Kizashi Diaries - Wired Wrong, Running Still 48 days 3500kms

For almost two years, I was on a quiet hunt for the perfect vehicle not just something to drive, but something to escape in. A vehicle I could start living in until I didn’t want to anymore. something I could build from the ground up. I wanted to know each screw, every corner. Make it mine. Old, because obviously, I didn’t have a big budget. I kept looking for an old van or SUV, I was hunting for something with character or so common that I could give it a character.

And then I remembered the Kizashi. A car that used to drop my jaw as a kid. Rare. Misunderstood. And of course, the replacement parts nightmare. But it came under budget, and it had everything I was looking for. It screamed my name. A 2.4l NA engine, 6 speed manual transmission, a solid build, and the kind of uniqueness that called out to be turned into something more.

I found one after a yearlong search in a barely drivable state, just good enough to limp into a garage. Over the next few months, I started restoring it as if it was the only thing that made any sense in my life with everything that was happening and with the kizashi something started to come alive in me too. That idea of escape. Of freedom. Of absurdity. Why not a JDM sedan as a camper conversion. Why not take it to places it was never meant to go?

I worked on it for six months. Back seat and boot into a bed. Passenger seat as storage. Driver seat my cockpit. From the inside: a sleeper camper. From the outside: a blacked-out JDM with full skirts and a tuned exhaust.

We hit the highway. Kizashi and I.

The car turned into a f***ing NASCAR on the expressway. Cruising at 140–180kmph, 6th gear, 4–5000 rpm, 13kmpl on a JDM from 2011. It was perfect. Exhaust note like a dream. Suspension like butter. Tight steering. No one dared to chase. Kids screamed, people filmed, and all I could do was smile. I was in a dream I built myself.

We reached Bir after 500 kms on Day 1. Climbed during sunset. 40–50-degree incline. Road barely wide enough to fit the chassis. It was a rally. 60kmph uphill in 3rd gear. The full exhaust note echoed through empty valleys, turning heads, drawing smiles, and feeling honestly unreal. At 2300m altitude, we stopped. The JDM turned camper. No one around for miles. No ground clearance. No backup. Just my window and the world outside it.

This wasn’t just a car build. It was a form of therapy, a rebellion, and a dream that I’m still in the middle of living.

The trip wasn’t just about highways and mountain passes. I took the Kizashi into campsites, rough trails, and mild off-road paths, not extreme enough to get stuck, but just gnarly enough to practice technical driving. I learned the car’s limitations, but more importantly, I learned how to push them.

Despite being a sedan, the Kizashi turned out to be surprisingly livable. I was more at ease, stretched out in the backseat than I ever felt in a crowded hostel. Waking up at 2400m, with sunlight spilling across the windscreen of my big black machine, and leaping off the cliff beside it to practice paragliding it felt like I was living inside an anime montage. For ten straight days, I returned to the same spot, the Kizashi becoming both my launchpad and my home base.

It wasn’t long before it began turning heads people clicking pictures of it, kids pointing at it, “boy” crowds at roadside washes. I’d often find myself staring at it in disbelief, thinking, how is this mine? But slowly, it began to make sense.

As much as I needed this car to survive, it felt like the car needed me too.

After 22 days, the gear shifts grew harder, the gear bushes were wearing out. My restoration still had gaps. About 200 km away from bir I find myself in my worst nightmare of narrow, patchy mountain roads recently reflooded, half missing, sneaky potholes, and creeping traffic. Somehow, the suspension powered through as I couldn’t keep my foot off the pedal.

We finally found a riverside trail, almost vertical, a 70-degree descent with three tight hairpins and zero room for error. It was a one-way gamble. But I was craving solitude, and challenge. So down we went. For four days, I didn’t move the car. Just lived beside the river in stillness for 4 days, trying to get a grip on my life. Each day getting harder as I started breaking down reality and processing how my life had unfolded.

The morning, I realized that solitude might not be the best solution for me, that I might fall further down on this road. I decided to leave, I turned the key and a loud snap echoed under the hood. The new belt had torn clean in two, getting jammed in the water pump and pulley system. Stranded. No spare.

When the engine belt snapped, I didn’t react. It was new. Installed not even a month ago. I stood there, staring at the torn rubber like it was some kind of message I wasn’t ready to read. I already knew I wouldn’t find a replacement anywhere nearby. It was more than that.

And just like that, I was stuck on a trail that had no exit without the engine running, beside a river that had become home for the last few days. The next three days were quiet. I didn’t drive; I didn’t leave. I just stayed inside the car, beside it, pacing around it. Not having control wasn't new to me, I had been practicing adapting to it you see but this time it felt like did have it, I just didn’t want it anymore. And maybe that’s what was needed.

We both broke down me and the car.

Thoughts I’d been outrunning began to arrive one by one. The silence made room for them. That spot isolated and still, became the place where everything I had been carrying finally surfaced.

There was no fixing it immediately. So all I could do was sit in that stillness and let whatever needed to catch up, catch up. I was already carrying a lot when I started this trip. But that riverside silence was where it all finally hit me. That place broke me. And sitting in that river, alone with the car and everything I hadn’t dealt with, I was forced to pick myself up.

Eventually, I managed to get a belt shipped from Delhi. It arrived at a village about 3 kilometers from the spot where I was parked. I got up before the sun, walked the trail, picked it up. Installed it with shaky hands, a youtube video, an amazon bought tool kit and hope. it started.

I took that as a sign. I left immediately, drove almost 100 kilometers away from that place, from the river, from the campsite. I didn’t know exactly where I was headed, but it felt good to be moving again. Like I had escaped something. I reached the end of the road for that valley a point that maybe could’ve been my next stop. But it was sunset. And something about the way the light hit, the way the car moved, the way I felt it didn’t sit right. I had somehow lost the confidence. The energy. In the car. In myself.

So, I turned around. Turned around and drove all the way back, to the same riverside where I had been stuck.

I thought I’d say goodbye in the morning and leave for good. I even washed the car. Packed everything. But just as I was ready to leave, the belt snapped again.

This time, I wasn't shocked. Somehow, it made sense. It felt like the car was trying to tell me something. That this pause, this delay, had meaning. That it wasn’t just mechanical it was personal.

Because the Kizashi wasn’t just a vehicle anymore. It had been with me through everything. It had seen who I was before this trip. The arguments, the laughter, the music, the numb silences, the crying, the moments I didn’t know what to say. Moment where we said goodbye for one final time. It had held me and her inside its cabin when things were still soft, and also when the time began to slip, when our lives started unravelling.

The car remembered.

It knew the version of me that had broken down quietly, long before this trip began. And now, as it sat stranded beside a river, it felt like it was grieving too. Processing its own miles. Holding mine.

I eventually realized it wasn’t the belt’s fault. It was deeper something inside the alternator assembly had shifted. A spring had misaligned with heat, pulling the belt off track every time. I knew how rare the part was. I had waited months for it once, back in Delhi.

So, I braced myself for another long wait. But then, out of nowhere, I heard from someone who had ordered the part four months ago. He had sold his Kizashi in the meantime, given up. The part finally arrived, and I got to have it.

By then, the walks had become familiar. Past the valley, through the morning chill. It no longer felt like a breakdown. It felt like a process. One that both the car and I were going through, together. And just when I had made peace with everything when I’d accepted the stillness and started to feel okay again just when I’d sat with everything and started to feel steady the car came alive too.

As I got back on the road this time with a clearer idea of where I was headed the flow returned. Kizi and I drove another 500 kilometres that night, and it was something else. The road was empty, smooth as glass, lit up by a full moon. The air was sharp, the corners endless. The car felt light, responsive, like it had been waiting for this just as much as I had.

I wasn’t pushing the car to its limits. I was pushing myself to mine. And the Kizashi kept up, without question.

For the next few weeks, it stayed that way, continued to hold up, night after night. It had found its rhythm in the mountains twisting, cornering, climbing, descending. It became the eye-turner again. as if it had always belonged there. It had found its rhythm, its home, in those winding roads.

Yeah, I could feel some vibrations through the engine head. Probably loose tappets. The gear shifting started getting rough too I had to double-clutch sometimes just to get it in. But by then, I’d learned the rhythm as well. A way to work with it. We had a system. It needed me to keep going, just as I needed it. And somehow, deep down, I just knew it wouldn’t break down again.

We were looking out for each other.

I had promised myself that I’d take this car everywhere it could go, everywhere I could go right up to where the road ends.

And that’s exactly what we did.

The trip ended on an 80-degree incline. Kizashi didn’t have the articulation or the ground clearance to climb further. I parked it near the stairs of Dharamkot and let it rest there for weeks, before finally bringing it home.

Now, the Kizashi rests again but only to gather itself. It needs a full gear bushing, maybe a complete clutch system overhaul. The engine head will come off too rockers and tappets need replacing before they wear through completely. But this isn’t the end. It’s just the prep before the next adventure. After all it’s been through, I owe it that much. I owe myself that much.