Sunday Drive by Hormazd Sorabjee: Driving through the Gir Forest National Park
Driving the first EV in Gir provided the satisfaction of knowing it would not disturb wildlife nor pollute the pristine forest
It was only towards the end of two magical days that I realised we had created a bit of history. Okay, it wasn’t quite a moon landing. But it was an achievement nonetheless. An achievement that will perhaps only be truly appreciated half a century later when cars with internal combustion engines will only be seen in museums, and everything our children and grandchildren drive will be powered by electricity.
So, what did we do?
I was the first to drive an EV into the famous Gir Forest National Park, the last remaining home of the Asiatic lion. (Drum roll please!) Now, it may seem like an obvious thing to do and in the future all cars in national parks will be electric, but no one had done it before, and for now I am savouring the moment of being the first. And what a moment it was!
Fear of a charge
I was in the lap of the luxury that is the Audi e-tron. Apart from being the first electric car in Gir, it is a cocoon of opulence, the kind you don’t expect in a thick jungle. Gir forest isn’t the natural habitat of the e-tron and this is not a place to be stuck with a flat battery. Forget finding a plug, there are no power lines here and the only thing on a charge could be a hungry lion! So, it’s a good thing that the e-tron’s fat 95kWh battery is good for a 320+kms on a single charge. Even so, I couldn’t help but glance at the range meter every five minutes. Range anxiety is somehow hardwired into my brain.
The real adventure started before I even got to Gir. What was to be a straightforward drive from Ahmedabad to Sasan Gir turned out to be a nail-biting one simply because I couldn’t find a charger that worked at Rajkot, the midway point. Fortunately, the e-tron’s massive battery pack offers good range for long road trips, and driving like my grandmother to conserve the battery did help too. I made it to the Fern Gir Resort, my home for the next two days, with around 40kms range left.
The next day, it was a crack of dawn start, because that’s when the big cats are most active. It was a magical feeling gliding through the forest silently, with only the crunching sound of the e-tron’s massive tyres on the muddy tracks audible. I spotted some spotted deer, a common sight in Gir that I never got tired of. But it was the lions I was impatiently after.
Electric dreams
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long. The naturalist from Fern and the Forest Department guide, tipped off by trackers, knew exactly where to go. They took me straight to a male feasting on a buffalo kill. What an unforgettable sighting of my first lion!
I put the e-tron’s sunroof to good use by sticking my head out of it for a ringside view of the hungry lion at breakfast. It was a gory sight, but such is the law of the jungle.
The lion is the emblem of Gir, the star attraction. But there’s lots of other wildlife to see. It was captivating to watch Nilgai, wild boar, lots of deer, a crocodile sunning itself on a rock and hundreds of species of birds that are part of the ecosystem. But the day couldn’t end without another tryst with the lion.
Just when I thought I would end the day disappointed, I hit the jackpot. A lioness and her cubs were lolling a few metres away from me, totally oblivious to the e-tron. Her whole attention was on her newly born babies, which she dotingly licked and nuzzled. It was the kind of photo-op wildlife photographers often wait for years to get.
During the two days I spent in Gir, I saw as many as 11 lions. What made this safari even more special was the e-tron, which apart from giving us the kick of driving the first EV in Gir, provided the satisfaction of driving something that doesn’t disturb wildlife nor pollute pristine forests. It’s time for all national parks to find electrified alternative to those rickety old Gypsys.
The views expressed by the columnist are personal
From HT Brunch, February 6, 2022
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