Keep Smiling...............: Isha

A lovely trip...a befitting last trip for 'before Diksha leaves'.

Especially so considering how suddenly the trip came about, and how tightly planned it was................ and we did have our fair share of the hiccups and the adventure element. (end of trip, diksha was like, if it wasn't for those last three hours when I thought my nerves would snap....)

Let me go chronologically though.

In fact, I'd say we started with hiccups. Zoom cars gave us some super stressful moments. Advice from folks with zoom car experience was, 'get a car that's set for outstation, so all basic parameters are cleared'.

It was our first experience with Zoom, and we were in for a surprise. There was no real person to talk to.....not through the whole process..... not the booking, not the picking up of the car, and not even the drop off.

Diksha was to pick up the car, and she got the first surprise. She had the car location on GPS, and while she was expecting an office or large garage, it led her to a residential colony where this single car was parked on a street under a tree. She then had to follow instructions on the app... use an OTP to unlock the car........ find the car key inside the glove compartment.....feed in a whole lot of dashboard readings and stuff........... and basically drive it out herself.

Considering we had no one to confirm with, we did some basic checks ourselves, and what we saw was not too good. So pretty much started with a 'pit stop'.....needed to replenish engine oil, coolent and wiper water, and ofcourse fuel...all were at pathetically low levels. The inside was dirty, dirty enough to make me actually go at it with a wet cloth, something I don't remember doing even on my own car :)

All this done, by the time we left Bangalore it was well past noon. Closer to 1 pm.

We hit the highway in a couple hours (Bangalore traffic) and Diksha's like, "something's weird ma, it's just not pulling". While we initially got concerned, we quickly realized it seemed to have a speed lock at 80 kmph. Called customer support for whatever it was worth, only to hear "yes, ma'am, we have a speed governor, it's government regulations". What a bummer ! (atleast until we got the hang of it, and that was a whole other story to me)

That made the 380 kms drive go from a seven hour drive into eight, and by the time we drove into Coimbatore it was close to 9 pm.

The drive itself was simply beautiful.... with the highway running through Hosur, Krishnagiri, Salem, Erode, Coimbatore. It's a really scenic drive, with lovely mountain views....while not totally in the ghats, it's yet in the western ghats terrain.

At one point Diksha even saw a group of twenty peacocks on a hillock. I missed that as I was at the wheel then.

Past Salem we caught some spectacular cloud covered sunset views....... so good that we felt that even if Isha doesn't work out ( cause that morning we got to know that next day was International Yoga Day, and could mean crazy crowds), just those sky views would make the trip worthwhile. They were spell binding.

Here's some pictures:

In chronological order, first getting the car fixed: