{"id":50304,"date":"2023-11-20T13:19:45","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T13:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highwaynewspro.com\/?p=50304"},"modified":"2023-11-20T13:19:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T13:19:45","slug":"driving-my-bmw-330i-gt-from-coimbatore-to-the-umling-la-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highwaynewspro.com\/news-features\/driving-my-bmw-330i-gt-from-coimbatore-to-the-umling-la-pass\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving my BMW 330i GT from Coimbatore to the Umling La Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"
BHPian graaja<\/strong> recently shared this with other enthusiasts.<\/p>\n Last year in September, when I visited Hanle for Astrophotography, I dreamt about driving my 3GT in those beautiful sceneries and also to Umling La pass. This October, that dream came true. I completed a road trip to Leh and Hanle that spanned 4 weeks and 8500 kilometers. This travelogue is to document this road trip. As this is a 4-week road trip, I will keep mundane parts of the drive (like the first 4 days and the return part from Jaipur) short and cover the more interesting parts of the trip. I will also provide an index in the next post so that the reader may jump to the topic of interest.<\/p>\n Let me begin the thread with a note of thanks to the following people:<\/p>\n Below is the map of the whole trip.<\/p>\n The below table shows destinations and distances covered on each day of the trip.<\/p>\n As this is going to be a very long trip report covering 28 days, use the below index to skip to sections of interest.<\/p>\n Usually in our astrophotography group, we start planning almost 6 months before the trip. This includes planning equipment, targets to capture, flights to take, hotels to stay etc. I too started the preparations for this road trip 6 months in advance. There were several parts of the trip to be planned and prepared. I will go through all this briefly in this post.<\/p>\n My first version of the route to take was as below:<\/p>\n However, I was told that the Manali – Leh route is risky as the route gets closed often due to snowfall in Rohtang Pass. Also, this route is more suited for an SUV with a higher GC. I was instead suggested to take the Jammu – Srinagar – Leh route. As this route is a highway taken by trucks too, this route is better suited for a sedan. The only risky sections would be the Zoji La pass and the Ramban and Banihal sections between Jammu and Srinagar. As the Navrathri holidays were coinciding roughly with my return dates, I also decided to add a 4-day break in Jaipur to have a family holiday. The initial plan was to spend a couple of days in Agra and Gwalior visiting the historical monuments (Gwalior fort, Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikhri etc.) in these places.<\/p>\n I made several tweaks over the 6 months time and finally made this route.<\/p>\n I was prepared to make last-minute changes to the itinerary. Some changes I made dynamically to the trip were:<\/p>\n Initially, my plan was to use the same equipment that I used last year in Hanle. This included the EQ6-R Pro German Equatorial Mount. This mount is huge and occupies a lot of luggage space and weighs about 35 kilos. As roof boxes were banned in some of the states I had to drive through, I decided to remove the roof box from the GT. This greatly reduced usable luggage space in the car. When I did a mock fitting of luggage in the car, I found that it was not possible to fit all the equipment and other luggage for a month long road trip into the car.<\/p>\n So, just two months before the trip, I decided to get a portable setup for the trip. I bought the ZWO AM5 harmonic mount which has the same payload capacity of the EQ6 R Pro, but weighs just 5 kilos and is much more compact. I also decided to use a 250mm wide angle telescope setup. This resulted in all my equipment fitting in the same space that just the EQ6 R Pro would occupy.<\/p>\n The below picture shows the complete equipment setup assembled.<\/p>\n The below picture shows all the equipment disassembled and packed up.<\/p>\n As usual, I also did a dry run of assembling and disassembling the equipment in my living room.<\/p>\n I had planned for 3 nights in Leh and 4 nights in Hanle, a total of 7 nights of astrophotography. For these 7 nights, I prepared the below list of targets to be captured. However, I lost 2 nights in Leh and half a night in Hanle to bad weather and could only get about 4.5 nights of data. I covered 6 of the targets from the original plan.<\/p>\n As my car is under BSI, BMW services the car only if the service requirement notification pops up in the iDrive. I was initially worried that some or other service requirement would come up in the middle of the trip. I was very lucky that oil service and front brake pads and disc service came up 2 weeks before the trip. The rear brake pads had some 4500 kilometers of life left (they would need replacement in the middle of the trip). But during service the service team at KUN, Coimbatore found that the rear pads and discs too had worn below specifications and they got approval from BMW to replace these too. This gave me total peace of mind with no worry about any service requirement in the middle of the trip.<\/p>\n The rear tires had only about 5K kilometers of life left. So, I changed both the rear tires and also used one of these tires mounted on a spare alloy wheel to get a full sized spare wheel.<\/p>\n I have covered this service in my 3GT ownership thread.<\/p>\n All my astrophotography equipment and the full-size spare wheel filled the boot.<\/p>\n The hydraulic jack, jerry can, camera bag, and duffel bags of mine and my friend were placed in the rear seat. I took care in arranging the bags in such a way that they don’t get thrown around.<\/p>\n With all this preparation done, ready to roll at 4:00 AM on the 30th of September 2023.<\/p>\n Continue reading about graaja’s road trip for BHPian comments, insights and more information.<\/p>\nA Road Trip to Leh and Hanle in a BMW 330i GT<\/h2>\n
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Credits:<\/h2>\n
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TL;DR Version:<\/h2>\n
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Index<\/h2>\n
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Planning and Preparation<\/h2>\n
Route Planning<\/h2>\n
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Preparations for Astrophotography:<\/h2>\n
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Preparing the Car<\/h2>\n
Other Essentials:<\/h2>\n
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A few tips for people who plan for a road trip to Leh and Hanle (particularly sedans)<\/h2>\n
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