[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by laluks

Hari, you were there too?

I had to put the Civic through it. The level was just above the number plate, was one scary bit of experience. I dont know what all could be in trouble after this wading, got an underbody clean wash and sprayed anti rust spray!!

City could have done it decently I feel

Hi Hari, Laluks,

i was in the traffic jam too, but i decided that the Jam is very lenghty
hence took a U turn in front of HAL and came via MG road - Rajbhavan road to hebbal to yelahanka.

today i understood that it was a good decision.

i still remember the 26th July floods in Mumbai few years ago, i would not like such an incident happen anywhere.

[laluks]

StarVegabond, good decision. I would have cried if I had to put my just delivered car into what was yesterday there!!

But isn't nice that it rained - consider that as blessings for your car from above

[StarVegabond]

Hi Yesterday night i completed the first 100KM in my new Ninja - ANHC
the milage indicator showed 13.8 KMPL.

i wanted to know the good aftermarket shops (in bangalore North), from where i can buy some seat covers ? i checked with some friends, they told me to go to JC road.
i do not know where it is.

thanks in advance

[StarVegabond]

Hi Friends,

Yesterday night 22:30 hours, We (myself, wife and daughter) returned from a 5 day, 1401 KM road rip to Udupi, Ankola, Murudeshwar, Agumbe, Shivamoga, Tumkur and back to Yelahanka. Shedule was as below

Day 1:
-------------
Yelahanka to Udupi (actually a small town near Udupi), total distance
428KM via Hebbal-Yeshwantpur-Nelamangala-Kunigal-Hassan-Sakleshpur-Uppinangady-BC Road-Mangalore-Udupi-my native place.

Start time : 5:20 AM (delayed by 20 minutes from planned start)
Reached Destination : 13.35 PM
Breakfast Break : 7:40 AM to 8:30 AM at Kamath Upachar, Chennarayapattana
very good quality Idli-Vada-Upama-Coffee plus offered english newspaper to read
which delayed our departure further.

Road condition update
------------------------
Yelahanka-Hebbal-Yeshwantpur : Good
Yeshwantpur-Nelamangala: Under construction, BAD
Nelamangala - Kunigal : underconstruction, heavy incoming traffic
into Bangalore
Kunigal Hassan : Excellent
Hassan By-pass: Un-even, unfinished, potholed stretch
Hassan-Sakleshpur-Shiradi Ghat-BC Road: Excellent
BC Road to Surathkal : Under construction, BAD stretches,
very heavy traffic, Formula 1 local bus drivers
Surathkal to Udupi : excellent but full of formula 1 bus drivers

Formula 1 bus driver means the local bus driven by a driver who thinks
he is on a F1 Track and his only goal is to reach his destination in next
few seconds. He does not prefer wasting even a nano/pico second.
he just overtakes no matter what. The two wheeler drivers in Bangalore
needs to learn some tricks from this fella if they want to save those precisous nano/pico seconds. Currently these 2 wheeler guys are still trying to save precisous seconds.

Due to flyover construction, there was a heavy traffic jam at BC Road (10 minutes), Panambur (5minutes), Surathkal (5 minutes) and the stretch from Mangalore exiting toward Udupi is very bad as no road exists.

It took us about 50 minutes to reach Nelamangala (33KMs) , over 60 minutes (approx 35-40KM) from BC road till Surathkal

Performance of the car
-----------------------
my new ANHC behaved wonderfully well. the dashboard indicator showed 17.8KMPL at the end of the trip with still 1/3rd of the fuel tank intact. I drove at 80-90 KMPH @ 2500 RPM max mostly in 5th gear. Car was behaving like a automatic transmission one. When speed drops i was not required to change to lower gear. even at low speeds of <40, car picks up wonderfully. The over taking (s) were a bliss, only one Tata Safari Dicor managed to over take me throughout this stretch.
I was careful not to exceed 3000 RPM and 100 KMPH speed. The engine is so quiet
that it feels as if we in a bullet train. My daughter who was sleeping on the back seat
could sleep extreemly well till 8 AM. The ICE was playing suprabhat (morning prayer) and some devotional songs. The dawn was very beautiful and the mood was divine.
The A/C (at setting 1) was adequate till it was 11:30 AM. After which we had to switch to 2 as my daughter started complaining that it is hot at the back. Once switched to setting 2, she never complained till we reached our destination.


Update on Shiradi Ghat
-----------------------
Shiradi Ghat condition is very good, only at couple of places construction is still going on. we met with a large convoy of more than 25-30 large Gas/Fuel Tankers travelling up from Mangalore and another dozen dravelling down to managalore. Some of these truck drivers were blocking both the lanes.

i need to go, will pen down the rest later..

[neel12345]

Any pics of your new ride ?

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by neel12345

Any pics of your new ride ?

my new car is still shy as far as photoshoot is concerned.
i did not find enough time to get the profile done, will try over
week end. I managed to get two photographs from the trip which features the car as well., i tried to upload it, but the size exceeds the limit of 1MB, i will try to convert them an upload later.

[Lukeskywalker]

hey nice concise trip report, must have been fun driving your new car.

[StarVegabond]

Here are some images of my ANHC, sorry i do not have any front/rear or top views yet, i will take new pictures this week end.

[abhinav.s]

Wonderful report mate! Enjoyed reading the report and loved your writing style as well. Congrats on your car and wishing you many more happy miles with it.

[AirbusA340]

Hey, we are waiting for the rest of the report.

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by AirbusA340

Hey, we are waiting for the rest of the report.

Here you go..

As I said earlier, we reached the destination at 13:35, my parents retirement home. my father preferred to stay at his native place after he rebuilt the 100+ year old house. They were eagerly waiting for us, mainly thier grand daughter. Sumptuous lunch was waiting for us and vice versa. I quickly had lunch and decided to engage in my favourite holiday activity.
An Afternoon Nap , An early morning wake up (4 AM), a long drive (8.15 hours) and a sumptuous lunch has everthing needed to push me into deep sleep. When i woke up, it was already 6 PM. Hot tea was waiting for me.
I found the grand father and grand daughter are out in the village for some activity. We had the tea and then just spent the rest of the evening chatting.

I found (as usual) that by 7:30 PM the village shops started winding up and by 8 PM most of the street was empty, by 8:30 PM most of the people retired into their respective homes. The village street was very quiet unlike the bustling town/cities like Bangalore and Mumbai where the 8 PM is just start of the evening.

Then came the rains, it rained for almost an hour and half plus. My car was thoroughly washed. The thunderstorm ensured that electricity was disconnected as a precaution. but thanks to inverter, we had the basic lights/fans working. My mother told me that generally the power is cut several times a day cumulatively for at least 4/5 hours in a day and some time up to 8-10 hours as well. My mother who had lived list 20+ years in Pune and Mumbai had pretty well adjusted to this power cuts. I can not imagine how myself, my wife and daughter would live with such long power cuts.

My daughter missed the TV channels as my parents are yet to buy a new TV as thier 22 year old BPL colour TV stopped working last year. Grand father promised his grand daughter that he would buy a new TV tomorrow itself. I found this transformation amazing as i have been pushing them to buy a TV since last about an year and they have been postponing it.

After another sumptuous dinner, we retired for the day at 10 PM.

[AirbusA340]

okie dokie...

seeing parents after a long time is a great feeling!

i'm sure you had one hell of a stay & the rains only make it better!!

[StarVegabond]

Day 2 started at 5:45 AM for me when i woke up after a very long and deep sleep. i was fully freshened up. It was drizzling outside. i found that the night had its own share of rains. My parents were already up and had started thier raily routines, mother performing morning puja and preparing the breakfast.

With drizzling stopped, i decided to wipe the car clean. i took me about 40 minutes, turst me, i was cleaning a car myself after 6+ years, it was a good morning excersize. i then realized the rural folks are always fit becasue they always do their work themselves, where as we city boys want to employ others to do our work.

while i was at my car cleaning job, several people (some of them my distinct relatives) who were having their morning walks enquired about the car, admired the great looks, Honda brand name and how big the interiors were.

Breakfast was ready by 7 AM, after having breakfast, reading news paper and completing all morning chores, all of us were ready by 9:30 AM.
My daughter was excited (since she woke up at 6:30 AM) about going for shopping for TV, We visited near by shop and got all offers for TV, Stabilizer, TV stand, DTH STB and Antenna etc. But postponed the decision so that we can check for offers in Udupi.

by 10:30 AM we decided to leave home for going to Mulki Temple. Mulki Is midway from Udupi to Mangalore. It is about 45KM from my parents place.
We encountered several F1 drivers on the way. Need to be careful if one is new to this region.

This Venkataramana Temple is very famous for its "Darshan" where in one can share their problems / issues with the god and ask for solutions. New borns are brought to this temple for naming. Even i was named in this temple. There is a ritual that every person who is named in the temple has to pay a yearly tax to the god of minimum 25 paisa, there is no limit on max.

My parents had arranged for special puja at this temple, after the puja, we had our lunch in the temple itself, rested for some time, and decided to drive back to Udupi. Refueled at IOCL just prior to Udupi, visited couple of TV shops in Udupi, also visited Shrikrishna temple, offered some banana's to the elephant outside, had some evening snacks and coffee at Kidiyoor's Resturant. Visited again Mulki temple for the part II (evening) of the puja and after puja and dinner returned home at 10:30 PM.

Day 3 was planned to be a long drive to Ankola (approx 200KM+ one way) near Karwar. We had planned to leave home at 8 AM. Hence we retired to our beds as soon as we returned home.

some more feedback about ANHC
-----------------------------------
While returning the traffic was minimal and it started raining, i could still maintain the speed of 90 KMPH with outstanding road grip and excellent view without any blind spots etc.

I also found that the high beam light to be inadequate especially in the pitch dark and heavy raining situation. The low beam head light was good enough but lacked the longer visibility.

My parents liked the opening of the doors at almost 90 degrees (my old car Palio opens at 65-70 degrees only) Leg room on the rear seat, A/C cooling with a setting of 3 (outside temp of approx 38 deg C with high humidity in the afternoon) and ofcourse the ICE.

I found that the dashboard indicators are visible even when it is very sunny (unlike my old palio). this is mainly becasue of Orange color of the speedometer RMP meter and other indicators.

I also found that the black color plastic dashboard prevented the reflections during the day time making driving easier even in the hot sun.

Fuel lid opening is very easy. if car is not locked the lid is open by default. onbe has to just tap on it to open it. When the car gets locked (by remote key) or engine is on then lid is also automatically locked.

I will post the Day 3 proceedings and more feedback on ANHC tomorrow.
sorry for the lost post, thanks for reading

[StarVegabond]

We started at 8:20 AM, Just prior to Kundapur it started raining very heavy. the rain lasted till Byndoor. The car once again demonstrated the excellent stability even at 80KM speed in the rain when the visibility was just few meters. It is under these situations the built, stability, safety (ABS, airbags etc) will provide great confidence to the driver.

As AC was chilling, we switched to the heater mode. I found the heater is not heating up the cabin as much as my old palio used to heat up. But it was still warm enough. Defogger was instantaneously effective.

The road conditions on NH17
---------------------------

Road conditions are excellent on NH17 except between Madangeri (Gokarna Road) to Ankola which is having some rough patches.
In this stretch there are several places where the villagers are
selling Mangos. Vehicles stop suddenly to buy the mangos. We also stopped to buy mangos.

Bhatkal town is full of 2 wheeler F1 drivers who drive very erratic.

We reached our family temple at Ankola at 11:30 AM, This temple is similar to the famous temples located in goa. We did not take any photographs this time but i will try and find some previously taken photo and upload.

After puja, lunch we started back at 2:30 PM. reached Murudeshwar at 4 PM. i will let the photos do the talking. Most of the photographs have been shot by my 7 year old daughter, please excuse for some wrong angles or lack of clarity (if any).

Returned home at 10 PM after visiting 3 relatives homes on the way.

[lohithrao]

Star, its a 5star report

Firstly congrats on the new car, Honda for sure makes no trouble car!

Good to know that you are from Udupi

Btw on power cuts i guess now it has improved few years back a day without power cut was a miracle!

Have fun...