Road trips – you end up where you started!But this 1557 km journey from Vellore to Karur, Munnar, Kumarakom, Kumily, Thekkad, Vandanmedu and back gave us enough memories to last a lifetime. Thank God for an amazing time and safety! This is our first major road trip ever since we returned from OZ and even though the drive was very different, the scenery was just as spectacular as Australia or New Zealand!

Today, as we drove to church, a store, a lunch get-together at Bagayam and then back home, the predominant music playing in the car was by Rend Collective.Stumbling on to the band was semi-accidental.When we were in Chennai last year, we worshipped at a church called Ashraya. The worship leader led in a very lively song that stuck in my mind for weeks and then slowly faded away. In November 2014, my sister visited us at Vellore with her family. As we caught up and did lots of exciting things, we also played some songs that our children liked. J said that K loved this song and then played a video for us from youtube – the song was “Build…

We had to travel about 150 KM to Sirkazhi today for the reception. I decided that it would be better that Venkatesh drove, especially as the return would be late in the night. The road was a narrow road that was winding. In an hour an oncoming car came really close and although venkatesh swerved off the road the rear-view mirrors hit and I heard a loud noise. We stopped and on inspection found that only the mirror had cracked and the whole assembly and car didn’t even have a scratch. The other car didn’t bother to stop! Just a few inches could have seen worse results!The return journey at night was safe but quite scary through the narrow roads.

I actually noticed it on the Chennai trip, but it started becoming more obvious now even inside the city. The car tended to drag to the left and I had to consciously keep the steering a little to the right to keep it straight. I rechecked tire pressures and they seemed OK. On New Year when we parked for lunch I realized that the front left tire showed some uneven wear and it dawned that the car probably had a serious problem. I checked with the GM guys and then left the car at the service center for a thorough check up. Within 24 hours the diagnosis was finalized – the front left suspension strut was stuck and damaged for…

I finally got my Permanent 4-wheeler driving license today. Getting the license was not difficult – a couple of months ago I got my learners license after enrolling at a driving school and signing a few forms. Today, along with a few others from the driving school I drove down to the RTO office 10 km away and managed to finish off the formalities and the driving test.This was another day that God showed in subtle ways how much he cared.For one, a person who had come last week told me that the crowd the previous week was a lot and the queues were much longer.Also, the tests are conducted in the open – and in the even of rain…

We’d given in the car to do the repair work and spent the week using the Kinetic Honda. Unfortunately the work couldn’t be finished by the weekend and that meant the weekend without the car – and a wedding to attend 10 miles away! The service center promised to send a car for our use for the weekend and saturday saw us with a UVA – their test car.Pretty cool eh?Even cooler if you realised that the car had a huge gorilla painted on the sides (as a part of their ‘Incredibly Spacious’ ad!).It was fun – and funny. Everywhere we stopped kids jumped in glee while others gave us a wide grin. No harm done. We attended the wedding…

Stuff the bags in, turn on the ignition, fill the tank up and …. er…. don’t step on it. The Chevy guys had warned me not to go beyond 80 kmph for the first 2000 KM!Even with this restriction the drive was a dream! The roads were really good (in the daytime). Ajay had arranged for a driver to drive home the Maruti and he took the lead.The U-VA handled itself perfectly on the highway and the drive was very comfortable. Even though there were several heavy vehicles and short detours at unexpected places we had absolutely no problems. The ribbon announcing that our car was new and the “L” sticker (I still have a learners license) ensures that other…

(Warning: Incredibly long blog entry coming up!)It all started off as an inkling of a thought all the way at the back of our heads when my dad lent his Maruti800 to us for 3 months. I discovered that I could actually drive it. Soon the luxury of 4 wheels sank in and 2 wheels (aka my Kinetic Honda) started gathering dust and risked becoming obsolete. Could we actually buy a new car? The research and calculations started. Unfortunately car companies seem to be producing more new cars everyday! We started off with a Santro in mind and naturally the i10 appealed more – almost clinched it for us once the i10 kappa range rolled out. Er… how about the…