10,000 km ownership update of my Thar: 2nd service & an off-road drive

It felt funny that a hardcore 4x4 SUV which is meant for off-road trails turned out to be absolutely the right vehicle for an urban drive

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10,000km and Other Updates!

It has been a while since I updated this thread. In that time, I did one offroading trail with a few fellow Team-BHP members, did a couple of road trips, and also reached the 10,000km mark on the odometer.

Off-roading with BHPians:

I have written a detailed post on this off-roading session with fellow BHPians and their 4x4 machines. Just sharing a couple of pictures here for summary:

Dusty with other BHPian friends at this 4x4 drive:

Drive to Bandipur Tiger Reserve:

Another drive we did in Thar was to Bandipur Tiger Reserve. We also took a jungle safari there and got to see a leopard sleeping on a tree!

On the way to Bandipur, we took a short detour to some locations near the KRS dam backwaters.

Apart from the Bandipur drive, we also did a couple of other drives in Thar. But those were routine drives for some work or social meetings, and there is nothing to write about those. For example, recently we drove to Chennai to meet our family friends there and to just chill with them in Chennai city. We took Thar for that drive. In the Bangalore-Chennai drive, the last 100km or so before Chennai is now under road work, and the roads there are so bad that Thar was the right vehicle to manage those diversions and horrible roads. It felt funny that a hardcore 4x4 SUV which is meant for off-road trails turned out to be absolutely the right vehicle for this urban drive connecting the two big metros in India. The last 100km felt like an off-road drive anyway, and I enjoyed driving Thar there.

10,000km Service Update:

And then, after these drives, I hit 10,000km on the odo, and it was time for the "Second Free Service", as Mahindra calls it. It was essentially a complete service including engine oil change, all filters change, coolant top off, and other routine checks and inspections.

At the service centre for the 10,000 km service:

The service experience at Sireesh Auto was great! Just like in the 1,000km inspection, this time too I had a great experience that I would rate 10/10. So far I am pleasantly surprised by how good the Mahindra service has been. The service advisors are polite, friendly, knowledgeable and very approachable. The work was done well, on time, and always with a smile. Yes, the service centres are crowded. But that has been the case with BMW service too. So nothing unusual about that. What was impressive so far is that despite such a crowd, the service advisors are polite and friendly, and they got the work done on time.

Although Mahindra calls this 10,000km service "Second Free Service", in reality only the labour charges are covered by this "free" tag. I had to pay for the oil and other consumables. But that is again a standard practice in most brands. The bill for these consumables came to about Rs. 5,600 which is quite fair and reasonable.

Overall a very nice service experience with Mahindra so far.

Unfortunately, I missed taking the customary photo of the 10,000 km mark on the odometer (I was driving through a busy section of a highway at that time and there was no opportunity for safely stopping for a photo), but here is the odometer photo now as of today's reading:

It has been a fun time owning and driving Thar so far. Thankfully, no major niggles so far and the regularly scheduled service experience has been great too. These 10,000km were fun times. Let us see what this new year of 2024 has in store for my drives with Dusty, and let us see where we end up driving through 2024. But I am certainly looking forward to some more fun times with Dusty in 2024.

Well, that is all for now. Wish you all a very happy new year, and thank you very much for reading this!

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