TO FIAT IN A FIAT ALL ALONG THE MONSOONED ROADS

I had requested for a plant visit on CEO comment/feedback. I got a reply from them to pick a day for the visit. I was overwhelmed with a positive response from Fiat. Scheduled the visit for the 5th of September 2009. Planned to leave by 6 pm on 3rd September 2009, visit Jog falls, Unchalli Falls and then drive down to Pune via Hubli.

Day 1: 3rd September 2009: Started about a couple of hours late from the scheduled start and drove down via the Nice Road to Nelamangala from RR Nagar. Reached Shimoga at 1 am. Took a room to doze off for the day.

Day 2: 4th September 2009: Started at 7 am from Shimoga and drove down to Sagar. We had breakfast at Sagar and proceeded towards Jog. Reached by 9:15 am, initially very excited with the mist, but disappointed a little later as this hid the falls completely. It started raining, so was waiting around the place for the rain to stop. But a brisk breeze cleared up the mist which ensured I got busy with clicking pics.

From Pune - Shirdi

Then my companions decided to trek to the bottom of the falls. I was ok with myself waiting inside the car half asleep. After a couple hours they return completely drenched in rain. After they got back to normal dresses, we left for Unchalli Falls. This is one splendid falls. We reached Unchalli falls by 12.30 pm.













It was raining pretty heavy. Decided to give the umbrellas a bit of a workout. Reached the view point again completely misty, there was no letting from the mist. All along the leeches gave us company at the falls. The noise at the falls was deafening but we could not see the waterfalls due to the mist. We waited for about 45 mins for the mist to clear, but to no avail, we decided to move on. Drove till Sirsi and stopped over for lunch. Then drove through Yellapur to Dharwad to reach the Bangalore – Pune highway. After hitting the Bangalore – Pune highway at 7 pm and with about 430 odd kms still to go for Pune, started upping the speed, but the situation got only worse as it started to pour. The average speed being low due to rain, reached Pune by 1:30 am. Was tired and hit the sack for a sound sleep. But invariably I could not sleep, thinking about the next day’s program.

Day 3: 5th September 2009: Got up early, the executive from Fiat was ready to meet up with me. We headed off to the factory. The factory is about 57 kms from Pune. Reached the factory by 11 am. Delay as we visited a Ganapati Temple on the way. The findings from the visit will be put in a new thread.

After the visit around the plant, decided to visit Shirdi which is about 150 kms from the factory and about 200 kms from Pune. The roads till Ahmednagar were good and then from there on it was a night mare till about 20 odd kms to Shirdi.

A routine temple visit and dinner, hit the sack for a sound sleep after 2 days.

Day 4: 6th September 2009: Got up a little late, and finished the pending visits to numerous spots in Shirdi. Started from Shirdi via the same route I came from. Drove till Pune outskirts on the Bangalore – Pune highway.













Stopped at a fuel pump and also a dhaba was located there. Finished lunch and chilled out for about an hour. And started driving back. It was very leisurely drive cruising all along. Then unfortunately had a puncture so wasted another hour and half. Then after the puncture was fixed, drove on till Belgaum for a coffee break. Another delay here, because the milk was still on its way. In the meanwhile was playing with the Labrador dog that the hotel owner had. Then after the milk arrived, another 40 mins gone. Then drove up to Dharwad to stop for dinner. An hour gone. Stopped at Dharwad to withdraw money and refuel. Required quite bit of money due to the toll that one pays all along the highway.

From Haveri toll to Hiriyur toll the road is in very poor condition. Seriously pissed off with the road condition as I could not maintain even a decent average speed. Took about 3.5 hours to cross this stretch. Then from there on, the traffic was high in the night all along the highway till The NICE Road. Finally reached home by 6:15 am on Monday.

A long search ended when I found a White Angel

For the past 5 odd months, I have been running around the used car showrooms, searching over the internet over this one particular car. I was ready to source one from any city within a radius of 1000 kms. Sounds like madness ah!

When I found the preferred model, either the car was in poor condition or had an accident history and also the owners quoted prices which would raise quite a few eye brows. Over the period of time, the search started to get frustrating as I did not want to settle for just another car.

Then one fine day, found one of the cars on the Sulekha ads which seemed good. Called up the owner to check if the car was still available for sale. The answer was yes. Went ahead immediately to have a look at the car. Was quite impressed when I found the car to be good condition if not excellent. It had 70K Kms on the odo; still the internals seemed quite good. Also the owner had the service history for the car. Checked the car with my mechanic who gave the green signal to go ahead. However, the owner had mentioned there was coolant leakage, which I checked with the service centre who said they can fix it.

I was pretty ok with the offered price, got a DD for the amount, made the payment, took over the documents and drove off on the Monday evening.

Headed to the service centre the next day morning to have the coolant leakage plugged. Even though there was a delay in getting the repair done, they did a good job of it.

The list of things done during the service.

1) Replaced the head gasket and ensured there is no more leakage issues
2) Got the disc pads changed (20% life left in them, still got them changed)
3) Got the engine oil, oil filter and fuel filter changed
4) Got a wheel cap which was missing
5) Got a new air filter (stock)
6) a new logo of the car
7) Bonnet rubber

The total cost came up to 7.5K inclusive of the labor and all taxes

BR Hills – Gopalaswamy Betta – Monsoon Edition 2009

Date: 2nd August 2009

Scenario

What best reason to ride when you have not ridden (touring) for 350 days. Yes you read it right, after Three Hundred and Fifty days, previous ride on 17th August 2008. Wanted to do this solo as well with a target of 500 kms, to see how fingers and my right hand can handle the stress.

Location: BR Hills – Gopalaswamy Betta

Started at 6 am (instead of 5 am) as advised by my mom, left home at 5:55 am. Tanked up at Mysore Road Shell Petrol bunk, and rode till Maddur to stop for breakfast at new Kamat Restaurant. Had tasty idly vada and chow-chow bath. Continued towards Shivanasamudram, spent about 15 mins and continued riding toward BR Hills via Kollegal. Reached by 9 am, visited the temple and left by 9:40, rode via KG Gudi to reach Chamarajanagar. Had tender coconut and rode on, reached Gopalaswamy Betta at 11:15 am.

Was disappointed when I reached there, reason being no mist/cloud cover and too many people flogging the place. The place has gone dirty as well. Spend about an hour and headed to Pugmark Restaurant. a Had


Had decent food, rest for about 30 odd minutes and started the ride back to Bangalore. Reached home before sunset.

After almost a year, finally a ride for about 554 kms in about 10 hours with 13 litres of liquid gold.

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

From BR Hills - GP Betta - Aug 09

A Drive to Religious and scenic places

May 1st being holiday just put me in a spot of bother, wondering what I would be doing over the weekend with the Friday being a holiday. On a lazy afternoon on Monday the 27th April 2009, my cell phone rang. My uncle had just helped me clearing all the bothering for the weekend. We together planned to visit the places listed below.

1) Kollur
2) Udupi
3) Sringeri
4) Horanadu
5) Dharmastala
6) Kukke Subrahmanya

We decided to start on the 30th evening. Here is how the drive for the next 3 days went about, but before we get into the details a quick list of facts.

Car: Alto LXI June 2008

Odo Reading: 2398 kms (the car is very sparing driven)

Day 1: 30th April 2009 – 1st May 2009

Planned to start at 5 pm, however invariably we got delayed and started at 6.45 pm with the odometer reading at 2398. Set the trip meter to ‘0’ and we set off. A big thanks to our Bangalore traffic, we were delayed even further. By the time we cross the Nelamangala it was already 9 pm. Reached Tumkur outskirts around 9.45 pm were we stopped to tank up. Next stop was for dinner somewhere after Gubbi. Had couple of rotis to ensure that I don’t dose off with a heavy dinner. The road up to Arayur which is about 20 kms from Shimoga is in excellent condition. Here I took the deviation towards Kollur. From here on the roads are ok, but very bumpy and narrow. This route had quite a bit of Lorries carrying the iron ore towards Byandur. We reached Hosanagara at 3.15 am. Stopped for a pee break and continued driving towards Kollur via Nittur. After Nittur the roads are pretty narrow and steep. We reached Kollur at 5.30 am. We took a lodge and dumped all the luggage and I dosed off for a couple of hours.

We got ready and visited the temple and after darshan had breakfast. Vacated the room and started off towards Udupi at 9.30 am which is about 75 kms from Kollur. It was getting hotter as the sun got higher in the sky. We reached Udupi at 11.45 am, had a tough time parking the car near the temple. Not to mention it was seriously hot and humid in Udupi, however the temple (for god sake the temple inside is air conditioned). After the darshan, we had lunch at the temple.

Now the most irritating part was to get the car out of the parking spot. The cars, MUVs, bikes all parked so haphazardly ensured that we almost wasted an hour getting the car out of the place. With the load of 5 adults and AC operating at full blast ensured the Alto was struggling to take even the slightest of inclines. After all the irritating parking woes, another one incident was in store for us. The boot lock spring jumped out of place to ensure that the boot cannot be closed. We searched for a nearby garage who could fix it. We indeed found a garage where we got the spring problem rectified.

We headed towards Agumbe. Agumbe is the Chirapunji of South India. This route from Hebri to Agumbe has dense ever green forest. This made the frustration to just disappear. The ghat section here is pretty steep and narrow. We drove up the ghats and stopped at the sun set point. We had some yummy pineapples here; the pineapples were just too good.

From here we drove to Sringeri. No rooms at the temple lodge in Sringeri, we were scouting around for a room to stay. We finally found one, which was very average. Left with no choice we had to opt for this one. Refreshed ourselves and visited the temple. We had dinner at the temple. I have to mention that the food serving premises at Sringeri temple is huge and it can easily serve food (lunch/dinner) to 5000 people at one shot. It was time to hit the beds for a sound sleep.

Day 2: 2nd May 2009

Got up early, paid another visit to the temple and then headed towards Horanadu via Kudremukh. Here we visited the Soothanabbi Falls; I’ll let the pics do the talking for falls and the Kudremukh road.

Reached Horanadu, we took a room there for a mere 80 bucks. This is the temple trust owned lodge hence the price being so low. Visited the temple and hand yummy lunch at the temple. It was time to dose off and remained indoors to avoid the scorching sun. In the evening it was time again to venture out, visited around the temple. Had the temple pooja related things done in the evening. Had dinner and time to hit the beds again.

Day 3: 3rd May 2009

We started early in the morning by 7 am as we had to reach Dharmastala by 9.30 am max. However the schedule went haywire as the Charmadi route has been closed until June 09. We had to go through Sakaleshpur and reach Dharmastala. We reached at 11.15 am. Now the frustrating part of waiting in the queue took toll on me. A good 4+ hours by the time we came out of the temple. Time to head to Kukke Subrahmanya which is about 60 kms from Dharmastala. The roads where pretty good.

We reached Subrahmanya at 4.30 pm, took a lodge and it was time for me to dose off up to 7.30 pm as I had to drive back till Bangalore. Visited the temple for darshan and then the dinner. But at the dinner place we got delayed it was already 9.45 pm when we finished dinner.

Quickly packed up things and started off at 10.30 pm. We had a couple of breaks on the way which lasted for about 45 mins. Reached Bangalore (my uncle’s house at 3.30 am)

A drive completed after quite a break. The reason for the break coming up in the next post.

Route:

Bangalore – Nelamangala – Tumkur – Arasikere – Bhadrawathi – Shimoga – Arayanur – Hosanagara – Nittur – Kollur – Kundapura – Udupi – Manipal – Hebri – Someshvara – Agumbe – Sringeri – Kudremukh – Kalasa – Horanadu – Kalasa – Kottigehara – Mudigere – Sakaleshpur – Dharamastala – Gundya Post – Kukke Subrahmanya – Gundya Post – Sakaleshpur – Hassan – Kunigal – Nelamangala – Bangalore
Total Trip Distance – 1188 kms