Off-roading is always a thrill game. Whether you are on a sideways incline staring at the ground from your window, crossing deep water or navigating through deep ruts with one wheel hanging mid air, these are without doubt moments that literally bring your heart into your mouth. That said, even though luxury SUVs are a favourite buy in India, most of them are chauffeur driven and used in the city on regular roads. They really don’t get to see the surrounding they are built for. So most owners are not even aware of the features and capabilities of their vehicles. And then there is the question. What if my SUV gets damaged? Well, Land Rover has just the thing for you, Say hello to the Above and Beyond Tour.

The Above and Beyond experience allows owners and enthusiasts to fully understand and exploit the capabilities of these legendary SUVs. The tour is being held across major Indian cities for the past six years and it is always a full house at all times. While there are 29 permanent experience centres in various cities across the world, the ones held in India are at make shift locations. Land Rover India invited us to the 2019 Edition of the event, that was held at 19 Degree North at Lonavla. A late departure from home and a relaxed drive on the Mumbai Pune Expressway later, I arrived at the venue at 1.30 pm. After completing the registration formalities and having some refreshments, we sat down for our briefing session with Ashish Gupta, who is the lead instructor for Land Rover experiences in India and part of Cougar Motorsport. Ashish took us through the route details of the trail, the technologies that we would be using and a list of do’s and don’ts during the drive. The total drive time would be around an hour. We were prohibited from getting out of the car at all times except when our instructor termed it ok. Most importantly, he told us to hand over the car to our instructor incase we felt we couldn’t do a particular obstacle. However, we would have to do it before starting to drive through it as changing drivers half way through the obstacle would be impossible.  The SUVs that we would be driving were the Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque. Both the SUVs were bone stock and exactly like what one would drive every day on the road. No modifications whatsoever.

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