[neoone042]

Route: Bangalore - Krishnagiri - Erode - Coimbatore - Palakkad - Thrissur - Kochi

About two months back, I purchased a Kia Seltos GTX+ 2023, and since then, I had been itching to go on a 500+ km drive to see how the car held up during the trip.

I was not a car enthusiast, and it is only recently that my interest in cars has increased - to a degree where 50% of recommended posts on my Google News feed and YouTube feed are related to automobiles.

Coming back to the trip, before buying this car, the maximum I had driven on a single day was a 250km trip to Bandipur on my old reliable Tata Zest - which was two years back.

I had already taken a trip to Palakkad right after I bought my car. While that trip was fun, I did not go above a speed of 80-85 on the entire trip, neither could I rev the engine much because the car was not broken in, and a couple of my friends advised me not to. Also, I had started that trip in the afternoon, on a working day, and therefore, the traffic did not allow me to enjoy the drive as much.

So when the opportunity for this trip came up to visit Kochi for a family function, I was practically on my toes - and I decided to make a road trip out of it.

For the first part of the trip, I did not have a dashcam, so I did not have many images from the journey's first leg. In Kochi, I got one of these beauties installed at (details in the Dashcam thread): https://www.amazon.com/Vantrue-S1-ST...dp/B0CL4FQBQV/

I was told by many of my friends to start at 4 to avoid traffic. And pack some munchies if I wanted to make it to my destination by lunch.

All excited for the upcoming road trip, I woke up at 3:30 on the day of the trip. We were slightly delayed in the morning because we did not account for the time it would take us to make sandwiches for the road. However, we left our home in Bellandur, Bangalore, by 4:30 AM.



I had already added a full tank of petrol the previous night and some money in the Fasttag wallet so that we did not have to stop anywhere, at least for the first few hours.

I drove for about 3 hours, stopping just after Salem for a tea and toilet break at 7:30 AM at Sarvana Bhavan. After you enter TN from Bangalore, the roads become quite smooth and are marked for most of the distance. This gave me the opportunity to try the lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control in conjunction - making the drive effortless on the highways. While these features may not be very useful in the city

The distance traveled was 220 km in ~2 hours 50 minutes, maintaining an average speed of 78km/h.

Sarvana Bhavan: https://maps.app.goo.gl/S2enAcCCVWNzzkxZ7


The toilets here were clean, and the service was fast. I had a quick cup of tea in about 20 minutes and started from there after stretching my legs at 7:55 AM.

Maintaining the same average speed, I drove for about two more hours when we decided to get our petrol tank full again before entering Kerala, considering higher petrol rates there. This stretch, too, was quite easy. Apart from 1-2 very small construction patches on the road, the roads were well maintained, and we did not face any problems.

We decided to fill our belly with the car with our sandwiches that I had toiled in the morning for. 😋 After the short 10-minute pet-pooja break for the car and us, we started again. This time, the average speed was much slower, as we were already into the 40-50 km 2-lane stretch of Salem-Kochi highway, which is quite frustrating to drive on. We were still driving at consistent speeds, and I decided to test the adaptive cruise control on the car for a part of it. I am happy to report that it handled the traffic really well, slowing down and increasing speed as the car in the front increased or decreased its speed. The lane keep assist also worked flawlessly. Although, when you are driving at 80+ speeds, it feels a little unsafe to let the car do the work when the road is turning. It will take some getting used to.

As we were entering Kerala, the roads turned into 6-lane, promising a better ride for the rest of the journey. However, I was in for a rude awakening when I noticed the speed cameras on the way.

I asked my copilot, aka my wife, to find out what speed limit would ensure we don’t get into any trouble - and Google informed us that 80 should cover most of them, considering a recent change in the speed limit increase on highways by the Kerala government.

While there were many speed cameras that did not let me drive above 80 till my destination, the roads were good and relatively empty, owing to it being a Sunday afternoon, thanks to our early start from Bangalore.

We touched the Thrissur bypass at around 11:30 AM while covering this stretch at an average speed of 72 kmph. Within another 35-40 minutes, we were near the Kochi airport, from where it took about an hour for us to reach our final destination in Maradu. The city traffic slowed us down significantly. Special mention goes to the stretch near Lulu Mall, which was quite terrible and reminded me of Bengaluru traffic.

We reached our destination at 1:15 PM. Considering everything, it took us less than 9 hours for the entire journey without it feeling hectic or tiring.

Here are some photos from the return journey with the dashcam:










Overall, The trip was a lot of fun, and I look forward to doing more of these in the next couple of months.

Also, on the return journey, one of my cousins told me about the Radarbot app. It tells about upcoming speed cameras with details of what they are tracking (speed, seat belt, etc) and the speed limit in that stretch. Godsend!