| Pune- Nagpur- the wedding trip
I recently (well on 4th-6th dec) did a pune -nagpur - pune trip in a fiat siena (2002 model, 1.6, which we fondly call Teroso). I was a bit apprehensive about th etrip from the start as i had to be in nagpur on 5th morning by 10am for my friend's wedding (which was the main reason for the nagpur trip) and i was in mumbai only on 3rd night. This meant starting on 4th, early in the morning and driving all day and i had no idea about the route and the road conditions (my earlier experience of maharastra roads, that too on dhule side were horrible, thanks to bad roads, poor driving/riding sense and maharatsra state transport bus).
Up and out of badlapur at 5.30 and after some careful driving and a few calls to my sleeping cousin, i was on the expresshighway towards pune. Man, i love this road (except for some road users who think that doing 80 on this road entitles them to block the right extreme lane). Did some decent speeds on the right side of 100 and managed to touch 182 (speedo reading) twice. In pune city by 7.30 and after a bit of searching and few more calls, at friend's place for breakfast. Few more calls to cousin (who gave a few inputs from T-Bhp) and freinds about the route, decided to go via ahmednagar-aurangabad route.
Left pune at 9.30 with a friend and after batling the pune traffic for more than an hour, finally on to the highway towards ahmednagar. Folks, please be very careful on this road, road widening in in full swing and that means two lanes with a vertical drop of 1.5 feet on the sides, two way traffic and lot of two wheelers (read splendors, passions, cd100s etc), carrier autos, jeeps which make overtaking a big project palnning in itself. You got a bit of 4 laned roads with dividers inbetween, but lookout for the diverion signs. Its the same way till Aurangabad. reached aurangabad by 1.45 and breaked for lunch.
More calls to friends and couple of mins later decide on jalna-sikand raja-mehker-karanja-yavatmal-wardha-nagpur route. Heard that this route was traffic free and had better asphalt. Reached jalna and then the search began for the mehker route. after two wrong turns and enquiring a couple of people, we were finally on the right route at 4-4.15. Lamost immediatly regretted taking that route and started cursing all those who had suggested that road (including a guy at some transport office in jalna, who said it was "international quality" road). the whole road was dug up for nearly a km and then terrible roads for nearly 10-15 kms.
After this strech, the really good road started and the teroso's speedo needle started resting itself on th right side of 100. except for some bad roads near some villages (this was just for a km or so). There are bypass roads near mehker and karanja, but you will have to ask for it. and oh.. there are a couple of toll booths on the way and toll varies from Rs.15 to Rs21. Reached karanja at around 9.15pm and then took the bypass towards yavatmal. by the time we reached yavatmal, it was around 10 pm and we decided to call it a day and crashed in some hotel.
Next day morning, started at 7am and completed the remaining 140 kms (our hotel was 5kms away from yavatmal) in 2.5 hrs (after taking a fuel break and some 15 min to access the damage doen to the rim by the crater in the centre of the road, which i hit at nearly 100kmph and changing the damaged tyre (thankfully, it was justa bent rim)). Be careful on this road from yavatmal to nagpur via wardha. though the road surface is smooth, there are occasional potholes and crates right in the center of the road which will catch you unawares.
On the return journey, started form nagpur at 3pm and reached jalna by 10.15pm. and to my bad luck the radiator boiled as soon as i parked the car in the hotel. found out that the radiator cooling fan wasnt working. checked the wiring and fuse (which i found later wasnt the fan fuse) and found them alright. Since the fan dosnt work on the highways, decided to drive to aurangabad and get it checked at the fiat/tata service center. Started early next morning (after filling up the coolant) and reached sanya motors in Aurangabad. These folks might be good for tata vehicles but got to go a long way in for fiat vehicles. Though they pin pointed the problem to a shorted radiator fan motor, they didnt have spare motors or fan assembly nor the spare fuses for replacing the blown fuses. They told me that they could do no more and if they had to repair it, it would take 2 days. Since it was highway till pune outskirts, i decided to drive to pune.
After some quickfix advices from friends (and ofcourse turbosam), hit the highway and drove like crazy to keep the airflow to the radiator. Though i had a bit of tough time through ahmednagar due to marriages, managed to keep the temp under 50% of the scale and reached pune outskirts by 2.15 pm. After a break there and more crazy city driving to keep the car above 60 kmph (for the air flow and about which i am not at all happy) reached BU bhandari at 4 and handed over the car to them for recification.
Total journey was of 1386 kms (693 kms each way) (+135kms from badlapur to pune) and journey time was 13hrs on the onward journey and 11.5 hrs on the return journey (less on the return journey as we knew the roads and that crazy driving between aurangabad and pune). Road was pretty good except for patches. and i think the strech between jalna and sikand raja will be asphalted soon.
Teroso was amazing during the journey (except for that non working fan). Absolutely comfortable. no fatigue or body pain after 3 days of continuous driving. the tyres (appolo accelare 185/60/ R14) were great offering beautiful grip and never let me down, no matter how fast i took the turn or how shrp the turn was or under heavy braking.
Last edited by normally_crazy : 13th December 2007 at 16:57.
Reason: Read the rules - do not use formatting
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13th December 2007, 15:08
