Honda Drive to Discover Edition 4

August 25, Day-1, Chennai to Nellore

We began our journey from Taj Fishermans’ Cove on the East Coast Road outside Chennai to the Olympia Honda showroom on a bright and rather humid Sunday morning. After a few formalities our drive through the Eastern Ghats was flagged off and thus began what I can only describe as an epic journey from the confines of dusty Chennai City to the flat lands of Costal AP.

Our first pit stop was a pump just off the highway where we stopped and fuelled up (right to brim). After spending about 20 minutes on the NH5 we switched to a back road and headed off into a slightly less travelled and more rustic pathway to the AP border. 

The sights and sounds that greeted us were incredible as we veered our way through two rural market places where everything from cheap Chinese toys to slabs of mutton sirloin were being traded within meters of each other. We crossed the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh Border, which on this route turned out to be nothing more than a road sign and a gradual change in licence plates.

Our first of many stops to click “dude this is surely going to be my next Facebook cover picture” type photos began about 75km into the journey just outside the village of Pichatur. We headed off to a lake with the same name that supplies the elixir of life to the village and nearby areas.  

After admiring the lake for a bit and observing some boys fishing for what appeared to be sardines, we headed off towards Srikalahasthi. This is a small town just south of Tirupati which has a Shiva temple, the only one believed to be open during solar and lunar eclipses. Lucky we didn’t get much rains, unluckily that meant exposure to heat and humidity of South India! But Amaze’s AC did its job really pretty well and we were able to keep ourselves cool, on the flipside with the fans running overtime, the cabin had become quite noisy. The thing is it didn’t bother much, until we had burned up Fisherman Cove’s five course buffet breakfast – then of course, everything was annoying, even the plan of going to a scenic waterfall.  

So we simply stopped for our first taste of Andhra food and unlike the many rumours of AP food setting fire to your digestive system on successive bites, our village food was quite mild and rather oily.

Meal done, we exited the town after getting directions from a rather helpful traffic cop and were on our way to Nellore. En route, my partner Meghan and I were witness to a glorious sunset which took place in the backdrop of a large paddy field. We got to our hotel in Nellore by 8pm and unwound with good dinner that included some lovely Andhra style prawns, which unlike the Biryani, we had had earlier, turned out to be quite a stomach burner.

While the Golden Quadrilateral has good tarmac, the roads in the inner areas had many pot holes and in some cases they were just dirt tracks. The Amaze was able to absorb most of the bumps thanks to its soft suspension setup. The downside to such a design is that at higher speeds the car tends to roll and requires very high attention levels. It however, makes up by having a good ride at slower speeds (heavy traffic) and this is likely to be the home turf for a majority of those who buy the Amaze.   

August 26, Day 2 Nellore to Vijayawada

We departed Nellore at about 9:30am and headed straight towards Mypadu Beach about 25km from our hotel. As soon as we left the town, the beautiful single lane country roads began. The beach was just 45 minutes away, but we were disappointed to discover few shabby shacks and a large assortment of motorised fishing boats.  A chat with some of the locals, revealed that there was a beach about 20km from Mypadu that was cleaner and quite a bit more deserted.

As we wound our way through the narrow back roads passing villages named Naidupeta, Varanasi Kandrige and the rather devoutly named Ganga Kandrige. We passed various fields filled with significant amounts of standing water which we initially assumed to be holding extremely thirsty GM rice crop, we eventually found that they were shrimp hatcheries, a major product of the region.

We spent about an hour outside Ganga Kandrige observing shrimp being harvested from the ponds and being packed into plastic crates ready to be shipped away to the market.  Our enquiries revealed that just a quarter kilo of the little critters sells for around Rs 375 making it quite a profitable business and putting to rest the question of why shrimp-based dishes are priced so expensively. Oh, and the region does have paddy fields (What else would you eat the shrimp with?) which along with the shrimp fields are guarded at night to protect the catch.

We surged ahead after our Crustacean encounter and after a little off-roading we reached the entrance to a little grove that would lead us to the secluded Kotha (new) Koduru beach. While some of the group headed off to the sea, the rest of us with so much time to spare decided to play with the car and needless to say, the Amaze proved that even with just 102PS going through the front wheels, it is a car capable of taking ‘anything’ thrown at it.

We eventually made our way back to the highway and because it was lunch time already. My craving for the afternoon was an Andhra Thali which I realised if eaten without the third helping of rice (gluttony generally overpowers common sense) can be quite filling and nutritious. After lunch we set off for a rather straightforward and smooth drive down to Vijayawada.

After about 140km and multiple diversions, owing to road expansion work, we stopped to refuel and encountered our only major ‘thorn’ in the journey; a punctured tyre. Thanks to run flat tyres and a portable air pump that Honda was carrying, we had to stop just twice to fill up the air but were able to make it to Vijayawada by about 8pm. Our journey on the second day too was graced by a beautiful orange sunset in the back drop of a blue sky that we captured on the highway.   

After an entire day of throwing the car around on and off road, its instantaneous consumption metre showed that we were averaging 16.5kmpl. However, the seats are not suited for very long journeys and will not offer much support for the lower back if you have been in the car for more than four hours – especially if you have ‘generous’ proportions and tend to shuffle a lot while being seated.        

August 27, Day 3 Vijayawada to Vishakhapatnam

The last time I was in Vijayawada was for a relative’s wedding (about 16 years ago), it was a rather small and seedy town overrun by garbage and pigs. However, a small stroll the previous night left me feeling that I was roaming the streets of Mumbai and not a tier two town in AP. However, the morning traffic and inner city roads brought me back to reality. We quickly left the city and thanks to the driver of the backup car who had managed to fix our punctured tyre, we were back on ‘100 per cent go mode’. The backup car departed with two journalists from a Tamil channel that had an early flight to catch in Vizag, leaving us to become a trio. 

We encountered some light showers on the way which eventually turned into a torrent, but that did not deter us from racing along. However, what did slow us down were protests and one demonstration, most probably for the Telegana cause. We eventually stopped on the banks of a canal off the highway to take some photos and play a bit more in the dirt. 

By around 1:30pm we had reached the town of Kovur on the banks of the Godavari. One of the largest river basins in the country, it starts flowing from the Nashik regions and eventually empties itself into the B.O.B near the town of Yanam. It is at its widest just outside of Rajahmundry which lay on the other side. The sight of the mighty Godavari flowing is something that can only be stomached if you look at it from the air; otherwise it is just too huge to take in.

After standing in awe and taking a few more photos, we crossed over on an extremely long bridge filled with more than a hundred expansion joints, giving us possibly the bumpiest ride of the journey. Our final lunch of the trip comprised some simple vegetarian food which included the ever green but quite yellow lemon rice.

The final adventure spot for the trip was a drive through a heavily forested area. In the ensuing chaos of Rajahmundry traffic our group got split up and we eventually had to play catch up with the other two cars. Once we regrouped, our convoy headed off the highway and towards the Yeluru reservoir for some more pictures.

We then headed off into the forest where for the first time in many years, I had a fully functional phone but no signal at all- a scary but very peaceful feeling. Passing through multiple villages, two of which had check posts, we ventured deeper and deeper and finally stopped to take a few group pictures with the cars in the twilight, a fitting tribute to the journey.

From here on it was non-stop driving as we exited the forest area at Narsipatnam and blazed a trail towards Vizag. Our route included passing by a town called Venkatapuram whose pictures I could not get but will  definitely go back to if I ever happen to pass this way again. 

Our Blue Amaze (DL 13C 6215) finally reached the outskirts of Vizag by about 9:00pm and we were the first team to reach the hotel at about 9:30pm concluding the final leg of an epic three day journey.

Bye Bye Vizag!

As the name of the trip goes, it was truly a “Drive to Discover (4)” and showed that Andhra Pradesh is truly a beautiful state with much to offer in terms of Mother Nature’s Gifts. The Honda Amaze was almost faultless the entire journey and is sub four-metre remainder of why the Honda brand name commands so much respect when it comes to reliability.