10 BMWs and the Fury of the Rain: Story of our "Monsoon Drive 2024"

We drove out for this year's monsoon drive across Coastal Karnataka, Goa, and the hills of Maharashtra, in not one or two, but in 10 BMW 3-Serieses in various shapes and forms.

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Prologue: BMWs and Rains

In our local BMW 3-series owners and friends group (not an official or a formal group by many means; just a casual group of 3-series owners who share common interests and became friends), we often joke about BMWs and the rain. We joke, based on purely anecdotal evidence (not to be taken seriously), that BMWs are sitting ducks even in the small puddles after a tiny amount of rain.These are just jokes, but these "BMW and water" jokes go on and on in our group.

Little did we know that when we drove out for this year's monsoon drive across Coastal Karnataka, Goa, and the hills of Maharashtra, in not one or two, but in 10 BMW 3-serieses in various shapes and forms, we would be continuously challenged by, tested against, and made to fight against the very thing that we joke about the most and fear the most - water!

So this is a story of the 10 BMWs against the fury of extreme monsoons that we faced in Coastal Karnataka, Goa, and Maharashtra in early July this year. And a story of 10 drivers who drove on, crossed many puddles, crossed many hills and ghats, relentlessly drove on highways with wipers running at max speed all day and water splashing on all sides of the cars, maneuvered uncountable speed-breakers and a few potholes too, had to stop and turn back and find alternative paths on more than one occasion, and still made it a successful drive with smiles on their faces!

We were 10 friends, each driving a BMW 3-series. As I said, this was not a formal or official group by any means. Just a casual, informal, friendly group. Two common things had brought these 10 men together. The superficial commonality was that they all drove a 3-series. But the more important common factor was that they all love to drive, they drive long and they drive hard, and they enjoy every driving challenge!. Not one of these 10 BMWs are garage queen!

The convoy of 10 included these eight TeamBHP members driving their respective 3ers: @robimahanta (Sunset Orange M340i), @RakishRam (Nardo Grey M340i), @HighRevving (Portimao Blue 330i), @praveenbalan (White 330i), @jfk1975 (White 330i), @hemanth.das (Portimao Blue 330i), @PrideRed (White 320 Ld), and myself (Melbourne Red 320d F30). The two others, Purna (Portimao Blue 330i) and Prabhath (White 320d F30) are not members of the forum.

We had two F30s as mentioned above, and the rest 8 were G20s. We had three Blue and four White cars in the convoy. That made a nice pattern of white and blue as the convoy drove down the highways and the ghats. The Melbourne Red, Sunset Orange, and Nardo Grey offered some variation from this blue and white pattern from time to time.

This was a 3 days and 2 nights drive. The rough trip plan that we had in mind when we started the drive was this:

This circuit was chosen to include a variety of conditions: scenic hills and western ghats, coastal highways with a couple of scenic sea-view points, again some hill climbs, and in the end fast and flat highways back to home.

As it turned out, the actual route we took was different. We were constantly challenged by the rain, and at one point, we had to turn back, forego our hotel reservations, find a new hotel, and make a new trip plan on the go. So the final route turned out to be different. Please read on for that story!

The best camera is the one you have or the one you actually use in the given conditions. I was carrying my Nikon Z5 in the car trunk for this drive. However, as it turned out, most of the time it was raining, we were always under challenging conditions, and my mind was more focused on checking the routes, timings, and conditions and keeping myself dry. We hardly ever got a chance to even get out and talk to each other in that heavy rain. Given all this chaos, it never occurred to me to take my camera out and take a nice composted photograph. The camera remained in its bag in the entire drive. Not even a single picture from the camera. All I managed was jumping out of the car in the rain, quickly pulling out my mobile, and capturing whatever photos I could while still thinking about the next path and the next challenges ahead. So in summary, all photos in the report below are taken with a simple mobile camera.

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