Last week completed yet another Chennai to Kolkata jaunt.
Nothing much to report. Road conditions are good throughout.
A few points:
1. If you are travelling from Chennai to Kolkata and want to enter Vishakapatnam city, then keep an eye out for the left loop beside the newly constructed Anakapalle - Sambhavaram bypass. It is not very well marked, yet and may be difficult to spot in the darkness. GMaps gets a bit confused and has a tendency to mislead. I relied on HMaps (Human Maps by simply rolling down the window and asking the nearest person for guidance) and it worked fine.
2. Many of the Bhubaneswar - Balasore roadworks have been completed. Remaining portions are very much manageable. In most cases one need not "cross over" to the other flank. Most diversions will require you to take stick to left hand side and go past the shoulder.
3. Orissa state is using a lot of ANPR, (Automatic Number Plate Recognition), camera's to check speeding. The camera's are installed on gantries spanning the width of the highway and can be seen from quite some distance away. The speed limit is 80 kmph,corrected, so in most mass merket vehicles, even if you touch an indicated 85kmph on the speedometer, you are still within the legal limit.
I am not sure how the penalty mechanism is calculated as I did not see any cops immediately after the camera's. I assume the cops calculate your speed based on the amount of time it took for you to cover the distance between two "gantry mounted camera set-up's" and arrive at your average velocity.
4. On the Balasore to Kharagpur, NH-60, a large part of the highway in West Bengal, somewhere between Dantan and Belda is being widened and concretised to make an emergency landing strip for the defence forces. Traffic, thus, has been restricted to a single lane in both directions.
Please exercise patience for these two / three kilometres and avoid reckless overtaking and unnecessary honking.
The NOCCI resort in Balasore is a good place if you want to freshen up. The restaurant is nice and has a decent spread.
I take it easy as I do most of these drives solo. No "pell-mell", pedal to the metal, teeth gnashing dragster like runs!
This time I took an overnight halt at Bhubaneshwar.
Reasons were two:
1. If you are coming in from South you are probably doing the Vishakhapatnam - Bhubaneswar stretch on the 2nd day. Estimate is that you will be passing Bhubaneswar somewhere between 1530 - 1630 hours and if you do not halt at BBSR and proceed further, you will be crossing Bhadrak - Balasore et al, somewhere around 1730 hours. In these pre-summer months, in that particular stretch, it is prime "Nor'-Wester"storm season.
Yes, it is a lovely experience driving through a Nor'-Wester on the highways, but please be careful of two things: (because i have experienced it)
a) Crosswinds. When you are travelling to Kolkata from Bhubaneswar you are travelling North-North-East. Basically the right side of your car is exposed to the full might of the gusts that blow in from the Bay of Bengal. Some of the gusts are so severe that they may actually veer you off course a bit. In a low slung sedan or a low hatch you are fine - but be prepared to take corrective steering action if you are driving high sided/slab sided vehicles and you are caught in one of these summer storms.
b) Hail. Sometimes these summer storms dump a fair bit of hailstones. Reduce speed as some of these ice cubes are large enough to crack your windscreen!
c) Also crossing Bhubaneswar in the late afternoon means you will be hitting Kolkata late night and I need not mention the truck menace as you approach the city late night
By the way: The erstwhile ITDC Hotel Kalinga Ashok has been fully refurbished. Rooms are neat and clean and charges are extremely reasonable. And it's quiet. They have a huge parking lot as well which self driving BHP-i'ans will like.
Yes, their service is slow and is more 1820's than 2020's - but what's the hurry? They'll even let you speak to the chef and let you tell him exactly how you want you dinner to be prepared!
And if you are still unhappy you can pop down to a swanky mall right next door and have your fill at the Food Court.
Onto the vehicle: the Tiago ran like clockwork. As it was packed to the roof liner the l'il fella' was squatting on its suspension and it felt like I was driving a vehicle with "active supension" woth hardly any body roll to speak of!
It is a very stable car and on more than a couple of occasions handled high speed recovery from highway dips and undulations, impeccably well, with nary a shudder or course deflection.
The Yokohama tyres, (which i had changed to, two years back, from the stock Bridgestone's), were very grippy as well. Air retenton is commendable.
Got a "brim - to - brim" fuel efficiency of 20.2 kmpl with AC set at 23degs C and speeds between 85-100 kmph. Vehicle was full loaded with at least 80-90 kgs of luggage and another quintal of lard - that's me!
After Balasore the weather was beautiful and intermittent usage of AC saw the fuel efficiency improving to 21.5kmpl, "brim - to - brim"
Logging off for now. Stay safe & drive safe everyone!
Cheers!