[BoneCollector]

Hi all, I'm posting on behalf of my cousin who is planning a Leh-Ladakh trip in July first week with his friends. They have a problem though. It seems his friend is buying a Tata Safari Storme and the car will be on temporary registration plates. Is it advisable/ possible / permitted to travel to J & K in a vehicle with TR only?

[Slush_Traveller]

Hi. I always think about this. Which is supposedly the best vehicle accordingly for a road trip ? Is it a huge suv or a big sedan ? It would be great if one can give the segment wise best vehicle opinion for road trips ?

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by Slush_Traveller

Hi. I always think about this. Which is supposedly the best vehicle accordingly for a road trip ? Is it a huge suv or a big sedan ? It would be great if one can give the segment wise best vehicle opinion for road trips ?

Depends on your route, destination & co-passenger(s).

SUVs generally do good in areas that need you to have good GC. Otherwise on regular highways, sedans would be faster, safer and more comfortable.

There are people who are not very comfortable in a slouching posture and prefer the rather high and straight seating of an SUV.

[joybhowmik]

Originally Posted by Slush_Traveller

Hi. I always think about this. Which is supposedly the best vehicle accordingly for a road trip ? Is it a huge suv or a big sedan ? It would be great if one can give the segment wise best vehicle opinion for road trips ?

Like Dry Ice's comment, it depends on the conditions of the road more than anything else and at the same time, one's own tastes and preferences.
Example: Usually a vehicle with good GC will be better for driving in the higher himalayas considering that road conditions sometimes degenerate.

On the contrary , I have known people taking their Honda Civic up to places in Pithodagarh district of Uttarakhand - and they did not complain about scrapes.

To each his poison!

[Aslamjaffer]

As cars, driving and road trips have become a part and parcel of every BHPian’s life, wanted to share a link that would help planning a better road trip anywhere in India. Many here should have come across the link but this is for the crowd who are yet to discover the website. A good initiative from a startup for the crowd that loves to drive.

The website engenders a comprehensive drive, eat and stay plan from the starting till the end of trip with options to revise any part of the plan if need be. It also generates a proper excel sheet which we always prepare before any trip.

Try this out and hope it helps.

Here you go: http://www.goroadtrip.com

Hoping to see many more travelogues from every BHPian here.

Mods: Please shift this thread to the appropriate section if required.

Cheers

[Karvel]

Thanks to all the experience being shared here. Wonderful guide for preparing for a long drive. For a city commuter like me, this thread is a boon. Now i too feel that i can do long drives. Its not that i had not done long drives, those were mostly about 300-400 kms, but not like the really long ones mentioned here. Maybe its time for me to set out exploring.

Originally Posted by Aslamjaffer

The website engenders a comprehensive drive, eat and stay plan from the starting till the end of trip with options to revise any part of the plan if need be. It also generates a proper excel sheet which we always prepare before any trip.

Try this out and hope it helps.

Here you go: http://www.goroadtrip.com

..
Cheers

Tried the website. Link not working. Any other link available, would be helpful.

[catchdoon]

Originally Posted by Karvel

Tried the website. Link not working. Any other link available, would be helpful.

The website works just fine. Check again!

[evilminstrel]

Can someone suggest a good car sleeper? Am gonna travel with my three year old this June from Delhi to Ranchi on my Honda City. This is the first time am taking my family with me in this route.
Any other suggestions pertaining to the fact that toddler is travelling will be helpful.

[digitalnirvana]

Pardon me if this is already answered - is there an article on preparation for a road trip in a self drive vehicle e.g. Zoomcar or Revv?

[for_cars1]

Originally Posted by digitalnirvana

is there an article on preparation for a road trip in a self drive vehicle ..

Not discouraging you from taking a self drive vehicle.
However, we as a society are not yet mature enough to treat other's property (read:self drive car) with care. As a result, the condition of the self drive vehicle you'd get would be a gamble.

Lucky if you get one in a good condition (tyres included). Obviously there are higher risks in taking a car out on a highway when its conditon is unknown.

[Thunder70]

Originally Posted by digitalnirvana

Pardon me if this is already answered - is there an article on preparation for a road trip in a self drive vehicle e.g. Zoomcar or Revv?

I don't know about any article by someone here but I used Zoomcar in Banglore to Sivasamudra waterfall around 300 km trip. We were 7 persons, so we booked Tata Hexa for the convenient travel. Only problem we faced with Zoomcar is with the speed governor. Speed limited to 80km but the journey was an unforgettable trip.

[waypoint]

I searched the forum but I could not locate threads or comments handling natural extreme events when one runs into while being on road. I did find threads on “Emergency Driving” topics though but that did not talk about handling unpredictable natural events.

I believe, a car also needs to be prepared for any unexpected natural extremeties.

On 01 May 2022, parts of Bangalore had hailstorms sometimes coupled with strong winds; luckily, not large hails rained but parts of Bangalore had surround sounds of drums played by those hails falling on various things. That nature’s composition got me thinking about what a road user must do in such unpredictable natural events - storms, hailstorms, flash floods, forest fires, landslides, sinkholes etc. which potentially cause panic in the road users. Being informed about surviving them may help in timely correct choices and timely correct actions, which may be very beneficial and even save lives.

In some cases of those extremes events, we get relevant early warnings so we avoid those routes which experience those extreme events by taking alternate routes but that may not always be possible, especially in the cases of flash floods, hailstorms, landslides, sinkholes etc as situations like hailstorms do not have reliable predictable models and they end up catching road users mostly off guard, therefore, one would not possibly have any options to escape them which, kind of, becomes evident in one video titled “Hail storm” from YouTube channel “Jack Brewer” showing the situation from a driver’s perspective. I am not pasting the video’s link here because the video has used, possible unintentionally, panic and shock driven abuses. Please watch it by searching for it there, only if usage of abuses do not offend you or, otherwise, watch it with sound muted which will still give you the perspective but the human behavioural aspects will be missed. Nonetheless, It does give a good perspective and make one wonder about existence of any possibility of escaping from such extreme situations and protecting occupants and vehicles and surviving those situations by making timely correct choices.

As far as I recall, I have never seen IMD or weather.com or any other weather forecast related sources predicting a hailstorm - they generally talk about strong winds, thunderstorms , heavy rains etc..With the lack of any reliable models of such predictions and with weather patterns becoming unpredictable and extreme by every passing year due to global warming, it would not be uncommon in future to get caught off guard in extreme weather events as, most likely, their arrivals will continue to remain a surprise for sometime to come and once encountered it requires quick thinking from the driver along with relevant timely actions to minimise losses. Moreover, with every passing year, those events are only going to become more severe and more frequent.

So, what one must do to minimise risks, damages and losses of any kind when faced with, say, a hailstorm -
1. Take shelter in the shadow of a tall building or taller structure in the opposite direction of wind
2. Take shelter under flyover or bridge, however, taking shelter under an underpass or subway may turnout to be a risky act as they get flooded in a flash, similarly, taking shelter under tree might turn out to be a fatal choice
3. If none of (1) or (2) are available nearby, one need to make a choice if to continue driving or stop by side of the road with hazard lights on and be at the mercy of nature
4. Is it possible in any way to protect the vehicle from damages in an open road when (1) and (2) are not an option?
5. After storm passes away and if car is no longer drivable, getting RSA may be an issue as there might an outage of mobile network or there may be too many RSA calls already and getting one may take a very long time so how would you protect yourself, occupants, belongings, car etc from weather and possible miscreants, if left stranded in a secluded place with no RSA in sight soon?

Every natural extreme event brings it’s own challenges, questions, needs for assessments, relevant actions to mitigate or minimise any loses by making timely choices and by taking timely actions. Like above list, similar lists of items can be formulated for each of the events.

This may sound as some worst case scenarios being stated, encountering one may even appear impossible to some but, the increasingly frequent extremities of the weather will not let them be so rare in times to come and signs are already becoming clearer every passing year.

There are many possibilities of such scenarios and a vehicle must always be equipped with some required stuffs and accessories to help recover from some of the eventualities or ease living while those events pass. For having some convenience during eventualities I always keep following items n my vehicle -

- Swiss Army knife (as keychain for car key)
- First aid kit
- Fire extinguisher
- Seat belt cutter and hammer (part of mobile holder)
- Spare fuses for all types of fuses that car has
- Spare memory cards for dash cam
- All tyre repair and replacement related kit including tyre inflator (my inflator has emergency and warning/help lights as well)
- A bag containing one pari of extra clothing for regular car occupants, some snacks, face tissues, hand wash soap etc (always remains in car in a sealed bag) etc
- Large and small umbrellas
- Contact list of emergency contacts in the glove box

As you can expect, as a side effect of doing all that, there is always some work involved for me when I give my car for service as I need to remove most of above stuff from the car before giving it for service.

Do you guys take rare scenarios into account and prepare vehicles for those scenarios? Do you guys have thought about lists of dos and don’ts when coming face to face with any eventualities and rehearsed those scenarios mentally? For example, while learning four wheeler driving, I regularly rehearsed mentally about mechanisms of driving through flooded roads and when I had to do that for the first time, it never appeared to me that it was my first time when I drove through about 20 inches of water. Now, it is very common driving through flooded roads in Bangalore.

For a pilot, preparing for eventualities are part of training and they do get trained on various challenging scenarios by means of simulator. Being trained and informed about rare unpleasant challenging events, help in getting them passed with minimal or zero losses. I believe, he same applies to road users as well.