[champ27]

Day 5

Last day of our amazing trip. I got up at 6:30 and went for a nice little walk.

Some early morning shots







There's always time for football









Surprisingly all of us were ready by 8 am, our best performance in the last 5 days!

Some parting shots










Dropadi - Serves some awesome breakfast- Next time may be



Check out the Parking area. All these coconut trees limits the space further







The place where we had breakfast - Bread omelette, Vada pav, Puri- sabzi, samosa and tea



We finally left Palolem at 9 am sharp. We took the same route which we had taken while entering Goa. In fact that was most logical option available to us. We had already covered the extra 100km that we had to travel on our way to Goa.

I drove almost non stop till Ranebennur, where we stopped at Kamat for Lunch. All the guys nicely slept through the way.

Verna cooling off





North Indian special thali



We quickly had lunch and pushed off.

Some random clicks on the way







Bane of National Highways - extremely frustrating



And you will keep encountering them



Anyway, after an uneventful journey, we reached neelamangla . Since our destination was Sarjapur road, I wanted to take the NICE road to avoid evening traffic. Taking Hebbal route was a strict No No. But that was not to be. I somehow managed to miss the turn towards NICE road and took the Hebbal route. It was a costly mistake. All of this happened at around 7 pm. Not surprisingly we got badly stuck in the traffic and the rain compounded our woes. I was mad at myself for missing that turn. I finally reached my place at 10:30 pm

As suggested by ampere in the street queries thread, even if you miss the turn to NICE road, take a U turn that comes after 5-6 km and come back and take the NICE road. Those extra 12 Kms will save at least 1.5 hrs. Expensive lesson learnt. I will keep that in mind.

Trip Statistics :

Total Distance, Bangalore - Goa- 727 Km ( form my place to BEAN ME UP, Anjuna)

Total Distance, Goa- Bangalore - 616 km ( from Palolem to my place)

Total distance covered during the trip -1724 Km



FE, Bangalore - Goa - 20.3 kmpl, with 4 people on board . a/c was on throughout

FE , Goa- Bangalore - 18.3 kmpl with 5 people on board a/c was on through out. Thanks to the Hebbal -Sarjapur road stretch, FE took a real beating.

I will write about how the car performed in the following post.

With this my TL comes to an end . It was an amazing 5 days of eating binge coupled with refreshing some old memories. Bye bye Goa till we meet again.

Thank You for reading my TL. Hope you enjoyed the TL as much as I enjoyed those amazing seafood

PS: If you need any information about good food joints in Goa, do reach out to me.

[21Archer84]

Lovely Travelogue there. Planning to visit Goa in Jan, not sure if it's the right time as Dec looks to be the right time for tourists and it'll be too crowded then.

[champ27]

Originally Posted by 21Archer84

Lovely Travelogue there. Planning to visit Goa in Jan, not sure if it's the right time as Dec looks to be the right time for tourists and it'll be too crowded then.

Thanks Archer!

Dec till mid Jan will be extremely crowded. IMO last week of Jan or early Feb is a better option. You will avoid the maddening rush and will get to enjoy Goa better.

This is strictly my viewpoint as I don't prefer crowded places especially on a vacation. But then I have friends who prefer travelling to Goa during the peak tourist season because they like it that way

[21Archer84]

Originally Posted by champ27

Thanks Archer!

Dec till mid Jan will be extremely crowded. IMO last week of Jan or early Feb is a better option. You will avoid the maddening rush and will get to enjoy Goa better.

This is strictly my viewpoint as I don't prefer crowded places especially on a vacation. But then I have friends who prefer traveling to Goa during the peak tourist season because they like it that way

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I understand your viewpoint, but u know Goa is a place best seen when there are enough tourists, but definitely not when it's over crowded. Will plan to visit, during last week of Jan as per your suggestion.

[champ27]

Performance of the Car during the trip

This was the 3rd long trip in my Verna in just over 3 months of ownership. In all these trips there were either 4 or 5 grown ups in the cabin with decent amount of luggage in the boot. So it was pretty much the maximum passenger load one can throw at the car.

Coming back to the Goa trip and how the verna performed. The driving condition on the journey towards Goa was severely marred by heavy downpour. I was forced to be in the 70-80 kmph speed range and there was absolutely no problem. In this speed range, minor undulations never filtered through to the cabin and it was a very smooth drive.

It was on our way back to Bangalore did the softer suspension reared its ugly head. During the stretch between Haveri - Davangere, when I gave the car a real rip, it started to bounce following which I had to slow down. This happened at least 3-4 times. Having said this, I would also like to point out that the road was not really smooth in this stretch and had that unevenness and minor consistent undulations that was not evident to the naked eye.

With 5 guys in the cabin, was it right to expect that the car will be more planted than with say 1 or 2 in the cabin ? Or the cabin load really doesn't matter?

I haven't really driven other cars like Vento, Rapid, Linea etc at this speed on a highway, so I will not be able to comment on how they would have behaved. But I would like to believe from what I have read on the forum and heard from people that they definitely wouldn't have got bouncier at high speed.

But I still have one question, has anyone done this stretch on NH4 or in similar road conditions in the above mentioned cars with 5 people in the cabin and encountered the same?

The other problem which is quite annoying is that the car scrapes a lot. During the entire trip I guess it scraped 5-6 times and all of them in Bangalore city. I have gone through those monster speed bumps before without scraping the underbelly when I was alone in the cabin. So I would like to attribute it to the max passenger load couple with a pathetic suspension. But still, why don't the manufacturers to a better a stress testing of the cars under Indian road conditions and come up with an appropriate combination?

Now, I am not trying to compare apples with oranges, just wanted to clarify on a couple of points for the peace of my mind. Request fellow BHPians to help me out.

1. Is this problem present in other cars as well but to a far lesser degree ?
   
2. Does Verna's softly tunes suspension accentuate this problem or is it the case that only this car has such a problem ?

It's a pity that one of the most refined and powerful engines of the segment is completely let down by a such a softly tuned suspension. The engine is such a gem and always wants to do more but doesn't get the support from other components. Only if someone had a solution.

Having said all of this, I still love the car. It suits my requirements and I love driving it in the city. On Highways, if one drives this car within its limits, it's a breeze. Anyway, with my married bachelorhood status coming to an end shortly, all the future highway drives will be with my better half and my kid Then I won't be allowed such adventures and will be sticking to the promise & premise on which this car was bought