Trip to Hyderabad in a Mahindra Thar and Kia Seltos diesel

Thar is super fun to drive. Once one is used to the slightly higher body roll, one can settle comfortably into those high sofa like seats, enjoy the commanding view of the road, the smooth powerful diesel engine with a not so heavy clutch

BHPian ashis89 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Two trips to Hyderabad, back to back and on different rides.

Last week, my buddy asked me to accompany him as he drove back from Bhubaneswar to Hyderabad. He drives a Thar D MT. So we started on a Saturday early afternoon, drove through the night to reach Hyderabad early on Sunday morning. Then I took a flight back to Bangalore in the evening.

Thar is super fun to drive. Once one is used to the slightly higher body roll, one can settle comfortably into those high sofa like seats, enjoy the commanding view of the road, the smooth powerful diesel engine with a not so heavy clutch. We stuck to 80-110 through the trip and got some good FE too.

Everyone gives way to a Thar on the road without having to honk or flash like a maniac

I don't need to climb on the wheel/footboard of my car to look ahead for the reason of a jam. I can see that from the driver seat itself. That bugger ahead had a roller loaded on the back of the flat bed and driven under the railway overbridge without thinking out the height of the machinery behind. Now the roller had a broken roof, a bent exhaust pipe. All that had created a long pileup near the Vijayawada city bus stand at 2AM in the night. Luckily the trailer could realign to one side of the road and I drive out from there after 20 mins

This Saturday I got some work in Hyderabad and return date was not final. So I drove down alone. Starting at 7AM from Bellandur and reaching Tellapur by 3:40PM, I took just one break - Kritunga @Kurnool at 12PM for some yummy biryani. Also spotted this Bull while refueling.

I never expected this in early March but my hands and cheek were baked by the direct sunlight coming into the cabin for a better part of the drive. So when I had some free time in Hyderabad, I got Coyote washed and also got sunfilms installed on it.

Got to see some beautiful sunsets from my balcony

The sunfilm installer had asked me to bake the car for 6-8 hrs in the sun and I did whenever I got a chance. The soap water marks were gone in half a day and the rest of bubbles were gone by the next day. All thanks to the film, the return drive was much cooler.

The place I was staying had a lot of shade. So I had to search for places where I could park the car in the sun

Drove back yesterday, starting around 8AM and reached home by 5:30PM. Took me an extra hour on the return leg all thanks to evening traffic in Bangalore.

Crossed 90k on the way back. Refueled at the BP COCO bunk near Kurnool

And that was the end of the 1300 km round trip

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