Ladakh by VW Jetta in June 2013

The Ground Clearance (GC) of cars for a drive to Ladakh is invariably a topic of discussion for all road fanatics like us.

Indian Roadie, Vikram Virulkar (Facebook @ vikram.virulkar) shared his experience of driving to Ladakh in his friend's VW Jetta in June 2013.

He was supposed to take a Mahindra Xylo from Baddi in HP. However, the registration of the vehicle had not come through. It was a choice between waiting 4 days in Baddi or taking the VW Jetta to Ladakh. He decided on the later. He admits that he made a horrible mistake of taking the Jetta to Ladakh because of its low GC.

His words, verbatim,
"We encountered the first set of problems related to bad roads in Zoji-la.
The road from Kargil to Leh was so smooth that one could iron a shirt on it.
The Leh - Manali road was a journey filled with horror and some hind sighted regret. Makes for some good laughs now..
We literally had to get out and throw stones into the potholes to make sure that the under body didn't hit the road.
My feet and hands went numb from exposure to the freezing water and the cold & the situation at Tanglang La top could have easily turned sour. We also managed to bring a smile to the drivers of Scorpios and trucks . Some of them waited to see how we overcame some exceptionally large potholes (actually no roads)...lol.
We made it in one piece, although the car suffered some damage which was fixed easily. So all said and done, just have a good GC car for your Ladakh drive, other things will take of themselves."

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