FATEH BURJ ICONS OF INDIA

For the first part of the Icons of India series, Dhruv Saxena drives the new Hyundai Verna to India's tallest victory tower located in the vicinity of Chandigarh, the country's first modern planned city

- Dhruv Saxena

As part of the new Icons of India series with Hyundai, we’re exploring the country’s culture, heritage and diversity. For the first installment, we got hold of the striking new Hyundai Verna in its most exciting avatar – 1.5 turbo with a 6-speed manual transmission – and made our way to the tri-city area of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula. Around 230km from New Delhi, the highway is a busy one connecting the national capital with Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, all the way to Ladakh. In terms of quality, the roads, at least until Chandigarh, are decent, but there are a couple of under-construction patches along the way, which combined with slow-moving commercial vehicles, can lead to traffic snarls. Time lost was easily made up thanks to the segment-best 160bhp turbo petrol under the hood of our Verna making it oh so easy to execute quick overtakes and allowing us to cruise effortlessly at highway speeds.