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BHPian mrpotato recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
The Yercaud drive was born out of my need to take the newly bought car to the mountains and test if it’s meeting my expectations or not. More on that later, but let me start with the planning phase for this trip.
So, I bought a used 2016 BMW 320d (F30 pre-LCI) recently and I wanted to take the "new" car to my favourite kind of terrain - the winding mountains. The initial plan was to visit Yelagiri as a one day trip but then my colleague recommended Yercaud with a stay as an option. I had not been to Yercaud so far and was also scared to venture into unknown territory with the "new" car. But my heart got better of my mind and I took the plunge and decided to go to Yercaud. Also note that I am on a week off from work and hence, I wanted to make this a weekday drive but all my sugary talks to make my wife take off from her busy office schedule fell on deaf ears which meant I was forced to plan this drive on a weekend.
I had finished a Bike ride to Yelagiri just the previous month and knew that the Hosur - Krishnagiri stretch had some nasty diversions. I did not want to take this route to avoid scrapping the gorgeous sedan. Couple that with the holiday traffic moving out of Bangalore for Christmas and New Year, I decided to take the Atibelle - TVS motor factory - Kelamangalam - Rayakottai - Palacode - Dharmapuri route to Salem (Boy was I wrong, more on this debacle later). Of course I scavenged the team-bhp website to find places to eat and visit. On that note - Yours truly is now a team-bhp member (Yippieee!!!). My membership got approved just last month. It was in my mind for a long time and finally, my joy knew no bounds when the membership came through.
With all things planned properly (which is so not me :P), we started our journey from South Bangalore "right" at 6.30 am, 1 hour delayed from the planned 5.30 am start (cough missed my alarm cough cough). I did not take the Electronic City flyover just to see the extent of the traffic situation ( really bold of me) and found it to be above average but not that bad but I still didn’t want to risk it and hence took the planned Kelamangalam route. This was another bold move considering I have only taken this route in my SUV and things got a little crazy. The roads after the TVS motor were quite fine but the Kelamangalam- Rayakottai stretch is a scary thought for sedans. The contractor seems to have swapped the countryside road plan for the JEEPs obstacle course. Some god level speed breakers where a Sedan has to bring out the inner Tarzan to manoeuvre it. Even then, I ended up scrapping the car belly twice on those speed breakers.
All this while the only saving grace for me was the thought about the time I am saving if I had taken NH44. But exactly at that moment, the traffic came to a standstill. A tree had fallen on this road and a JCB was clearing the road for us. We waited for a good 25 to 30 minutes there watching Indian civic sense at display where few folks cut the lane and block the oncoming traffic and whatnot. After reaching Palacode the smooth highway started and that’s when I could start enjoying the car. I got a good stretch of 40 km with very little traffic and I managed to smoothly glide across the tarmac appreciating the sedan’s aerodynamic-atha( Yes, Baiju n Nair reference ). Google suggested we bypass Salem city and take the rural roads directly to the Yercaud foothills which proved to be another waste of time as there was water clogged in the underpass that had to be taken to cross the railway line that cut across. So we came back to Salem city and started our ascent to the 20 hairpin bend beautiful roads of Yercaud.
The roads were not very crowded ( compared to my experience of having driven to Ooty multiple times in heavy traffic). I took the car around corners very carefully and the car gave me a lot of confidence. Coming from driving a manual I was apprehensive of the capabilities of an automatic on these mountains but this ZF8 transmission proved to be great. The amount of power available on all bands in this 2.0 litre 188 bhp engine is sheer brilliant and nowhere during the ascent I felt wanting more. It proved more intelligent during the descent. More on that later. Though the sceneries on the route were gorgeous we did not stop anywhere and reached the Yercaud lake by 1:30 pm. Considering our breakfast break was a good 1 hour due to the holiday rush, we reached Yercaud in about 6 hours. This was more than I had anticipated but I consoled myself thinking it might have taken more if I had taken the other route ( learnings from “Paradox of choice” came in handy )
Yercaud felt like a quiet, peaceful town but was reminded immediately of Kodaikanal. Similar to Kodai, Yercaud’s main centre of attraction revolves around the central Yercaud lake. We headed straight to "Sweet rascal" (the restaurant I found on Team-BHP) to place our order for dinner. Apparently, they are big on food wastage and prefer guests to order for the lunch/dinner in advance. We had booked a stay near the lake - the Grand Palace Hotel. After placing the order we headed straight to our stay to check in.
It’s a pretty old property perched on top of a peak and you get views of both Sunrise and Sunset. More than those views what I loved about the room that we were given was that direct view of the bimmer parked right in front of the hotel. At night it looked even more gorgeous to me .
The sheets were a little shabby but we managed since we had brought our blankets and sheets ( benefits of having a wife with OCD for cleanliness). All the travel had made us pretty hungry and we headed straight to their restaurant. It served global cuisine and we ordered some fancy stuff which I can't even pronounce. I felt the taste to be good but as is the case with every restaurant I felt the price was on the higher side. Leaving that aside, it had a great view of the valley. Having lunch with this amazing view of the valley brought some sense of peace to my mind.
Post lunch we wanted to go to the Cauvery peak cafe and try their in-house brew of coffee. For this, we decided to walk and boy it was hilarious walking in those ups and downs panting like crazy for the last 10 minutes of the uphill. Either the coffee was pretty good or my mind was convincing itself to be the case after all that hard work I guess we will never know. Then we went to Sweet rascal ahead of time. The caretaker Rathish was sweet enough to let us sit there and gave us the wifi passwords to pass our time. Special mention of his beautiful handwriting in the invoice that he made for us (Will attach one card he gave us). We sat there for about an hour and a half when the restaurant officially opened. Our dinner was served. The salmon fry was delicious but the porottas and chapatis were average. After dinner, Ratheesh was kind enough to call for an auto to take us to the hotel. We spent some time near the bonfire in the hotel did some stargazing with naked eyes and called it a day.
The next day, we finished breakfast and did an early checkout to explore the Yercaud Loop Road before starting the trip downhill. One word to describe the Loop Road would be Gorgeous. For folks who don't know the Loop road is a beautiful stretch of 32 km of scenic beauty in Yercaud. It starts from the Yercaud Lake area, goes up to the Cauvery Peak estate, wraps around Solur and comes down crossing the Sri Chakra Maha Meru Temple and joins the Lake again.
I absolutely loved the tarmac, properly marked with proper signs and enough places on the side to park every once in a while, relax and yes click photos.
The aim was to complete the entire loop, but unfortunately, the roads were broken right at the top of the loop. Maybe for some other time. Loop Road "I will be back".
Before returning we headed to Basil Bakehouse to have our lunch. I loved their pizza and Tex Mex chicken. The staff was polite and cheerful. Loved their service. Highly recommend them if you are in Yercaud.
Post lunch we started our return journey and this time I decided to take the normal Dharmapuri-Krishnagiri-Hosur route and managed to reach home in about 4.5 hours. With that the almost 500 km trip came to a conclusion. We managed to get a mileage of 14 for the overall trip. Not bad I would say.
The car fared well during the trip. I had power in all bands and drove conservatively in comfort mode across the trip. It felt like the brakes lacked a little bit of the grip, I guess I will get the brakes replaced. Also could hear some noise from the front suspension while going over speed breakers. I might have to get the front suspension replaced as well. But on the whole pretty happy with the purchase and the trip.
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