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Thanks for your wishes!! Heres the next part of the story.

The Honeymoon - Part 1: Munnar

Him: What is your honeymoon plan?
Me: I have not planned any. I will go on a honeymoon after a few month, let your health improve and get to normal.
Him: If you go after a few months, it will be a trip that you go with your wife - not a honeymoon. Get going.
End of conversation 1.

Me: Let's plan something nearby. I do not want to be too far from home. And it has to be a drive.
Her: Drive? DRIVE??? Are you going to be driving on your honeymoon??? What the...!
Me: Yes. I want to be less than 12 hours from home, and I want to be able to start back in case dad needs me.
End of conversation 2.

With that taken care of, the next hunt was for destinations. After a bit of looking around, and a little help from our Travelogues section, I had a locales charted out. Munnar, Vembanad Back Waters and The Leela Palace in Kovalam. We got holiday homes booked for Munnar and a boathouse. I made the booking for Leela Palace too.

The car had done a little over 27,000 KMs. I had changed the engine oil at 25,000 and had no worries about it except for the tyre:



This has been there right from when the ODO read 22,500, the rear right tyre. I had driven 5,000 more with no problems, including a high speed blast to Nagercoil and back. Should I push my luck, driving with this on my Honeymoon?

I did not have a choice. Not much I could do at short notice. I preferred driving my own car than learning the ropes on a different car. At least I know how the car would behave, I have driven 99% of all the miles this car has done.

We started off early on the morning of 13th, and filled up at the Reliance fuel pump at Singaperumalkoil. The approx route was Chennai - Perambalur - Musri - Karur - Aravakurichi - Dharapuram - Udumalpet - Munnar. We reached our Holiday Home in the evening, the drive was about 10 - 11 hours, including a bunch of stops for food, photoshoots, etc.

The roads were as expected - highways between Chennai and Perambalur (NH 45), and between Karur and Aravakurichi (NH7). The remaining roads varied from ok to bad. The last lap to Munnar through the ghat section. Narrow, sometimes bad, but not undriveable.

Let the pics do the talking...


About an hour to Munnar, forest range... (shot using our Sony W210)


These guys were there at the checkposts, keeping us company.

The checkposts required us to enter our details including the car number. I "paid" 20 bucks in each of the checkpost.


Waterfalls like these are around throughout the trip. Not sure how many of them are approachable. (Our T1i, at 90mm).


It was green, and clean too!


Tea plantation. And my beloved road rocket :)


Green Ridge, Munnar - This is were we spent 13th and 14th. The rooms were comfortable and pretty good.


Mettupatty Reservoir. No, we did not go speed boating :)


... ... ... (no words!)
We tanked up at Munnar (HP). The mileage returned by the Reliance filling was 15.31 (555 KMs) - this is a combination of 50% highway blast, 30% two-lane roads with opposite traffic, and 20% of 3rd / 4th gear driving.

While the car was planted on the highways, even rough patches were magnified, thanks to my low profile tyres. Made me rethink if I should go down to 14" and get C.Drives this time (instead of the current 15" / S.Drives).

After two lovely days, we started off to our next destination - Vembanad Backwaters...


The Neryamangalam bridge

Thanks Krish!! The circumstances were really hard - at one point, people were asking us to get married then and there at the hospital in front of my dad to get his blessings!

The drive to the boathouse was a mixed bag. The roads were superb (not 4 lanes, though) for a bit, but turned extremely bad at certain other places. The holiday home was near Vechur Bund Road, and the approach road to the holiday home was non-existent. My low profile S.Drives were not helping at all, and unless I am dead slow, I was scared that the car will fall apart. This part of the drive made reiterated my plans of downsizing to 14", and getting a more comfort oriented tyre set.

We had booked the boathouse for two days / two nights - 15th and 16th September. The place was pretty decent, you get a twin-bed room with AC and attached bath. The boat has a kitchen, and you get a standard affair of Kerala food as a part of the package. You can also order special dishes, for which you will be charged extra.

You will be taken around the lake for 3 - 5 hours, and then the boat is halted in its boat jetty. AC and TV will function only with the boat is on the coast.

A few pictures...









A word to anyone planning a holiday on these boathouses - go as a group, and plan out your activities for your period of stay (games, activities, etc.). We got bored half way through the 2 day stay, and even contemplated leaving to Kovalam a day ahead of schedule. The boat is taken through the lake for a few hours, and after than it is bore-time. You can watch TV, chit chat, etc. - but that's about it! We realized that we should have chosen one day's stay on the boat.

We stuck to our schedules, and started on our way to Kovalam on the 17th morning...

Congrats, Phoenix.

You are right - the boat stay should be done for 1-day max. Anything more would be boring - there is only so much you can do with water all around. We did it for 22 hours (my Travelogue is there on tbhp) and it was the best time of our life.

Excellent Photos Jayanth. I think you should start a thread in T-logs if time permits.

Thanks Biju. The boat would have been fun had we gone as a larger group (say, like the BHP gang that raided Pondi ;) ), but for a honeymoon couple, the ideal time would be one day and one night.
Thanks Paramesh! Everytime I venture out, I think I should write a travelogue - but I just do not get to it. This time, it has been too long since the trip and I dont remember the vital things (exact road conditions, etc.). Moreover, the story climaxes with my car playing its role perfectly...

So here is the concluding part of the Honeymoon story.

We get up early on the 17th and get going to Kovalam. The route go from Vechur Bund Road Jn to Cherthala and get on to NH47 (Cherthala - Alappuzha - Karungappally, Kollam), by-pass Trivandrum city and reach Kovalam. The NH47 in Kerala is bad at places, and an average of 50 - 60 KMPH is what I could do. There were some sections that I could touch 100 KMPH, but then they did not last.

We checked in to The Leela, and got a pleasant surprise - we were bumped club class! The room, the food and the service were impeccable. We thoroughly enjoyed the two days we spent there. We roamed around the property, went around a bit in Kovalam. We enjoyed the Kerala cuisine in Hotel Sea Face, tried something at a Dhaba nearby, as well as gobbled up the sumptuous food in The Leela. Even before we leave, we decided that this will be one trip we will do again.

A few clicks from The Leela:

Wonder what would it be like to stay in this room... :D


Where do we go next?!!


The winding pathway

We checked out on the 19th noon and headed to Trivandrum to visit a relative, and then carried on to Nagercoil. My initial plan was to halt for the night in Kanyakumari to see the sunset / sunrise, visit a few places in Nagercoil / KK District, and then start back to Chennai by early evening - reaching back home before midnight.

Call it luck or the lack of it, there was a political meeting in Kanyakumari and all decent hotels were booked up. So the night halt was to be in Nagercoil instead. The drive from Trivandrum to Nagercoil is something I have done bunch of times in the past. The NH47 that was once seemingly broad (10 years ago) now seemed narrow and congested. But yet the beauty of the route is still intact if only you know where to look.

We reached Nagercoil by late evening. After refreshing ourselves, we headed to Kanyakumari for a visit, only to be stuck in ridiculous traffic jams and road blocks - all thanks to the political meeting preparations. We got back to Nagercoil late, and retired to our room in my friend's house.

We did not know we will be jolted out of bed soon.
We did not know that it was indeed our luck that we did not get an accommodation in Kanyakumari.
We did not know that the political meeting in Kanyakumari itself was a blessing in disguise.

Fantastic write up and pics, Phoenix. Keep writing :thumbs up

Leela seems like a great place to stay!

20th September 2010, 4:40 AM
My phone rings - "Appa passed away at 4:30 AM, start immediately."

I froze. He was alright. He was declared out of immediate danger, and was discharged from the hospital five days ago. He calls us everyday and chats with me and my wife for a few minutes. He did not give us that call on the 19th, I was told he is just feeling tired (he usually gets tired after 3 - 5 days of coming back from the hospital, the effects of the medication starts kicking in then, lasting for a week or so).

I take a grasp of my senses, and start thinking on getting back. There are a bunch of flights from Trivandrum that leaves by 7 - 8 AM, but I will not be able to make it to the airport in time. Nagercoil to Trivandrum city takes at least 1.5 hours of break-neck driving, the airport would take another 20 - 30 minutes. Add to that, there was a DMK meeting happening in the Kanyakumari, and all the political bigshots including the CM are landing in Trivandrum - the entire route will be under a security cordon.

The first morning flight from Madurai is at about 10. I can reach Madurai in 2.5 hours, but I will be waiting for the flight. More so, there were no other morning flights and if this one had no seats, I will be stuck bad.

Drive back it is. I had done this route hardly one month back, so I am kind of familiar with the route, and I know I can make good speeds. But there were two concerns - the cut in the tire, and this time I am driving as a family.

This is where my car becomes the hero. This is why my beloved Getz is THE BEST anyone can get.

I wake up my friends' parents (whose place I was staying for the night). I start from Nagercoil at 5:15, and reach the GQ at 5:45 - and I pump it. A stopover at Periyampatti (after Kovilpatti) for a tank-up. 584 KM since the last tank-up, 15.10 KMPL.. And I pump it again.

The car is an absolute gem. Yokohama S.Drives is a gem. I was doing consistently over 140, with quite a few stretches of 180+ KMPH. This car is supposed to have a not-so-great suspension setup. The tire has a cut in it. But yet here I am, doing 140+ KMPH and touching 180+ KMPH at stretches. I was careful, but yet there is only so much I can do at these speeds. Yet "impeccable" is the word for the car's behavior. The braking was implicit - I knew exactly how much pressure I need, when to come down to 3rd. The handling was predictable, and was within my control at all times.

The traffic had picked up. We stopped over for a 30 minute breakfast break right before Trichi, at about 8:30 AM. In the meantime I had SMS'ed all those I can from my mobile. My wife is handling the calls.

All this while I have been concentrating on handling the beast I am driving - but as Chennai draws near, my emotions start playing up. My pace gets cut a bit, and we reach Besant Nagar at a bit after 12:30 noon - 7 hours and 15 minutes of drive, including 45 minutes of stopovers, for ~650 KMPH. Not bad, eh?! Had I gotten on a flight in Madurai, I would have still made it around the same time back home. My uncle (dad's brother) who started from Coimbatore on a 11:30 AM flight reached home 45 minutes after we did.

The rest was a haze. I performed the last rites. I could not believe what I am doing, even though this was a known eventuality. Even now, I can't believe he is gone.

Maybe he has not...

From my car's perspective, I have two takeaways from this -

1. I will never give this car away, however stupid of impractical this would sound in the future (Hey, I am holding on to my 15 years old Kinetic Honda and spend twice its current sale price for maintaining it!!!)
2. Yokohama S.Drives are the best bang for the buck - they did not heat up, give way or change any of its normal behavior despite the extremes I put it through. In fact I am half mind if I should get another set of it, or get the C.Drives in 14" for the comfort

The End

Thanks anekho! If you have at least a 3 days' holiday, The Leela Palace @ Kovalam will not disappoint you!!!

ph03n!x,

My commiserations!!!

Honestly, I don't know what to say. But you have a very strong heart that you were able to put the car's performance perspective under the circumstances you were in.

btw,
180kmph and still the car shows the stability does tell out aloud about the performance!!!!

Thanks headbanger. It took me close to four months to get to write it down - all these are me looking back.

And the car, like I said, was the best I could have had given the circumstances. It was a stonker, I knew it well enough to know its limits (~30k KMS, 99% of me driving it), and I had faith that it wont let me down. My wife said later on that never once did she feel scared throughout the drive - and that is saying a lot, if you know her!

I always say that driving is like meditation - your mind will get trained to focus on just the one task, more so if it is a high speed drive.

My condolences phoenix.May his soul rest in peace.

Its these tough times that make us put immense faith in our machines.And when the machine reciprocates your faith ,you both share a special bond.And that bond lasts forever.I am sure you would not have attempted 180+ or 140+ consistently under normal circumstances even with a perfect set of tires.The getz 1.5 CRDi is a stonker of a engine.And the car as a whole pulled itself and rose to the situation in-spite of having a cut S-drive.The faith that we have on our machines makes them do certain impossible things.And ya,Happy married life:)

Not really, he usually flies low, now he is driving fast ..thats all - 160+ is common for our hero.

The best part is the cut in the S drives..

Thanks Sagar.

While doing speeds and pushing limits because you want to can be fun (say in a track or in long drives), having to do push limits because of circumstances, and pulling it off against odds - that is something that deserves an applause. My car, and the S.Drives on it, did just that for me - looking back after 4 months, I can lose count of the things that could have gone wrong in that drive. Yet here I am. I can't be more serious when I say this machine was meant for me - I had almost given up on owning a Getz CRDi when I actually bought one.

Thalais, 140 in this car comes before you can spell one hundred and forty, and 160 is just a push from there :D

Yes, the S.Drives deserve a spotlight of their own. That's why I am stuck between C.Drives / 14" and replacing S.Drives in 15" - in city comfort is NIL with them, yet...

Jayanth- My condolences. Even though very belated, GOD BLESS!!!

Good to hear that the tires held on even in that high speed run, but have you changed the tire now? I wouldnt have the guts to keep using the car with those tires on.

Just went through the thread. My condolences for the loss.
Very descriptive and interesting read.