Day 0: From the city of dreams to the Maratha capital

   The journey started on a lazy Friday evening with the sort of delays expected from a Kingfisher Airlines flight. A journey supposed to start around 7 pm to make use of the last remnants of sunlight ended up starting  past 9 pm. The days trip was supposed to be from the home of the car in a cosy suburb to the north of Mumbai to the IT park at Magarpatta located a bit west of Pune. I will be attaching pics of each days journey throughout the blog.
   The delays started with the overcrowded locals along one of the Mumbai's lifelines running a bit late. This was followed by the discovery that the car was covered by a thick layer of dust and grime due to quite some time of disuse. The cleaning of the car to make it just fit enough for driving did take a some time though it only involved cleaning all the windows. After battling through the layers of dust to make the front and back windshields transparent enough, I set off. The car was low on fuel and some of the tires also seemed a bit sad. So a long trip to a petrol pump to fill her belly up with petrol and her tires up with air coupled with  the fact that one of the tires had multiple punctures further added to the delays.

     I turned on Google Navigation ( a friend to be relied upon for large parts of the trip) to my destination and set of with a great smile on my face. After some boring driving on some crappy potholed roads, I finally reached one of the most beautiful roads in India pictured above, the Mumbai Pune Expressway. This road is fun to drive on and an ideal place to test the top speed of your car. It was great fun racing along the expressway at 120 kmph and reaching a top speed of 160 kmph( The speedometer of the Alto only goes upto 180 kmph so I was amazed that the car was able to reach this speed(my personal best)). The fact that the roads are lined with reflectors everywhere and were only sparsely populated by traffic was indeed a welcome relief.
   After the exhilarating drive on the Expressway which involved some of the fastest driving I have done in my life, I reached Pune city and finally Magarpatta city at midnight. I was happy with the cars performance and looking forward to a well deserved rest and the eventful road trip ahead.

The car..

  Our trusty steed for the upcoming 6 days was the Alto K10 from the stables of Maruti Suzuki. Despite its smaller size, this car does pack a nice punch and was a pleasure to drive. It was capable of handling high speeds, tight corners and had a decent acceleration as well.
   The car packs a powerful 1000cc engine under its hood which is more than capable of accelerating its light frame. The car was well tested during the trip. It clocked a top speed of 160 kmph on the Mumbai Pune Expressway. It was able to sustain 110 kmph+ speeds for long periods of time on the magnificent NH4 highway. It handled well in the twisting and tuning Western Ghats. And it delivered all this at a very nice fuel economy (which is amazing with the AC off but does suffer a bit with the AC on).
   For more details about the car have a look at the CarDekho specifications or have a look at the nice review given at TeamBHP.
   The pic below shows the car at the start of the trip.

The route...

      The both of us not being great planners, the plan of the road trip was not well defined at the start. We had just decided to go where our hearts took us to. However, as per our previous plans we had thought of first visiting the Gokarna beach in North Karnataka.
    The trip started near a place just north of Mumbai, where the car was located. Then it continued on to Pune to pick up the second member of the duo. From there on the map below gives an approximate idea of how the trip proceeded. From Pune, the first halt was at Gokarna Beach. The next day involved visits to a couple of beaches nearby. The following day we visited the majestic Jog falls. The day after the impregnable fort at Chitradurg welcomed us and we proceeded to the ancient town of Hampi. From there on we returned to Maharashtra to the coastal town of Ratnagiri. The next day we returned to Pune and then finally back to Mumbai.
    The journey lasted around 2400 kms in all and was one heck of a ride.

The start

     Like all plans, it started out big with loads of people coming in from different places to meet and have a fun vacation. It was supposed to be a happy reunion with eight people invited. But like leaves in autumn, everyone of them dropped out citing various reasons and finally we were left with only the two of us. Not letting our dropped spirits stop us, we decided to pursue our road trip anyways and commenced on our memorable journey.