How Ashish Gupta built Cougar Motorsport's Desert Dash in the Thar

A banker who kept finishing on the podium in the desert

Ashish Gupta spent more than a decade in banking and finance before he turned a weekend habit into a company. He drove the Maruti Suzuki Desert Storm rally three years running, in 2007, 2008 and 2009, after finishing third in the 2006 edition. He also ran the Xtreme Raid De Himalaya in 2006, 2007 and 2008. In 2009, while still competing, he set up Cougar Motorsport in Delhi and gave it a desert event of its own, called the Desert Dash, run through the Thar.

Four days, 17 cars, the Thar desert

The first Desert Dash flagged off from The Aman in New Delhi on 3 December 2009 and finished four days later at Amanbagh near Alwar. Cougar Motorsport ran it as an FMSCI approved closed invitational Time Speed Distance rally. Seventeen cars entered, carrying 36 competitors including eight women, across four legs that mixed tarmac and dunes. The field was built around premium street legal SUVs and sedans rather than stripped out rally cars, among them a BMW X5, a Porsche Cayenne, a Mercedes M Class and Toyota Land Cruisers and Prados.

That choice of car set the tone for everything Cougar did afterward. Gupta was not building a rally for professional crews with navigators and service trucks. He was building one for owners who already had the right car sitting in their garage and wanted to drive it somewhere harder than a city flyover.

From rally stage to self drive expedition

The Desert Dash ran five editions as a competitive motorsport rally before Cougar changed the format. It is now run as a self drive expedition rather than a timed event. Cars start together each morning and end the day together at the same hotel, with Cougar handling the road book, communication equipment, convoy marshalling, local guides and medical and service backup along the way. The company says its Thar itineraries are now scheduled to extend further into the Rann of Kutch as well. Both 4WD and 2WD vehicles remain eligible, continuing the format that let a Cayenne drive alongside a Land Cruiser back in 2009.

Cougar has since added two more events to its calendar, the Himalayan Dash and the Sanctuary Dash, and became the Indian representative for the Rainforest Challenge from 2014. The company says it has run more than 400 events since it started, for clients that include Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes Benz, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki and Isuzu, and won a CNBC TV18 Overdrive Motorsport Award of the Year in 2015.

What it means for an Indian 4x4 owner

For a reader deciding whether to sign up for a desert drive instead of taking the Thar out solo to Jaisalmer, the Cougar model shows what a run organiser actually adds. The company's own account lists route planning, a road book, radios, trained marshals and a doctor and recovery vehicle on call, the things a group of friends in private SUVs usually cannot arrange on their own. None of that removes the basic groundwork. A driver still needs to know how to read sand, drop tyre pressure and carry recovery gear before pointing a 4x4 at a dune, whether the club behind the drive is Cougar or one closer to home.

Sources

• Ashish Gupta, Founder and Director, Cougar Motorsport: in conversation with Raghav Sarma
• Desert Dash Flags Off from Delhi
• Cougar Motorsport, Signature Events
• Cougar Motorsport, About Us