For the uninitiated, driving in Ladakh comes with a long list of new prerequisites. Apart from acclimatising yourself to the altitude of India’s highest plateau, there are the vast expanses of open border roads to keep track of, the lack of phone signals, and with the thinner air, harsher UV rays. 600-odd kilometres down on the odometer, I became well acquainted with the latter — sunburned hands turning over the LX500d’s steering wheel. We were well over 12,000 feet above sea level, and crucially, two feet away from a sheer drop of at least 500 feet — and yet, my usual test-drive anxiety was nowhere to be found. Our convoy would double the distance across the next few days — crossing lakes, mountain passes, herds of sheep and horses and countless army bases; in ways that would profoundly change the way we saw the world around us and perhaps within us as well.
The Path of Pashmina
Pashmina wool, often referred to as ‘soft gold,’ is a treasure deeply ingrained in every facet of Ladakhi culture. While it’s often worn daily by local folk because of its innate softness and warmth, I came to learn that pashmina is much more than mere luxury clothing.
Lexus quickly introduced us to the women behind Lena Ladakh Pashmina — a successful women-led startup that was set up in 2016 and has since gone on to upskill several young women, keep the art of hand-woven pashmina alive and thriving while supplying their handiwork to ateliers around the world. The idea was to follow the thread of pashmina back to its very roots — from holding phenomenally woven finished products in our hands to learning how to dye and knit the fabric ourselves, and finally getting up and personal with the ‘Changthangi’ — the charmingly small, fluffy goats that produce cashmere wool worthy of the pashmina moniker.
Setting off from the tranquil village of Nimoo, I came to learn how pashmina was interwoven into centuries of customs and social realities both old and new. The fabric has traded hands over coming-of-age ceremonies, and weddings, and even served as a prized store of value for Ladakhi women when British Raj laws prevented them from inheriting land. Simply put, there’s no other fabric in the world as prized or as interesting — and it certainly got us primed for the vehicles we’d be spending dozens of hours in; each of them craftworks in their own right.
The four vehicles we got acquainted with were the nimble, tech-laden NX350h, the Titanic, the road-spanning LX500d, and two generations of the RX line. We turned heads throughout our journey — Lexus’ evocative, dramatic design cues certainly made for incredible shots, but against the backdrop of Ladakh’s clear skies and snowcapped peaks? Surreal didn’t begin to describe the view; each of us felt the city-slicker in us melt away as the odometer kept ticking. By night or by day, driving in Ladakh has a certain meditative aspect to it; one that we often remarked upon and appreciated as we carved our way through our route.
The NX and LX both excelled — the latter offering incredible levels of pliancy and drivability despite its imposing size and weight. While our time spent with each SUV was comfortable, easy-going and largely error-free — I’d have to chalk out the new RX350 as the clear winner here. The new RX is simply one of the best go-anywhere machines that money can buy in India, offering a slew of creature comforts, a finely-tuned inline-6 engine, and impeccable cabin craftsmanship, especially when it came to the dash and leather trimmings. The many hybrids on offer did quite well — adjusting easily to the region’s thinner air and offering plenty of grunt by the time we passed Pangong Lake, and its bobbing, weaving lakefront roads.
‘Lexus Life’
Lexus India has been around for just over half a decade at this point. Competing with the ‘Germans’ — as most Lexus reps put it — certainly isn’t an easy task as you might imagine, but Toyota’s luxury division has, if nothing else, been particularly straightforward with developing a base of operations in the subcontinent; its Bidadi, Bengaluru plant making India one of three global manufacturing centres — the other two being Japan and the United States.
This has, since early 2020, allowed Lexus vehicles to become vastly more accessible in India — as CBUs, Lexus cars were subjected to 100 per cent import duties in India. That figure is now less than half of what it used to be, and has been followed up by an exponential jump in Lexus’ YoY sales — Lexus India’s president Naveen Soni sharing a healthy 12,768 sales figure for the year so far; taking a moment to note that Lexus, and the luxury automotive sector as a whole, is seeing a whole new generation of buyers. While we rubbed shoulders and shook hands with the usual crop of business stalwarts — some arriving in family groups, others with childhood friends taking a ‘self-declared break’ from their spouses — younger Lexus owners such as 30-something entrepreneurs and hotshot doctors also made their appearance felt; bringing a spirited energy to the drive that saw itself reflected in campsite chats, inside jokes, and a cheeky overtake or three.
For Soni, who has spent over two decades working with Toyota, much of Lexus’ future in the market depends heavily upon customer interaction with these luxury segment newcomers — how a customer feels and connects with their chosen car company can have a ripple effect, influencing car talk with everyone from their future generations to their peers and colleagues.
“The maximum marketing budget spend,” explains Soni, “usually goes towards acquiring new customers. But we’ve spent about 42% of ours on our existing customers. We aim to identify their passion points. Somebody may like music, somebody may like food, somebody may like travel, somebody may like health… so we’ve done various programs. We firmly believe we don’t sell cars. We sell experiences.”
The result, at least in terms of their planned drives, is markedly different from many others we’ve seen. Instead of simply tossing current owners and media folk into the latest machinery, Lexus decided to take the scenic route and tell a subtle story along the way — one that connects Lexus’ own ‘Takumi’ craftsmanship principles with an equally beautiful approach to indigenous textiles and the land that they arose from; we’re excited to see where Lexus India goes next.
Image Credits – Lexus India
