My first anniversary was of course memorable since I brought home my Italian babe. The first week of november was more memorable....It was my first honeymoon with her and the second with my wife.
I was on leave for the whole festive week and this was just what I needed...a trip without being too concerned about the time.
We headed out from Bangalore at 8:00AM towards Mysore road planning to spend our time in Ooty. October 31st At 10:15 we reached the Maddur tiffanies hotel for our first break. The break took around 45minutes and by 11:30 we reached Mysore.
I wanted to take my new car to gopalaswamy betta on its first long drive.
When i reached the foot hills..it was like the whole of Bangalore had shifted to Gopalaswamy betta and We were not allowed inside because of a huge car pileup.
I didn't want to waste time waiting and hence decided to head straight to Ooty. My next stop was at the tamilnadu checkpost where I was stopped by the TN police for their small dosage of 50Rs.
My Italian babe just loved the roads that followed. She matched the hairpin curves with hers and just climbed up the 1800feet with such ease that I don't have many words in my vocabulary to describe that.
I reached ooty at around 2:30PM and then after lunch,we went for a small boat ride in the ooty lake. then the botanical garden to finish our sightseeing for the day.Luckily for us the rain didn't interrupt us anywhere.
The next day we set out to coonor after breakfast.the ooty-coonor road had been blocked due to some road repair work and we had to take a deviation through selas and karumpalam and reach coonor. this route added 15kms extra.
This was the first of november and the first time I didn't like the mist. The drive was very good but the mist covered everything in all the viewpoints.
Returned back to ooty and after lunch we visited Doddabetta and a small wax museum.this was when road side eveteaser (A bangalore indica cabbie) scapped my italian babe and left a small mark at the right rear corner while negotiating a small mountain road. luckily its nothing visible.
This was the maximum the rains could hold for us and that night it rained cats and dogs. We had anways planned to leave next day and we left ooty at 7:30am in the morning. the descend down was just awesome as the ascend was. My punto just enjoyed negotiating the ghat sections.
We wanted to do a safari in Bandipur but reached there at 9:30 but luck ran out and the last morning safari was only till 9:00am. So I headed to the place where i couldn't go while going to ooty-Gopalaswamy betta. Snce it was a weekday this time, the traffic was at its minimum. Enjoyed the Scenic beauty and descended down at around 12:00. Tried some offroading with my car and drove around a lake which I had never seen in all my visits to this place. it was just awesome.
FE was 13.5 in the ghat sections and when my car had hardly touched 5th gear.
It was time to return to mysore but I made a plan change. we decide to head towards sakleshpur. But before we returned to mysore we had to do another offroading because of a truck that had fell horizontally near the mysore airport
We had our lunch in mysore and went to sakleshpur on this beautiful flat road and i 3.5hrs We reached our estate 20 kms inside sakleshpur.
The toughest of all conditions came when i had to take my car inside the estate road which was just the perfect size of my car and the rains on the previous day made it just that hard with the first of the hits to the bottom came here. but my punto didn't complain one bit and drove beautifully.
The next day we had a short visit to Beluru, Halebidu and pushpagiri(a small mutt on a small hill). The next day we left backto bangalore and drove on the evergreen NH48. we left our estate at 11:00 and reached chanraypatna at 2:00pm. A 1 hour visit to my wife's friend for lunch and we left at 3:15pm. I reached nelamangala at 5:30pm.
This time i wanted to see if the yeshwantpur elevated section was open and thats why I didn't go on the Magadi road by purpose. As fate wuld have it, it was still not open and bythe time i reached bangalore it was 7:30pm
The flat road journey gave me a FE of 15.3kms.
The whole journey was 1300kms with a nice mixture of ghat roads, flat roads, and no roads
The comparitivelyless power of punto is easily visible on ghat sections but its not that she won't climb but just that we need to stay at one gear less as compared to the other cars. Even after this, I'm satisfied with the FE before the first service.
My odo now stands at 2400kms and waiting for the first service in around 3 weeks. Below are some pictures