Free Spirit
Rohit Nalawade
Trial by fire is how one can describe how Rufina ended up with a black belt equivalent in the world of off-roading. Five years ago, she got into her Mahindra Thar which was eight days old, punched a route into GoogleMaps, and started the 2000-odd kilometre drive to Spiti Valley when the road network in the region was nowhere as prevalent as now. I know of uncles who’ve babied their cars and kept on the plastic covering the seats for much longer than that.
Rufina however, would have none of it. That drive wasn’t a mere road trip for her, it was a chance to get to know the SUV that she’d just gotten her hands on after a year-long wait. “I was absolutely clueless. I didn’t even know how to engage 4x4,” she sheepishly admits. And yet she powered on till she reached Kaza, the place where she had her first brush with off-roading – which started by learning to engage 4x4 in the most bizarre circumstance. “I was under the impression that you can just engage it on the move, and I’m trying to engage 4x4 via the transfer case, and the lever just wouldn’t budge. I was like, is this faulty or what? There was no network to look it up online, but fortunately, there were a few Boleros out there, and one of the drivers taught me how to do it,” says Rufina proudly.
Barely a few days after I speak with Rufina on the phone, I actually have the chance to watch the free-spirited woman and her Thar in action at a Mahindra Adventure White Water Escape in Kolad. The event packed in a mix of newbies and seasoned off-roaders, and while most tip-toed their way through the trails that the instructors mapped out for us, Rufina, who goes by Thar Yatrika on Instagram, isn’t one to do things in half measures. The others hold back, Yatrika guns through most of the obstacles at just the right speed with confidence, sparing us from grinding sounds of the sump or bumpers on the rocks. Another section of the trail included a near-vertical drop, which needed you to floor it or else you’d get your car beached onto the incline. A Thar owner promptly demonstrates the latter, requiring a marshal to summon the CRDe on standby to winch it out. Rufina needs no instruction. She floors it off the drop, and her Thar leaps off the ground for a few moments before the four wheels regain contact, safe and sound. “Gravity is legally just a suggestion, if your horsepower and sheer audacity are high enough,” she cheekily writes when she uploads a reel of that moment on Instagram.
Her love affair with SUVs is a long-standing one, and while she has owned a varying selection of them in the past, the Thar was a love at first sight for Rufina. “I still remember clearly that I was returning from Pune, and when I was driving down the highway, I saw this huge billboard that said ‘Thar launching soon’, and it was love at first sight. I thought it looked amazing. On October 3, when they opened the bookings to the public, I was the first person in the dealership to check out the car, test drive it, and I booked it. And a year later, I had my Thar on June 1, 2020.”
Most enthusiasts that I know of relish driving the Thar in the city, and usually spec theirs with the automatic transmission which makes driving a breeze. Rufina chose to defy that trend by getting herself a diesel-manual. “I’ve always been a diesel-head if you can call me that. And while most people think that automatics are easier and more stress-free, I’ve had one and I find them pretty boring. On a drive, I love having that conversation with my gearbox,” she tells me. Since she bought her Thar, she has managed to rack up 1,20,000 kilometres on the clocks, criss-crossing round the country, and the Mahindra has also changed her perspective on road tripping altogether. “I used to travel solo a lot, but I wouldn’t drive at night. I was always a little more cautious as a woman. My Thar changed all that. The minute people see it, they are in awe of it. I suddenly stopped feeling apprehensive once the Thar came into my life. Now I can just go anywhere, any time. I remember being in Sikkim in 2022, isolated but completely bindaas. I had driven through the night, and after reaching Sikkim at 4am, I woke up to people knocking on the Thar in the morning, asking why would anyone be sleeping in a Thar. It changed my entire perspective, and once I’m behind the ’wheel, I can head anywhere,” says Rufina. Another instance from Sikkim is when she saved lives of bikers. “I was driving towards the Zero Point and everybody else was turning back because of the heavy snowfall, but the locals encouraged me to engage 4-Low and carry on since I was in a Thar. Next thing I know, I see two bikers in the middle of the road to the Zero Point, freezing due to the sudden snowfall, and they were shocked to see a woman emerge from a Thar and rescue them. I got them into my car, turned the heater up and took them down to the cantonment area to help them. They had been stranded, and if it were not for my Thar, I don’t know what would have happened to them.”
Rufina has taken her Thar to most of the adventure haunts across India – you name a place and chances are that she has either been there or been passing through at some point with her Thar. She recently went up against modified Classics and Thar CRDes with her stock Thar at an off-road competition organised by Karad Offroaders, and even against vehicles with a better turning radius, tuned engines and cut bumpers, she finished as a runner-up, earning her a lot of admiration in the off-road circles. The free spirit that she is, she’s already eyeing the upcoming Scorpio pickup to unlock the next chapter of her adventures, and if the past is anything to go by, Rufina’s new Mahindra will likely have an equally epic tale to tell.
