A family of wild
boars did run past our car, though, and were out of sight
before we could chase them down and shoot them (as in
– take a photograph, just clarifying!). Once we entered
Tamil Nadu again and gaps started appearing in the
woods, making way for little villages, we noticed that the
bulk of the day had passed, and we were driving in
twilight (insert joke about vegetarian vampires here).
With darkness setting in, the Santa Fe’s bright, potent
projectors cast their radiant beams wide, covering not
just the road but the kerb as well. Distance-wise, I wish
it cast its glow slightly further ahead, but the powerful
high beam made up for this shortcoming. The roads had
flattened out for a bit, but that was only a brief respite
before we continued our ongoing affair with winding
roads. Back to navigating around a pot-pourri of hairpins
and sharp banks for us then, with traffic hurtling down
from the opposite direction, and no street lights to guide
us either. Everybody gave the Santa Fe a wide berth,
though, as they should. After all, what other choice do
you have when you see this huge SUV gaining on you, a
fierce growl emitting from its exhaust pipes?
By the time the road started to level out a little and the
blinking of distant lights got steadily brighter, the
temperature had suddenly dropped. The Santa Fe’s
automatic climate control was in full swing, providing a
warm, toasty atmosphere within the cabin that had me
feeling cosy and beginning to long for a soft bed for the
night. Outside, the air carried the slightest scent of
eucalyptus, another sign that Ooty was but a stone’s
throw away. After the local cops had stopped us just
outside the city limits and checked if we were laundering
money (‘what to do, sir, election time...’) we eventually
made it to The Greenery Ooty Holiday Inn, which was
our rest stop for the night. The first leg of or journey had
come to an end, and as I stood at the hotel’s front porch
looking down on the starlight reflecting off the roof of
our car, I knew deep down that it wasn’t half as bad as it
could have been if we had been any other car rather than
the Santa Fe.
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ESSENTIALS
HYUNDAI SANTA FE
STYLE
A head-turner from every angle,
Hyundai have translated their
fluidic design philosophy
seamlessly into the Santa Fe.
ENGINE
2.2-litre 4X4 diesel automatic
is inconspicuous in the streets
and roars to life on the highway,
while the impressive amount of
torque and cruise control make
driving in any environment a
breeze.
HANDLING
The Santa Fe corners like a small
hatchback which is high praise
for a full-size SUV. Its suspension
too is extremely forgiving,
allowing you to push the car
around corners with ease.
COMFORT
Spacious and comely, the 12
way adjustable driver’s seat and
top-notch interior combined
with an exemplary three-row
air-con system means the cabin
is comfortable enough to live in!
SAFETY
Traction control, ABS, front,
side and curtain air-bags, EBD
and vehicle stability
management control all work
hard to keep you protected no
matter what.
PRACTICALITY
With its massive interior space
and go-anywhere ability, the
Santa Fe is the perfect car to
transport you and six other
adults with full luggage to any
corner of the country in style.
TECHNOLOGY
Touchscreen audio control, USB
and Aux connectivity,
Bluetooth, six-speaker system,
mood lamps and steering wheel
controls make the Santa Fe a
party on wheels.
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