Two 612 Scagliettis hit the road for a 10-week, 13,000km lap of India

Two 612 Scagliettis hit the road for a 10-week, 13,000km lap of India, negotiating the usual traffic hazards plus some sacred cows

Two 612 Scagliettis hit the road for a 10-week, 13,000km lap of India

The Taj View Hotel in Agra boasts 100 stylish rooms that overlook the world’s most photographed monument, plus a welcoming bar and two restaurants that serve authentic Indian cuisine. I’m in one of them but there isn’t a samosa in sight. Instead, I’m tucking into a huge plate of pasta with chunks of parmesan and salami. Giovanni, our cook, with a smile even broader than his handlebar moustache, has commandeered the facilities and managed to delete curry from the menu. For the dozen or so Italians here, it’s a culinary postcard from home.

Italians and Indians have some surprising things in common but they might as well be in parallel universes when it comes to food. I’ve no idea whether Indians like pasta but this group of Italians, who are running Ferrari’s Magic India Discovery Drive, tolerate the local menu rather than embrace it. Famously wedded to their own cuisine, they are craving something, well, less spicy and much more like spaghetti. Silvia, whose husband is the trip’s technical manager Andrea Costantini, has just flown in with enough contraband for this excellent feast.

Dietary reservations aside, the Italians are loving it here and smile at the challenges of completing a lap of the subcontinent. Two months ago the Ferrari entourage blasted off from the business hub of Mumbai before heading down the west coast to Trivandrum, at India’s southern tip. It went north to Bangalore, centre of the silicon boom, then hugged the east coast up to Kolkata. From there it followed the Ganges river northwest, went through graceful Lucknow and up to the border with Pakistan. When the group returns to Mumbai, in a couple of weeks, it will have shepherded two Ferraris worth $600,000 apiece across 13,000km of the most challenging roads on the planet. The teams will have sampled the incredible variety that India has to offer, from ancient culture to hi-tech, from colourful fashions to mouth-burning vindaloos.

I’m one of 50 journalists taking a turn behind the wheel and I’ve struck gold, bagging the stretch from Delhi to Jaipur, which includes a national park in Rajasthan and loads of Mogul-era splendour. Like the rest of the group driving stage 10, it’s my first time in India so I’m looking forward to ticking off some tourist must-dos. We’re a Tower of Babel bunch who’ve gathered in Delhi from four continents and I’m lucky English is the lingua franca. There’s a TV director from Spain, a crime reporter from Italy, and three motoring specialists: one from Los Angeles, one from Japan, and me.

The Taj Mahal at Agra is our first goal but the national capital can’t let us go without ceremony. The Italians have drawn up a tight timetable that has us departing at precisely 10.12am. We don’t, of course, and our hosts shrug their shoulders as if to say: “It’s India, nothing runs on time.” I can’t recall Italy operating with clockwork precision but in India, it seems, even an Italian can get homesick for punctuality. Half an hour later, the city’s chief minister – with the unfortunate name of Sheila Dikshit – flags us off against the backdrop of India Gate, a landmark of Edwin Lutyens’ stately New Delhi.

It’s a nervous start. Even Italians express astonishment at the chaotic nature of Indian roads. I’m not the only one who reckons Italy sets the bar high when it comes to traffic anarchy. I’ve driven around the Coliseum, and Canberra it ain’t. If Italians are intimidated, how tricky will it be?
The Ferrari 612 Scagliettis form the core of a convoy led by two SUVs containing the Indian support contingent, which steers the whole shebang by issuing directions over walkie-talkies. The Italian group, which includes photographers, film-makers, engineers and organisers, darts about in hatchbacks while the Ferraris follow a huge military off-roader, loaded to the gunnels, that doubles as a photographic platform. It’s driven by Giovanni, our impromptu chef du jour.

India is still getting on to four wheels, as is evident by the types of vehicles on the roads. Small hatchbacks are plentiful and most are Indian-built models from Suzuki or Tata. Even new ones carry metal scars from the daily jostle for tarmac – or whatever passes for a road surface. There are reminders of India’s colonial past in the rounded shape of Hindustan Ambassadors, a 60-year-old design based on the Morris Oxford and still manufactured. They lend a certain old-world charm to every street scene. Most are taxis and look as dated on the inside as they do from the outside. Curious about why they are still in service, I asked a Delhi cabbie if he liked his Ambassador. He loved it: “The body is very strong. If you drink and have a crash ... other drivers are scared of you.’’ His comments didn’t make my ride more relaxing.

The Ambassador has a two-wheeled equivalent in the Royal Enfield, another long-superseded British model, and swarms of motorbikes compete with three-wheeled autos (called tuk-tuks elsewhere in Asia) in their eagerness to create an extra lane between cars. The West’s obsession with SUVs has yet to take hold so there’s a big leap in scale to the trucks and buses, which invariably look old and tired, as if their perennially overloaded suspensions are ready to give in to gravity. Some tilt markedly to one side from an uneven load, like an old man leaning on a walking stick.

But vehicles are only part of the picture. I expected to see sacred cows wandering down the centre lines but the variety of other wildlife is a surprise. There are carts pulled by camels and donkeys, horses in full regalia for Hindu wedding ceremonies, painted elephants and herds of goats. None seems too familiar with the highway code.

European cars are rare. Indeed, even in Italy a Ferrari is not an everyday sight. In India, our two cars represent a handsome proportion of the total Prancing Horse population. Reactions range from excited to curious, although there’s never a suggestion that any special quarter will be given. On the road it’s every Sikh for himself and the Ferraris must perform the same highway-highwire act as the rest of Delhi’s take-no-prisoners traffic.

Our cars are left-hand drive in a right-hand drive country and what initially felt like an unnecessary complication turns out to be a boon, with lane discipline non-existent and most overtaking done from the “slow” lane. The pace isn’t quick but it’s frighteningly unpredictable to Western eyes. It’s not unusual on divided highways to meet a vehicle on the wrong side, heading straight for you. The Ferrari’s acceleration comes in handy for getting out of trouble.

Amazingly, we escape Delhi without a scratch. Thanks to its role as a tourist highway, the road to Agra is one of India’s better pieces of infrastructure. India may be entering a boom era but at the moment its most impressive structures belong to the past. The Taj Mahal, familiar from a million tourist brochures, delivers on its majestic promise. If the Taj Mahal is the jewel of the region it’s set in a magnificent crown. Our route is littered with marble palaces and red sandstone fortresses, each seemingly more spectacular and fanciful than the last. One Mogul walled city, Fatehpur Sikri, was abandoned only a few years after it was built due to a miscalculation about its water supply. The rulers of Jaipur left a perfectly good hilltop fort at Amber 300 years ago to relocate a few kilometres south. Subsequently, another leader decreed the whole of Jaipur should be painted pink, and so it remains. Happily, it’s terracotta not bubblegum.

Splendour I expected, but I was surprised to see a leopard. My experience of early morning safaris – in the Amazon jungle, no less – left me with the view that, like cricket, wildlife is better viewed from the comfort of a lounge. The Amazon is supposed to be teeming with life; I didn’t see a monkey. What chance in India, where everything is supposedly on the brink of extinction?

If Ranthambhore National Park is anything to go by, India’s efforts to protect its endangered big cats are going well. These 400sq  km of mountain and forest contain dozens of leopards and tigers. Even so, we’ve almost given up when the alarm calls of spotted deer betray a threat. After we glimpse the leopard, we mirror her movements for half an hour and, obligingly, she even plays kitten by rolling over in the dirt just metres away. Back at our lodge, we compare “kills” with the Italians, who covered different territory. Some have seen tigers and bragging rights are at stake. What’s the spots-versus-stripes exchange rate?

After a day without driving I’m looking forward to firing up the Scaglietti’s sonorous V12. This car is Ferrari’s grand tourer, with generous 2+2 seating inside its aluminium panels and springs that manage to cushion the worst that India’s roads can dish out. The cars were prepped for the trip by raising the suspension to give more ground clearance, while their plastic underbody panels were swapped for more durable metal. The route from Ranthambhore to Jaipur, which cuts through the parched desert country of Rajasthan, would be testing for any car. Partly made roads change abruptly into an uneven patchwork of dirt and stones, and each village has a maze of potholes.

The people are different here. It’s impossible not to be struck by the patrician bearing and electric-coloured saris of the Rajasthani women, or the smiles and waves of the children. When one of the cars warns that it’s getting dangerously hot under the blistering 44C sun, we’re forced to stop. While a compressed-air hose clears the radiator of clogging dust, local kids keep us amused by posing for photos and we marvel at the contrast between our air-conditioned chariots and the ubiquitous local jugars – mechanised carts cobbled together from wood and scavenged parts with generators for engines. For their drivers, a Ferrari isn’t an unattainable dream, it’s beyond comprehension.

A few hours and 100km later we arrive at the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, our destination. This marble extravaganza was constructed in 1835 “on a modest scale” for the queen’s favourite handmaiden, and was a popular refuge for maharajas and polo-playing princes before its 1970s conversion into a luxury hotel. The rooms are magnificent, furnishings regal and service impeccable, and for once it doesn’t seem over-the-top to be arriving in a Ferrari. In real estate terms, though, I suddenly know what it’s like to be at the jugar end of the scale.

First stop is a spot of lunch and I opt for curry. My fondness for spicy food, nurtured by years of eating at Indian restaurants in the UK, has been reignited and it doesn’t get any more authentic than this. After all, when in Rome …
Philip King travelled to India as a guest of Ferrari.