Joginder Singh Bhachu

JOGINDER SINGH BHACHU

(Born February 9, 1932, died October 20, 2013)

Born and brought up in Kenya to a Tarkhan Sikh family, he made the East African Safari Rally his principal theatre, winning the event three times (1965, 1974, and 1976). Others have since won it more often but in a race in which up to 90 percent of the competitors fail to complete the course, Joginder’s 13 Top 10 finishes and only three retirements in 22 years suggest that he may be the #greatest #driver the event has seen.

It was his performance in the 1971 event, however, that truly shows the measure of the man. The race had been underway for only a few hours when Joginder’s Ford Escort had a gearbox problem which left him able to travel only in reverse. Deciding to return to his service crew, he drove backward for three miles - using a screwdriver as the gear lever.

“All this time about 70 more Safari #cars were coming flat out towards me as I was reversing,” he later recalled. “On reaching the service point, we found the crew had gone. Only two mechanics remained. We just opened up the gearbox and stripped it to bits. The gear selector had broken. There were no spare parts... We bent the levers in the gears so as to stick them in and put it all back into place. It took a lot of hammering to bend the steel rods to make them work. This took a lot of precious time. As soon as we got back on the road, we let go at full speed. We started overtaking the tail-enders... We were the 100th car at one stage and we just kept overtaking them.”

The Ford team chief had long ago written him off, but Joginder turned up at the finish line at number three on the road, having overtaken more than 100 cars. It was only the loss of time that consigned him to 16th place on points.

Joginder had won the 1965 Safari in a PV544 left behind by Volvo after the previous year’s race . He and his brother, Jaswant, bought the car from the local Volvo dealer, rebuilt it themselves, and entered it privately — still managing to beat all the works teams.

There are some who felt that Joginder should have been awarded the race in 1969 after he and Robin Hillyar had fought out a close finish, Hillyar just prevailing. It was then discovered that Hillyar’s Ford had larger valves than were permitted under the rules, but Ford’s explanation satisfied the judges and their man kept the race.

Joginder continued to compete in the Rally after winning it again in 1974 and 1976. He eventually retired in 1980 after a career in which he had also secured more than 60 victories in the East African Rally Championships in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and three top-five finishes in the Southern Cross Rally in Australia. He was twice awarded Kenya’s Motor Sportsman of the Year title (1970 and 1976).

Ashok Bhalla, the manager of the East African Safari Rally, said of Joginder: “[He] never forgot a bend. He drove around it once and memorized its no details — the sharpness of angle, the gradient of terrain, type of surface. The next time we went there, he took it at the maximum speed possible. He combined the roles of driver and navigator.”

Joginder Singh TARKHAN was called the Flying Sikh in a book by Roger Barnard, Peter Moll, which was illustrated by Mohamed Amin.

Joginder Singh Bhachu was born on February 9 1932 at Kericho in Kenya. His father, who had come to Kenya in the 1920s from a village in Punjab, owned a garage. After attending a boarding school in Nairobi, Joginder worked as a mechanic before, in 1958, becoming the first patrolman for the Royal East African Automobile Association. He did not take up motorsport until he was 26.

#Tarkhan #Sikh