A journey of 1000 kms begins with a single spin!

Life is a journey, travel it!... it’s the path that matters, not the eventual destination… focus on the efforts, not on the results... da da da

Sounds like a perfect beginning to one of those long boring philosophical posts on life and goals, etc, etc… however, dear readers, don’t be so disappointed, this post is the exact opposite!

I was initially thinking of posting a very objective matter-of-fact review of different cars that I have test driven in the recent past, but decided to instead post about a day that was from my point of view exciting, ambitious, thrilling and entertaining and for someone distant from the driving world, it would have been at best boring and tiring!

The story till Friday, May 4th 2007:

Singapore, a near diamond shaped island, 40kms wide and 30 kms in length when extruded out of complex trigonometry and geometry formulae would probably stretch to 100kms in perimeter. I had driven nearly 1300 kms in Singapore in 2 weeks, essentially implying that there was no major road left untouched. I started off with “lets try this expressway”, two days later I was like “lets try the 2nd lane of the same expressway”, a couple of days more I was like “practice makes a man perfect, so keep driving and repeating the same roads again and again!”…

It was during one of these drives, the music deviated away from “high-bass, side rear view mirror vibrating and floating rock music” to “…I want to break free…I wanna break free…” and I thought, well, I have had enough of driving in Singapore - I actually need to break free as well – probably a drive to Malaysia and experience highway driving. Next step was rather simple – visa application to embassy of Malaysia and I got my multiple entry visa in a week’s time!

Then I started calling up my friends to join me for the trip - while some were direct in their feedback “dude, crazy idea… I am not joining”, other psued specimens like Candy were a bit more refined “would have loved to join you on the trip, but have got work over the weekend and a couple of meetings in the office”… finally after much persuasion, Abhishek and Aparna (K&M from now on, dorm names not used in public interest :P) agreed to be part of my crazy idea – a trip to Mount Frazer and back (~1000 kms) in a day!

Saturday, May 5th 2007…

With no real preparation required for the trip, we decided to start at 5:45 am after a negotiation process that lasted for 30 mins debating the pros and cons of a 5:45am start vs. a 5:50am one! As usual, I had to goof up with the alarm and by some strange configuration of phone settings, the alarm just didn’t ring. I got a call at 5:45 from K&M and I woke up in a state of shock – “What! I am late to get up for a drive?… no way, this is not me…!” However, made some quick recovery and we finally managed to start off at about 6:15am. A quick trip to money exchanger and stocking up a couple of cold drink cans, we were all geared up for a trip to Malaysia.

We crossed the border after immigration formalities by 7:30am and hit the expressway by 8am. The road was excellent with speed limits not as strict as in Singapore. So, I decided to throttle a bit more and see how the car behaved at higher speeds. At 150 kmph, Avante was sailing – well balanced and sturdy, felt in complete control. I will go into technical and driving details in the next post, but to sum it all up, the drive was quite cool and the engine behaved in the exact fashion that fits my exact definition of an ideal engine/ car – packed with power when required, otherwise serene, refined and calm with low decibel levels!

While M free-rode and peacefully slept, K was busy with navigating out goof ups. We had one map to help us – on most occasions we got the highway right, however a couple of times we found ourselves driving down the wrong direction though! :-)

We reached KL is quick time, had a quick brunch – so did the car (petrol refill)! The next stage was a bit more challenging as we found our way to the other end of KL bye-passing the city. We soon reached the smaller highway leading to our final destination. With significant decrease in road quality and width, it took us much longer to get to Mount Fraser than we had initially imagined. We got lost a couple of times, till we found a desi to help us with directions. In typical desi style, the route from his point of view was simple – “keep going straight, no turns”… we were like, “thanks, you are the man!”. However, 200m further down, the road split to two tangentially opposite directions! With not much left to trust the directions we were provided with, we decided to trust our instincts instead - right turn was the verdict!

The uphill drive was a challenge as well, at times the road was a bit too narrow to be classified as 2-way – meant that much more of focus on the road and control at the bends. But Avante behaved very well at turnings and steering through the challenging climb was a pleasure – more on this in the next post.

Finally, we made it to Mount Fraser at 2:30pm and then began the search for a restaurant for lunch. We had to now define the “next steps” – any places to see around? K managed to catch some sort of cold on the way and that was reason enough for him to free-ride. I was the designated driver and therefore I tried to act as if I was too tired. That left M to do all the googling for places to see. Next 5 minutes were completely hilarious – M tried to communicate with a mixture of sign language, actions and Singlish, but that did didn’t help much. We were trying to get the directions to a lake: “ehh… lake, where?”… no reply… “water…?” again no feedback from the other side to confirm if our attempt to communicate had been received and understood… next, we tried showing mineral water, but that did no good too… finally M got the idea of asking for “..boating?” aahaa, our receptionist understood and gave us rough directions to the lake.

We were in more ways that one excited about the lake and boating… our conversation went like:

“… wow, lake would be fun here” … “lets get the camera out” … “we don’t have tons of time, so lets keep the lake visit short, mebbe just cover one part of the lake boating” … “a speed motor boat would be fun here, lets try for that”… and there was a gradual build-up in excitement leading to the lake.

The lake was not too far, we got there with 5-10 minutes of drive. However, we were greeted with a shocking sight: 1) The lake was a bit brown in colour, as opposed to blue that we had envisaged 2) There was exactly one pedal boat in the lake and the other 3 were stacked one over the other at the corner of the lake 3) … and finally it hit us… nooooo… the lake was only a fraction bigger than a bath tub… just a hint bigger! Ofcourse, as M was the navigator at Mount Fraser, K and I peacefully blamed her and added the lake to her list of exponentially increasing list of recent goof-ups!

It was time to lower our expectations – to understand and accept that Mount Fraser is not a tourist spot by any stretch of imagination. We spent half an hour doing time pass at a view-point – it was good, just that there was no view. To limit any further damage to our self-esteem and trip-planning confidence, we decided to erase out from our memories that we ever visited this place! It was unanimously decided that all pictures taken at Mount Faber would be donated to the recycle bin of our laptops, once we get home!

With K down with tons of cold and a bit of fever, M decided to be the navigator on the way back. We started from Mount Faber at around 4pm, stopped at another lake in between in an attempt to search for that one good scenery to make this trip good, but didn’t find any. With not much left to see, we started the return journey back to Singapore.

Next 6 hours was all driving – we stopped once in between for tea and once for petrol, but otherwise I did what I enjoy the most – night driving, a true test of driving technique, stamina and inclination. Avante clocked 500kms in quick time and we were back at the Singapore immigration at about 10:30 at night. There was some visa and passport configuration problem and resulting punga at the Malaysia immigration, but M in her typical style went and gave a big lecture to the immigration officer and sorted it out!!

As we entered Singapore, the odometer read 970 kms for the day. With Newton/Novena being only 15-20 kms from the border, I knew that the decimal system of mathematical numbers wouldn’t let me reach 1000 kms in a day. So, took a slightly longer route, via Tuas to inch closer to the 4 figure mark. Next when I saw the reading, it was 994 for the day – and I knew we were ~5-7 kms from home… was not sure if we would get to 1000, but decided to go ahead with the straight route back home. One traffic signal from home, the odometer read 999… it was close, very close and the meter turned to 1000 exactly when we were at the security gate of the building!

We were all tired after doing 1000kms – but M still had the energy to make some quick dinner and we called it a day soon after that!

This was my second time to 1000 kms in a day, the first being in October last year in South Africa. I wouldn’t want to compare, but this trip was probably a bit more challenging with 3-4 hours of hill drive included. But statistics apart, it was a great trip with K&M. More trips in the pipeline over the next few weekends, any takers? :-)