Quote:
Originally Posted by figo_gpb Back from Kukke & Dharmasthala trip. Had good darshan both at Kukke and Manjunath temples. Thanks to all who have shared their suggestions. Will post an update on the trip a little later. Shiradi ghat section like Samurai was mentioning is holding up as of now, but deteriorating fast. It did have landslips in at least 4-5 places on Friday. Could see fresh wet mud on the roads. Luckily nothing major seems to have happened on Saturday/ Sunday when we travelled. Also quite a few bull dozers on standby for quick clearnance. Quite a few potholes and expanding in size with rains in the ghat section. |
Update on trip Prologue: We were pretty undecided almost till Saturday morning 9 am. The previous day's landslips and forecasted heavy rains did not help matters. I called up a couple of hotels in Kukke and confirmed the weather conditions there. They said, its only raining moderately and there are no blockages on the Shiradi ghat road section as far as they are aware. Finally decided to take the risk as this was the only weekend where all five of us can make it together (my mom-in-law is expected to leave on Wednesday). By the time we started it was almost 11 am.
Route & Timings:
Day 1: As suggested by fellow bhpians, took the Blr ORR - Nelamangala - Kunigal - Channarayapattana - Hasan - Sakhleshpur - Gundya - Kukke. (11 am to 6.30 pm with about 1.5 hours of break for lunch/ coffee/ tea)
Day 2 (onwards): Kukke - Gundya - Dharmasthala (9.30 am to 11 am with 10 min break)
Day 2 (return): Dharmasthala - Gundya - Hasan - Kunigal - Nelamangala - Blr (2.30 pm to 10 pm with around 1-1.5 hour breaks for enroute shopping/ snacks/pics)
Road Conditions:
Very good road conditions all along till Shiradi ghat section. They are four laning/ at quite a few places enroute after Kunigal. So you will find a lot of it being two lane. Shiradi ghat section like i said earlier is holding up as of now. But we encountered heavy rains in patches while going and returning. There are quite a few potholes and need to keep a watch while driving. Given my doubts with ground clearance of figo and 5 adults, i was a little extra careful in the shiradi ghat section. Once you take left at Gundya, the road conditions improve drastically. Its in fact in excellent condition all the way till Kukke.
Kukke to Dharmastha route via Gundya is also in excellent condition. There are a few potholes you should watch out for after you take right onto SH37 before reaching Dharmasthala.
Temple Darshan
We had a very good darshan in Kukke temple. I guess they close by 8 pm. We were the last people to come out of the temple and they closed the doors behind us. Had part dinner inside Temple premises & Neo Mysore Cafe outside. We had breakfast the next day in the hotel opposite Neo Mysore cafe and found it to be better.
Temple darshan in Manjunath was stopped between 11 am 12 noon for Puja. We took quick darshan ticket of 200 rs. We could do the Darshan in less than half an hour after 12 noon. Had lunch in temple premises again - similar to Kukke.
Performance of Car
Figo handled very well all through - mainly the curvy roads. Roughly the fuel efficiency figures seem to be around 16 to 16.5 km/ltr. Was expecting more than this. But probably the ghat road and 5 adults with 70% AC may have negatively impacted these figures.
One peculiar thing i observed was there was some kind of smoke (looked like steam/ water vapor to me) coming from the AC vents when i switched it on. This happened at least 3-4 times during the trip. Am a little puzzled.
Was it because it was raining and some water may have seeped through and then evaporated on getting in contact with an already very hot engine? Can this be a possible explaination? I opened the bonnet at least a couple of times to check if there was any issue, but could not find anything. Any thoughts on this would be very helpful.
Thanks all for your valuable suggestions.