[GrammarNazi]

Impromptu trips have a certain thrilling excitement because we don't anticipate things and enjoy the travel experience in real time, as they happen.

The experience of taking those spontaneous decisions are the moments to cherish. Thanks ramnaresh for sharing an exciting story & an unfiltered glimpse into real travel.

[silverstreakcbe]

Thanks for sharing your experience. As others have rightly said, the foremost important is you all returned home safely. Yes, i do agree, it has been very expensive trip, but you all were saved by the blessing and grace of the almighty and in spite of all the incident, you deserve kudos for finishing what you started. Dont stop, keep up the spirit with extra care and enjoy your future journeys. My wishes for more safe journeys.

[NagaBond]

Congratulations, you managed to return safely despite the hiccups faced all along. You should look at the positives from the trip. Very few people go to Hampi Temple in the night and get the majestic view. You were damn lucky that you didn't listen to hotel staff and went ahead to visit. Later, the trip in local Jeep to hill top must be an adventure that everyone will remember for long. Finally, the accident was not your fault. They had written "Press" on it and you promptly obeyed :-)

[kirans]

Originally Posted by ramnaresh_2000

Do I regret my decision to do unplanned trip? No way. It was a great learning experience on how not to do a road trip. We will be well prepared for the next trip, thanks to the lessons learned. Until then keep revving and keep smiling.

Apart from the unexpected expenses, its a pretty good trip! You saw a lot of places, travelled quite a bit albeit in a round about fashion, but a road trip is what it is - spending time on the road visiting places and having new adventures. Accidents happen and as long as you're intact and do not cause physical injury to anyone, monetary losses for vehicle repairs can be ignored in the long run as extra expense. Yes its a little off-putting at the moment, but overall you will not worry about it after a while.

May I suggest that for future trips, please do ask around from friends for suggestions/recommendations - someone is bound to tell you Coorg is a district and not a place. Glad you found a nice homestay and enjoyed the time there.

You seem to be a very positive person and what is impressive is that the family continues to push on, and continue the journey. You do not give yourselves enough credit. Many would just pack up and grumpily return home.

Kudos to you for detailing all the incidents that too in a jovial tone with no sense of anger and frustration. Your travelogue says that you enjoyed it in spite of a few hiccups and you will have many memories of the trip.

You have summed it up in the last sentence - Keep smiling!

[silverstreakcbe]

Originally Posted by NagaBond

Finally, the accident was not your fault. They had written "Press" on it and you promptly obeyed :-)

Rightly said and especially i liked the above

[sureshkumar]

Disaster? I wouldn't call them that except maybe the incident with the Ertiga. The others were all quite manageable and you came through with flying colours. Altogether a good travelogue, with some fantastic photos. Thank you @ramnaresh_2000

[KPR]

What a travelogue! There is no peace for married men both inside and outside home.

Originally Posted by ramnaresh_2000

Enjoyed the sunset, clapped along with the crowd on watching the sun disappearing in to the mountains.

This narration takes the trophy .

[fawad0222]

I believe it was a nice trip if you sum up all that you had. You could drive for days, had some reasonable hotels to stay over and a fantastic homestay near Maddikeri. Accident is the only thing which was a downer especially as it was a freak one and totally avoidable. On the upside, it was not a serious accident and you all came out safe. I believe any unplanned trip would more or less turn out to be similar in experience, which for many is an adventure in itself. I believe, not taking out your own vehicle was a mistake whatever the reason was, more so you would have enjoyed the drive more. Over and all nice travelogue, notwithstanding the fact that it turned out little costlier than expected.

[Kickdown]

Originally Posted by ramnaresh_2000

Day 5 & 6
Do I regret my decision to do unplanned trip? No way. It was a great learning experience on how not to do a road trip. We will be well prepared for the next trip, thanks to the lessons learned. Until then keep revving and keep smiling.

Your signature says you are always in mood for an adventure. You certainly got one here and an unexpected one at that .

On a serious note, I admire your grit to continue with the journey despite these hassles. And not just continue, but also click these awesome photographs for wannabe wanderer like me. How did you manage to keep yourself calm and focused throughout? I would have surely cancelled the trip if I were in your place especially after the Ertiga incident. So much to learn from fellow BHPians .

[Peepspp]

While it does sound like your trip was anything but destressing, it seems we might have crossed paths multiple times through the course of your trip as I was out on a 2K Km road trip from Trichy to Gokarna and back around the same time as well!!

Crazier coincidence, the Ertiga you ended up dashing into, the one with the beware 'press hun mai' sign (JK), gave me a horrible time from Bengaluru to Coorg. In spite of being incredibly slower than us, the driver was so affronted that we overtook him that he tailgated us (rather unsuccessfully, but quite dangerously) for nearly half an hour, until we guys understood why people invented brunch and chose to just get off the road entirely.. Glad nobody was injured or hurt though!! And I might add, a little, just a little, happy you gave that guy the kick in the rear he had coming, albeit in place of me (once again, I kid, I kid)

But really, what a small world huh!!

[lovlyfella]

Nice write-up and excellent photos. On the lighter side, I was expecting that you will list something like 'Dont take saas and bahu on a single trip' as one of the distilled lessons :-), going by the introduction

[ramnaresh_2000]

Originally Posted by chinkara

In our Jaisalmer trip, our Wagon R was rammed by a truck and turned turtle. We got the mechanicals checked at the closest ASS in Behror and continued.

Wow that is just scary man. Kudos to you for keeping it cool and continuing the rest of the trip. Compared to your experience mine does sound like small incident.

Originally Posted by NagaBond

Very few people go to Hampi Temple in the night and get the majestic view. You were damn lucky that you didn't listen to hotel staff and went ahead to visit.

They had written "Press" on it and you promptly obeyed :-)

Agree 100% with you here. Initially when the receptionist said the temple will be closed, I was really disappointed. We had all evening left and no place to visit, but the google search helped us. The temple at the night time was simply majestic. The pictures do not do complete justice to the experience we had.

This statement really cracked me up

Originally Posted by kirans

You seem to be a very positive person and what is impressive is that the family continues to push on, and continue the journey. You do not give yourselves enough credit. Many would just pack up and grumpily return home.

Thank you Kirans. I should hand out to my family on this one. Everyone was on the same page after the incident to move forward. I was contemplating inside to be honest, but after seeing the confidence in my family, we just moved forward.

Originally Posted by Kickdown

How did you manage to keep yourself calm and focused throughout? I would have surely cancelled the trip if I were in your place especially after the Ertiga incident.

Again to be honest, I was contemplating a little bit inside to continue the trip or not. After the negotiations with the Ertiga owner, I was a bit shaken recalling the incident. I tried to keep it cool and not to show off in front of my family, for the rest of the day I handed over the keys to my uncle and let him drive. It was then business as usual in the next morning.

Originally Posted by Peepspp

Crazier coincidence, the Ertiga you ended up dashing into, the one with the beware 'press hun mai' sign (JK), gave me a horrible time from Bengaluru to Coorg. In spite of being incredibly slower than us, the driver was so affronted that we overtook him that he tailgated us (rather unsuccessfully, but quite dangerously) for nearly half an hour

Such a small world, the Eritga driver was indeed slow when we were initially following him after visiting the water falls. I do remember breaking suddenly when we were following him, I assumed it maybe due to inclines and curves, however, looks the like Ertiga driver is also to be at blame here.

The actual owner who argued with me was not driving, he was actually eating in the car and the accident spilled all the food over him. He called the driver "Uncle", the uncle was the one doing all the dancing and saying "I am calling police now, let's go to police station, I got the FIR number SMS blah blah blah".

Funny incident I recalled now, the owners first reaction after getting the down car was taking out his mobile and shouting at us "Janta nahi mein kaun hu" (You don't know who I am). He then showed pictures of his family with Karnataka's ex-chief minister Mr. Yedurappa. He said I will be calling him, for which I calmly responded "So you are going to call ex-CM and tell him that your rear bumper is damaged?", for which he came to his sense and kept his mobile inside his pants

The uncle who was driving might be ex-constable, we got a police vibe off him. The owner said he was white metal dealer in Bangalore and shared his visiting card, the car has "Press" sticker on it (maybe someone from him family is a press member).

The quotation the owner shared for repairs was from Maruti app and it was exorbitant, 3,000 bucks for rear bumper and 15,000 bucks for labor. Despite our requests not to go with Maruti workshop, he proceeded there, looks like the "Uncle" persuaded him.

Originally Posted by lovlyfella

On the lighter side, I was expecting that you will list something like 'Dont take saas and bahu on a single trip' as one of the distilled lessons :-), going by the introduction

You want me dead or what? This is one item which everyone will just assume without us pointing out to them lol.

[Abhiram]

Nice narration.
Just one thing. My OCD is acting up. There's no place called Udipi that i'm aware of. Can you please change it to Udupi everywhere??
Thanks 😀

[dicor]

I was glued to your posts and read every word to find out "diaster" but I got sheer disappointment when I could not find one.

Probably the series of unplanned situations pissed you off and you labled them as disaster.

I can totally feel you. When we have seen 40+ autumns or travelling with family, surprises are the last thing we want to see.

If you would have been travelling with the friends, you would have called it "adventures".

Even if you have planned the trip well, hitting the LUV (Ertiga) could have happened.

Except hitting another car, I faced everything and I can understand how frustrating it is to stand in hotel reception arguing with receptioninst about lost booking.
How horrifying it is to reach a no men land , no roads in the with no mobile network (lost) and having a "asthi kalash" in the car which I have to put into river Ganges at auspicious muhurt sharp 6 AM (muhurt).

I am 40+, most of the time travel with my wife and kid but don't do lot of planning, often keep hitting these situations.

When we talk about Ganpati Phule, the conversation starts with lost hotel booking, when we talk about our Varansi trip, the first thing we tell is 6 hours of long queue, when we talk about our Coorg trip, the first thing we talk about the gas cylinder blast in the restaurant where we were having our dinner. We speak about how we escaped the police checkpoint in GA state border to safeguard our "Aqua vitae". We never talk about the windows of Hawamahal, but we talk how we caught Covid in Jaipur.

I am sure this Hampi and Madikeri trip will be remembered as most rememberable trip of your life time.

[rjalihal]

Nice write up, I enjoyed reading it in detail. I too did a Karnataka road trip in December. Drove Bangalore> Badami> Bijapur> Belgaum> North Goa> Panjim> South Goa.

Before that in 1st week of December I did Bangalore> Mangalore> Upudi/Manipal> Karwar> Shimoga.

Below is just an intro pic


Planning to write my first travelogue based on this trip.

Regards,
Rohan