Weekend Trip to Wayanad & Coonoor

It was decided that we were heading to Wayanad for a weekend vacation. Keshav dropped out ‘cos of incomplete project work @ office. Tarak was game and so was Ajay the ‘mull’ Vijayan.

The plan was drawn and my Swift (on its maiden journey on the highway) was to be our transporter and ‘mull’ was to join us in Vythiri after visiting his grandmother in Eranakulam.

As per the itinerary, we three (Tarak, Sameer and I) set out for Vythiri on Friday morning at about 6:30 AM and reached Bandipur at around 10:45 AM, stopping on the way for a while in Kamat Lokaruchi for a quick breakfast. We sighted a few spotted deers and a huge heard of elephants on the way to Muthanga forest range. A quick reshuffle of plans led us to Kalpetta where we stopped to have lunch and waited for ‘mull’ to reach there by bus and join us. Ajay reached there at about 1:30 PM and we headed straight to ‘Greeshmam Resorts’ in Lakkidi.

Lakkidi is in the southern tip of the district of Wayanad on NH 212 and about 100 meters from this place leads one to the district of Kozhikode or Calicut. This is where the views of the misty mountain ranges of Nilgiris or Blue Mountains get orgasmic.

Since the elections were on, entire state of Kerala was dry. Most disappointing thing was that even places of interest of tourists were closed due to ensuing elections. We had to be satisfied with only a glimpse of Pookoot a.k.a Pookudu Lake from a far distance.

Since we still had plenty of time, on Saturday, we decided to ditch the dry state of Kerala for the queen of hills – Ooty and Coonoor.

The distance from Lakkidi to Ooty via Gundlupet – Bandipur – Masangudi is about 160 KMS. We reached Ooty hill top after Swift’s much huffing and panting during the steep hill climb from Masangudi to Ooty.

Excessive commercialization and the “in-season” of Ooty led us to Coonoor.

On Sunday morning our lazy asses refused to wake up early and we had to cut our sight seeing plans short to enable us to leave for Bangalore.

We took the same route to climb down from Ooty to reach Masangudi and this made me firmly believe that buying Swift was one of the worst decisions I had made in life. The car is one heap of crap when it comes to handling ghats section. Lack of adequate torque is the main culprit. Six hair pin bends later, I was unsure if the car had fire wood for front disks ‘cos the front brakes were smoking. Mind you, I always use brakes as my last option to slow down a vehicle…heck, what are the gears and accelerator for?

If one wants to avoid this treacherous route, there is a way from Ooty to Mysore via Gudalur. This is a better route if you do not like to strain yourself and your car, but do not mind driving a small 30 KMS extra.
Driving back from Mysore to outskirts of Bangalore took us almost 4 hours. Traffic was very thick for a Sunday evening on the highway and was chaotic as we literally crawled and inched bumper to bumper towards Bangalore.

Route from Bangalore to Lakkidi: (via Vythiri)

Bangalore – Mysore – Nanjangud – Gundlupet – Muthanga Forest Range – Sulthan Bathery – Kalpetta – Vythiri – Lakkidi

Distance from Bangalore to Lakkidi: 300 KMS

Route from Lakkidi to Ooty:

Lakkidi – Vythiri – Sulthan Bathery – Muthanga Forest Range – Gundlupet – Bandipur – Mudumalai – Masangudi – Ooty

Distance: 160 KMS

Distance from Ooty to Coonoor: 20 KMS

Places we stayed:

1. Lakkidi – Greeshmam Resorts

Rating:
Location – 4/5
Rooms – 4/5
Service – 4/5
Food – 4/5
Overall Rating – 4/5

1. Coonoor – Vivek Tourist Home

Rating:
Location – 3/5
Rooms – 3/5
Service – 2/5
Food – 2/5
Overall Rating – 2.5/5

About Maruti Swift car:

This car rocks on good roads and on plane roads. It has got a very silent engine and its heavy weight adds to its highway stability. Speeds of over 130 KMPH can be achieved with much ease and best part is that the car is quite stable at those speeds. But the best mileage is achieved when the car is maintained between 80 – 100 KMPH and the stability is rock steady. The suspension is very hard and hence the ride is very hard on bad road conditions. The bad road stretch from Gundlupet to Bandipur saw the car bouncing away and giving everyone a backache. The AC works very efficiently.

Maruti designed Swift mainly to be a good city commuter and I must confess they’ve done a great job at that.
Low torque and a high RPM engine means frequent gear changes and shifting down gears just does not seem to have any effect on slowing this car down considerably.
The car does not seem to respond until it sees a 40 KMPH mark on the odometer and seems to be quite lousy below those speeds.

Maruti Swift was not built to handle any ghat sections at all, or so it seems. The car struggles for life when loaded with 4 passengers and medium luggage. The front discs and pads seem to get over heated and plumes of smoke arise due to friction from descent of 6-8 steep hair pin bends.

My Rating:

Fuel Consumption: 4.75/5 (returned an avg. of 17 KMPL with AC!)
AC: 4.5/5
Stability and Handling: 4/5
Ride Quality:
     Over Bad Roads: 2.5/5
     Over Good Roads: 4/5
Boot Space: 3.5/5
Performance:
     City: 4.25/5
Highway: 4/5
Ghats: 2/5
Driver Satisfaction:
     City: 4.5/5
     Highway: 4/5
     Ghats: 1.5/5