Now that we were on GQ, the drive from Davangere was easy. For the first 50-60 kms, it was a bit slow as the highway was under construction, but beyond that, it was very fast. We took a Brunch stop and from there on, I drove non-stop to Pune - the road was good and swift had finally started to eat kilometers. This drive in someways restored back our confidence of completing 10,000 kms on this trip. We got good roads all the way through to Pune.
At Pune, we took a snacks break and took a few pics with the wind mills around.
Closer to sunset, we reached the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. It's always a pleasure to drive on this expressway. It's a tough terrain and the expressway has made life very easy here. It used to take 6-7 hours to drive from Mumbai to Pune, now it takes just 2.
I was doing this drive for the second time in Swift and third time overall. I thought, the quality of the expressway had probably dropped a notch. It could just simply be a result of heavy rains this year, but the expressway wasn't that smooth as it had once been. Given that it was dark and raining, I kept to my 90-100 kmph for most of the drive.
We wanted to bye-pass Mumbai and thought of a few different options. Finally, a call with Abhishek (K) made things clear and he suggested we drive through Thane, make a night halt there and then continue to Vapi next morning - very good advice in deed as we figured it out on Day 5.
Overall, a good driving day - we did 711 kms and overall it was very comfortable.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Day 3: Palghat to Davangere
We made a post-breakfast start from Palghat and headed towards Coimbatore. It took us sometime to get through Coimbatore as we had to cross the city to get to NH 209. After half an hour of city drive, we made it to NH 209.
NH 209, like all other 200+ national highway numbers is relatively narrow, but we could maintain 70-80 kmph speeds as it was relatively empty and not so bumpy. After doing some distance, we reached the ghats. There, in time, we climbed up through 27 hair pin bends - a great experience. We did those 27 hair pin bends in about 10 kms or so, which means rapid climb up the mountain. This was the first real test for Swift - it faired very well, at so stage did it feel power deficient despite being fully loaded. Driving though the hair pin bends was an experience in itself!
The funny part was once we reached the top of the ghats, there was almost a plain road - and we are still to figure out how we got back to sea level as there was no major down hill drive at any stage. :-)
We continued our drive, the trip navigators teamed up to find the best possible way to avoid Bangalore and we found that taking a state highway to Tumukur would probably be the best bet. Again, this state highway took a lot of time to travel, 70 odd kms in 2.5 hours or so, all thanks to poor roads with tons of potholes.
Beyond that phase, we entered golden quadrilateral for the first time and the drive was a breeze. It had been post-sunset and head lights had come on, but we could maintain a comfortable 90-100 kmph from there on. I personally like to keep it slow at night and therefore didn't go any beyond that magic 90-100 kmph. At this speed, the engine is at its peak performance - the drive felt like a glide!
Shortly thereafter, we made a night stop at Davangere - we had to reverse the cycle somehow - for the first two days, we had been driving till late at night. Now, we thought of stopping by early evening - 8-8:30pm or so and then having an early start next morning.
Overall, we did 609 kms on Day 3 - a lot of it on not-so-great highways and now we were probably 3/4th of a day behind our original schedule - our target was to get to Pune by Day 3.
NH 209, like all other 200+ national highway numbers is relatively narrow, but we could maintain 70-80 kmph speeds as it was relatively empty and not so bumpy. After doing some distance, we reached the ghats. There, in time, we climbed up through 27 hair pin bends - a great experience. We did those 27 hair pin bends in about 10 kms or so, which means rapid climb up the mountain. This was the first real test for Swift - it faired very well, at so stage did it feel power deficient despite being fully loaded. Driving though the hair pin bends was an experience in itself!
The funny part was once we reached the top of the ghats, there was almost a plain road - and we are still to figure out how we got back to sea level as there was no major down hill drive at any stage. :-)
We continued our drive, the trip navigators teamed up to find the best possible way to avoid Bangalore and we found that taking a state highway to Tumukur would probably be the best bet. Again, this state highway took a lot of time to travel, 70 odd kms in 2.5 hours or so, all thanks to poor roads with tons of potholes.
Beyond that phase, we entered golden quadrilateral for the first time and the drive was a breeze. It had been post-sunset and head lights had come on, but we could maintain a comfortable 90-100 kmph from there on. I personally like to keep it slow at night and therefore didn't go any beyond that magic 90-100 kmph. At this speed, the engine is at its peak performance - the drive felt like a glide!
Shortly thereafter, we made a night stop at Davangere - we had to reverse the cycle somehow - for the first two days, we had been driving till late at night. Now, we thought of stopping by early evening - 8-8:30pm or so and then having an early start next morning.
Overall, we did 609 kms on Day 3 - a lot of it on not-so-great highways and now we were probably 3/4th of a day behind our original schedule - our target was to get to Pune by Day 3.
Day 2: Madurai - Kanyakumari - Palghat
We were a bit behind our initial plan on Day1 - the idea was to make it up on Day2, which meant we had to go to KanyaKumari, then cross entire Kerala and reach Mangalore by night.
We started off from Madurai and the highway to Kanya Kumari was a beauty. We covered 200 odd kms in just over 2 hours and then slowed down near Kanya Kumari to take a few pics with the windmills. We got to Kanya Kumari in quick time, thanks to the 4-lane highway, which is a part of the north-south corridor.
After doing touristy stuff at Kanya Kumari, we headed north-west-wards to Kerala on NH 47. I had decent memories of NH 47 - 15 years back, I had travelled on this highway and it was fast back then. Unfortunately, it was absolutely slow and clearly didn't look anywhere close to be a national highway. Kerala, is a state with end-less towns - one town ends and the other starts and thus there is absolutely no gap in between. In the last 15 years, clearly the traffic has increased a few times, but the road has not changed at all. This meant that on a national highway we were driving at around 30kmph - it took us hours and hours to get from Kanyakumari to Trivandrum to Allepy - at Allepy, we had a typical Kerala dinner and we headed off again towards Cochin, Alwaye, etc. Given our slow progress through the day, we made two decisions which in many ways changed our entire plan:
We started off from Madurai and the highway to Kanya Kumari was a beauty. We covered 200 odd kms in just over 2 hours and then slowed down near Kanya Kumari to take a few pics with the windmills. We got to Kanya Kumari in quick time, thanks to the 4-lane highway, which is a part of the north-south corridor.
After doing touristy stuff at Kanya Kumari, we headed north-west-wards to Kerala on NH 47. I had decent memories of NH 47 - 15 years back, I had travelled on this highway and it was fast back then. Unfortunately, it was absolutely slow and clearly didn't look anywhere close to be a national highway. Kerala, is a state with end-less towns - one town ends and the other starts and thus there is absolutely no gap in between. In the last 15 years, clearly the traffic has increased a few times, but the road has not changed at all. This meant that on a national highway we were driving at around 30kmph - it took us hours and hours to get from Kanyakumari to Trivandrum to Allepy - at Allepy, we had a typical Kerala dinner and we headed off again towards Cochin, Alwaye, etc. Given our slow progress through the day, we made two decisions which in many ways changed our entire plan:
- There was no way we could reach Managalore - it would have meant driving all night - we wanted to play safer than that!
- Doing the same 30kmph through Kerala for another day didn't inspire us at all. So, we decided to change our route and head towards Tamil Nadu side (Coimbotore) and stop where ever we could
At 1:30am at night, we reached a small town before Palghat and found a decent place to stay. That was it for this long day, a day when we travelled the first 200 odd kms in very quick time and the next 400 at very low average speed of ~30 kmph. A frustrating day, leaving us with plenty to think of for the next day. The pressure to "make up" lost time had started to weigh on us.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Day 1: Chennai - Rameswaram - Madurai
Day 1: Chennai - Rameswaram - Madurai
The first day of our road trip had to be exciting. It started off in an interesting way. We (Aditi and me) were supposed to land in Chennai on Thursday evening by 10pm, get home by around 11:30pm and sleep for 4-5 hours before starting off at 4-5am in the morning. However, our flight got delayed by nearly 4 hours and we reached home at 2:30am. We had two options - either to start right then or start by 7-8am. The second option would have made the day-1 target impossible to get to. So, we decided to start right then after freshening up a bit.
Early in the morning, we got to NH45 quite soon. It was a bit dark, a bit of early morning drizzle and it had been some time since I had driven Swift - so I took good half an hour to get used to the car, the gear changes, get a measure of the brakes and how the car was behaving with a truck load of people and baggages inside! It was doing well frankly, I didn't notice any major difference in the way it was picking up. Additionally, the car had undergone some repair, but it felt good - the clutch was adjusted wrongly, but otherwise everything else was fine.
We drove all the way to Trichy (about 300 kms) and at 9am had a breakfast stop. The first part of the journey was done in quick time. The end goal was to reach KanyaKumari that day, so I thought we were reasonably on target.
From Trichy, we got on to NH 210 and we had about 200 kms to go for Rameswaram - a distance that I thought should take 3 hours 15 minutes on a lesser national highway. However, it took a lot longer, it took us good 5 and half hours to reach Rameswaram. NH210 clearly doesn't deserve to be termed a national highway, the maximum I would call is a lesser state highway. The road isn't good, its very narrow and goes through lots of towns where the speed drops to 10kmph from an otherwise impressive 30 kmph :-)
On NH210, I took a wrong turn somewhere and within a km or so we realised we were heading down the wrong way. I parked the car to understand the maps and GPS to see where we need to be heading. I realised I had to take a U-turn and get back to the previous crossing. I took the car further to the left to give myself space to take a U-turn.... and that's when, the left wheel dropped more than a foot down and the car was stuck. All of us got down the car and the right rear wheel was in the air. People around came to help us readily and it was so very nice of them. Seriously appreciate their concern and help as they lifted the front left part of the car and I powered back the car in reverse - the car immediately rolled out and it was a sigh of relief for us. Big thanks again to the people in that town - you made a rather difficult situatio easy for us.
On our way back, we started from Rameswaram at about 6:30pm. We had heard of a new 4-lane highway that had been constructed linking Rameswaram and Kanyakumari. Unfortunately despite our numerous attempts we couldn't find it. Finally we decided to take the long route to Kanya Kumari, through Madhurai.
I had not slept for more than 36 hours and at around 10-10:30pm, I started to feel the heat. So, I handed the car to Papa and peacefully slept thereafter. At around 11pm, we reached Madurai and realised that we all were tired and going further wasn't the greatest idea. Therefore we called it a day and were 200 kms short of our original plan. Thanks to the various detours in between, we had still done a good 751 kms for the day.
The first day of our road trip had to be exciting. It started off in an interesting way. We (Aditi and me) were supposed to land in Chennai on Thursday evening by 10pm, get home by around 11:30pm and sleep for 4-5 hours before starting off at 4-5am in the morning. However, our flight got delayed by nearly 4 hours and we reached home at 2:30am. We had two options - either to start right then or start by 7-8am. The second option would have made the day-1 target impossible to get to. So, we decided to start right then after freshening up a bit.
Early in the morning, we got to NH45 quite soon. It was a bit dark, a bit of early morning drizzle and it had been some time since I had driven Swift - so I took good half an hour to get used to the car, the gear changes, get a measure of the brakes and how the car was behaving with a truck load of people and baggages inside! It was doing well frankly, I didn't notice any major difference in the way it was picking up. Additionally, the car had undergone some repair, but it felt good - the clutch was adjusted wrongly, but otherwise everything else was fine.
We drove all the way to Trichy (about 300 kms) and at 9am had a breakfast stop. The first part of the journey was done in quick time. The end goal was to reach KanyaKumari that day, so I thought we were reasonably on target.
From Trichy, we got on to NH 210 and we had about 200 kms to go for Rameswaram - a distance that I thought should take 3 hours 15 minutes on a lesser national highway. However, it took a lot longer, it took us good 5 and half hours to reach Rameswaram. NH210 clearly doesn't deserve to be termed a national highway, the maximum I would call is a lesser state highway. The road isn't good, its very narrow and goes through lots of towns where the speed drops to 10kmph from an otherwise impressive 30 kmph :-)
On NH210, I took a wrong turn somewhere and within a km or so we realised we were heading down the wrong way. I parked the car to understand the maps and GPS to see where we need to be heading. I realised I had to take a U-turn and get back to the previous crossing. I took the car further to the left to give myself space to take a U-turn.... and that's when, the left wheel dropped more than a foot down and the car was stuck. All of us got down the car and the right rear wheel was in the air. People around came to help us readily and it was so very nice of them. Seriously appreciate their concern and help as they lifted the front left part of the car and I powered back the car in reverse - the car immediately rolled out and it was a sigh of relief for us. Big thanks again to the people in that town - you made a rather difficult situatio easy for us.
On our way back, we started from Rameswaram at about 6:30pm. We had heard of a new 4-lane highway that had been constructed linking Rameswaram and Kanyakumari. Unfortunately despite our numerous attempts we couldn't find it. Finally we decided to take the long route to Kanya Kumari, through Madhurai.
I had not slept for more than 36 hours and at around 10-10:30pm, I started to feel the heat. So, I handed the car to Papa and peacefully slept thereafter. At around 11pm, we reached Madurai and realised that we all were tired and going further wasn't the greatest idea. Therefore we called it a day and were 200 kms short of our original plan. Thanks to the various detours in between, we had still done a good 751 kms for the day.
A big thanks to all!
For most part, our 10,000 km in 18 days road trip was a dream. It would have been impossible to do this road trip, without the support of our friends and relatives - who helped us immensely at every step. I would like to thank one and all. In particular, we are greatly thankful to:
- Arun Uncle: For helping us with route planning, GPS and motivating us all the way through with his daily phone calls enquiring if we were on the right track. While we were on the road, uncle also kept a track of news alerts, flood alerts, etc to keep us updated. A very big thanks!
- Romit Mama for helping us a lot while we were struggling to find our way from Sri Ganganagar to Manali and on the return journey, helping us with the best route to bye-pass Delhi.
- Tshering for helping us a lot with on the ground situation in Sikkim - helped us in a very big way - we would have otherwise gone and probably gotten stuck in Sikkim. A big thanks for genuinely helping us.
- Phuphaji for giving us a very clear idea about the road condition between Manali and Leh - it really helped us a lot, otherwise we would have been caught by an unpleasant surprise
- K and Mak for helping us for helping us find a smart way to get from Pune expressway to Baroda side highway, without getting stuck in Mumbai traffic.
- Prabhat Tauji for helping us with the route around Kanpur and Delhi
- Babboo Chacha and Chachi for keeping regular track of us and motivation through the trip
- To our friends (Latcha, Singapore gang, etc) for their constant motivation
- ... and to all those who are reading this blog and commenting on our posts :-)
.... and the list goes on and on and on... goes to show how much we have been helped in making this rather impossible trip possible. Thanks a lot!
Monday, 27 September 2010
Periphery of India!
Here is our route map (in red): We tried to keep it to periphery of India as much as possible
Fuel Efficiency
Let's set the context, before I give the final average. We had a fully loaded swift - 5 adults with 8 baggages - a sight that would give the engineer responsible for design and calculation of car's ground clearance nightmares! The car was atleast 300-400 kgs more in weight than a typical highway drive car.
Further, we went through very different types of roads and terrains. We did the Himalayas for 3 days, we did travel on not so great roads, we did a lot of travel where one had to break and accelerate in cycles and yes, we did have lady luck shining for us on the golden quadrilaterals and the empty top quality highways of Rajasthan - in short, it was indeed a good mixture of highway driving conditions.
Further, the A/C was operational for the entire journey.
The car gave a total fuel average of 13.6 kms / litre of fuel. This is a 2006 model Petrol Swift, which means that it does not have the advantage of the new more efficient K series engines. So, overall we were satisfied with the fuel efficiency. On Golden Quadrilateral, the efficiency jumped to around 15 and sometimes 16 km/ litre. On the hills we got between 10.3-12.5 kms/litre and 11-12 on bad/ congested roads per se.
Here is the list of our fuel refills and fuel efficiency for each refill. There is always a bit of error involved to the extent the tank is filled, I would estimate that all these figures are probably accurate to +/- 0.5 kms/ litre, or in other words +/- 1 litre of fuel filled.
In my initial trip budgeting, I had assumed an average of 12.5 kms/ litre - in the end, I should be more than happy with 13.6 kms/ litre.
Further, we went through very different types of roads and terrains. We did the Himalayas for 3 days, we did travel on not so great roads, we did a lot of travel where one had to break and accelerate in cycles and yes, we did have lady luck shining for us on the golden quadrilaterals and the empty top quality highways of Rajasthan - in short, it was indeed a good mixture of highway driving conditions.
Further, the A/C was operational for the entire journey.
The car gave a total fuel average of 13.6 kms / litre of fuel. This is a 2006 model Petrol Swift, which means that it does not have the advantage of the new more efficient K series engines. So, overall we were satisfied with the fuel efficiency. On Golden Quadrilateral, the efficiency jumped to around 15 and sometimes 16 km/ litre. On the hills we got between 10.3-12.5 kms/litre and 11-12 on bad/ congested roads per se.
Here is the list of our fuel refills and fuel efficiency for each refill. There is always a bit of error involved to the extent the tank is filled, I would estimate that all these figures are probably accurate to +/- 0.5 kms/ litre, or in other words +/- 1 litre of fuel filled.
In my initial trip budgeting, I had assumed an average of 12.5 kms/ litre - in the end, I should be more than happy with 13.6 kms/ litre.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)