Introduction

Details

Fees, and things to see

Travel

The thought of having an identity for yourself is quite perplexing at times! The thought of renewing that identity in different forms as time progresses brings about a nice refreshing change to the mind. Over the last 10 years, my interest over the internet has been completely captivating to say the least. This web journey started off in 1996 with humble ways of getting small time entrepreneurs in India on the world wide web (1)

In the quest for a youngster’s rather silly hopes of reaching dizzy heights using the net, a rather skewed attempt was made in 1998 to jump onto the internet bandwagon with the highly rated Tripod and Yahoo web services during those times. (2) When enlightenment occurred, the lure of the “yourname.com” syndrome caught me as well. But I never wanted my site to be too specific to me ever! So in the period between 2000 and 2002 a valiant but fruitless effort was made to put up a site meant to share my interests with others, the theme being “information sharing” (3)

To get onto the net more purposefully, a rather comprehensive plan was laid out in 2004 for a knowledge sharing site. But the need for conciseness and better focus brought about a change in names for reading the same content. (4) After a thorough run for ten whole years, and the purpose and design clarified, I bring about another refreshing change with a more pleasing layout which I think will keep the drive in me for the coming years. (5)

Just when I thought I had fixed on the gameplan for continuing the journey forward, I realized that people also needed something easy to remember to reach me, something connected to the city I write about, something that made them fond of Bangalore and thus came about the Bengaluru blog at http://www.chowchowbath.com! (6)

   

…. that this site looks and feels pleasant and refreshing to the eyes

…. that this site is as lively in terms of information as its looks

…. and that it is always updated with interesting things to get you back here

---

For any queries that you might have, you may use the contacts link on the menu above to get in touch.

(1) – http://hallmark.enmail.com was my first attempt in bringing about an insurance company’s presence onto the internet. At a time when web publishing and development was still nascent and there were hardly any standards for pages on the web, this effort brought about a lot of cheer to me to proceed onto better things. Although a rather graphics intensive site, Hallmark succeeded in providing the necessary information in a crisp manner to customers

(2) – http://srikanth.tripod.com was an attempt in bringing about my own presence onto the net. This site lasted only a while, since it was only an effort to learn the nuances of web publishing in those early times.

(3) – http://www.infodais.com literally meant a stage for information sharing. But a terrible time in my life wrecked the patience out of me to continue with this venture and all this site did was to prepare a stage for a moderate growth ahead, both in my web ventures as well as in my personal life.

(4) – what started off as a site that was to voice opinions from the geek community, the site http://geekopinion.com was transformed into a personal page full of my own scribbles, http://scribbles.ws. At the time of putting up this content, the site and domains still exist with the content, and has managed to draw over 3500 unique visitors for some or the other reason.

(5) – After a bit of pondering about myself, I realized that the amount of information I had amassed for one whole decade was possible only because of my time spent with the different gizmos that I had – the PC, the PDA, the laptop, the SmartPhone. I had by now acquired an identity – the GizmoGazer. And this site is a reflection of that identity –http://www.gizmogazer.info.

(6) – The final output of all the previous years worth of efforts is what you see here – the actual site that has survived, flourished and gone through years of efforts to be refined enough and accepted as a popular Bangalore based website – the Bengaluru blog!

An evening at the KL Tower, Malaysia

We were tired after a long journey from the airport to the city and after taking sufficient rest in our serviced apartment which I had written about earlier (you can read it here), we decided to quickly make a dash to the KL tower. This was pretty nearby to the Vortex suites and though it is walkable there is a bit of elevation as you approach the tower and it is not entirely possiblet to climb so much unless you are fit.

Taxi is a better way to reach the top and it should not cost you too much. There are two floors to the tower one being the observation deck only and the other having a restaurant and an open air observation deck from where you can see the city much more freely for photography purposes. The observation deck is fully housed in glass and hence provides for very less photography opportunity in a clarity sense.

The tickets are sold on either individual or combo basis. The observation deck for 2 adults and 2 kids must set you back about 150-170RM (1RM = 17Rs) whereas if you opt for other packages you will end up paying more but get to see other things such as aquarium, upside down house, and mini zoo. There is a normal queue and a priority queue for those who booked using booking sites such as booking.com. We thankfully had a priority queue entry though the number of people in normal queue were not many when we went it. However this number had swelled by the time we finished seeing the tower.

We spent a good hour going around and clicking photos of KL’s landmarks including the Petronas towers which is visible from one of the sides and I somehow found taking a photo of the twin towers from KL tower better than the other way round. It was just a choice between the two keeping costs in mind and I chose the KL tower this time.

Besides the KL tower observation deck, there is information and souveniers available everywhere around and you can buy them if you wish. The latest trick of having your photo taken and processed for you will earn those guys a few ringgits and make you poorer by that much as well. These are not photos that you yourself cannot take or process but remember everyone may not have access to good phones or cameras and for some, the moment captured in a pic is just what they need in return for some cash.

Written with StackEdit.

Introduction

With so many tourists flooding all the places, lots of accommodations have come up lately in all cities and people are spoilt for choices. You fire up any travel website and you will suddenly be flooded with thousands of options for staying in a place ranging from as low as 20$ upto all the way to 400 or 500$ even.

For me it was the same case when I decided to stay in KL. Initially considering my first stop was Batu Caves in KL, I decided to use my favourite app, to book the East Kiara Dex suites (apartments) since it was very near to Batu Caves. Something told me later that it would be difficult to shift when you have luggage from one place to another. So I decided to book The Vortex suites instead. You won’t believe what I got.

Apartments vs Hotels – what to choose?

It is always a confusion on whether to choose hotels or apartments ever since Airbnb type of apps came up on the markets and allowed people to book peoples homes for stays. What is more important to note are the pros and cons of booking apartments versus hotels. To make things simple I will list them here for you

Hotels: Pros

• Breakfast is covered in some hotels
• Scenic views of surroundings
• better room service (both on housekeeping and food)

Hotels: Cons

• Room sizes is limited
• Only one toilet usually
• Rentals maybe high

Apartments: Pros

• multiple rooms, feels like home
• kitchen for self cooking
• Better furnished and larger spaces
• Gaming consoles are there in some apartments

Apartments: Cons

• You have to prepare your own food or carry food from outside
• no feeling of being pampered
• sometimes could be in residential localities with access issues, and far from attractions

So its actually more of what you prefer as each has its own pros and cons as listed above. For us since i had never booked an apartment in the past, I decided to book the Vortex to see how it was for our journey.

Vortex apartments, near KLCC

We booked the Vortex which is a 25+ floors of apartment complex right in the heart of KL city. The apartment is walkable from KL tower, Petronas twin towers, and also many attractions nearby not to forget to mention hotels, clubs, and other small places within town. The speciality of this complex is that it is circular in shape with a dizzying stance if you look at it from below. The whole building seems to be glass facaded and has some fantastic views of the city from whichever location you look at it.

Booking and check-in procedures

I booked this hotel on booking.com from India, and was not charged the full amount until about a week before the actual check-in. The instructions in the booking mail were clear and I had to go to floor 6 for finishing the formalities. True to what was quoted, I went to the floor mentioned and the people managing the apartment were pretty welcoming for me.

Usually when I go to other countries I have to do some initial communication with the reception to make them understand what I need, but here the whole stay was understood and planned for me since they do this day in and day out. I spent less than 10 minutes at the reception to finish my checkin. Please bear in mind that there is a tourist tax and they ask you to deposit 200 ringgit (about 50 usd) for security purposes. This is refundable and will be returned to you later on. However, it is to be paid in cash only and you need to have withdrawn it well in advance.

Other constraints to reach the room

Since this is a high rise with over 25 floors, there are 6 lifts to reach the floors and you need to take one of the three lifts on the side of the apartment you are reaching to. Each set of three lifts service half the area of the overall circular building. These are high speed lifts and what you need to know is that these operate when you swipe the room card on the panel. It will automatically know which floor to stop at and will stop only in those floors for which people are present inside the lift.

Going up is easy, but coming down can mean stopping at every floor where there are people. I did find people smoking in the corridors and throwing cigarette butts here and there though advised not to, so this is something you need to get used to. Having said that you also need to remember that most people staying here are tourists who have come to KL to visit its attractions and hence they will all leave in the morning hours for this purpose. The hours between 9-11 are very crowded and hence the lifts are so full that you will have trouble moving yourself with your luggage – hence its advisable to be early or go later than those hours.

The apartment

In our apartment the furnishing was top notch. It had a dining table, a nice big sofa with a view to the outside of the city buildings, and two bedrooms with cots and mattresses again of high quality. Wardrobes, desks, bathroom fittings and bathroom facilities are all top notch as well. The apartment also had a kitchen with cutlery as well as a washer and dryer. The washer and dryer is perhaps the single most useful appliance for long journeys if you know what I mean. Overall the apartment was really high quality but did not have any balconies.

The air conditioner can sometimes make you feel a bit stuffy inside and the window opening was rather too high. I am not sure about the fire safety worthiness of such apartments and have my own doubts about it. I am yet to see a hotel with large dustbins instead of those silly small ones which serve no purposes.

There were enough towels provided during our stay and these were also refreshed by the time we were back from tourist visits. The housekeeping was seamless.

Other facilities

The apartment has a swimming pool which you can use daily once for a stipulated amount of time. However since it was on a higher floor it was small and not really a professional one. The apartment also has a small shop which is stocked well with things you need to buy for cooking or eating for quick eats.

There is also a 7-11 shop which is rather congested at the ground level, and a paid car park which is NOT touch-and-go card compatible at the moment.

Since this is in a highly commercial area, there are also banks nearby so withdrawing cash should not be an issue. This apartment is very near to KL tower, Suria KLCC (Petronas towers) and many other attractions nearby including restaurants and pubs.

Check out

One word : Smooth!

Your deposit money is returned to you, you return the cards to the room, and you are done. Period. Fastest one I have seen!

Written with StackEdit.

Ingredients

• One Potato – dices into small cube sized pieces and soak in water
• Beans – about 10 of them chopped into medium pieces, soak in water
• Carrot – about 2 of them chopped into medium pieces, and soak in water
• Onions – big ones, 2 of them sliced thin and long
• Green peas – a handful
• Mint and Coriander leaves – one medium sized bowl
• Ghee – 2 to 3 teaspoons
• Curd – 4 tea spoons
• Groundnut oil – 4 to 6 teaspoons for the onions to caramelize (same can be later used for vegetables to be cooked), 4 teaspoons for the spices to be cooked along with rice
• Basmati rice – One cup upto brim (standard cup measure)
• Multi spices pack – 2 packs (contains cloves, elaichi, cinnamon, star anise)
• Bay leaves – 3-4 for vegetables, 2-3 for rice
• Shahi jeera – for vegetables (2-3 teaspoons)
• Turmeric powder, chilli powder, garam masala, biriyani masala, salt, cumin powder
• Ginger garlic paste – 2-3 teaspoons
• Methi leaves – half a handful
• Chillies to taste (I used one long chilli, you can desire to add 2) – diced into medium pieces

Preparation

You need 2-3 vessels. Of these one is a small one for caramelizing onions. The other two are fairly bigger and preferably made of cast iron as it to withstand cooking heat.

Caramelizing onions

Of the diced onions, take 1/3 of that and fry it in the oil, until they start turning golden brown. You need to keep stirring and turning them around and the moment you see them moving towards reddish brown colour, take them out and let them dry and cool off on a tissue so that all oil is removed. Keep these caramelized onions for later.

Rice Prep – Parallel step 1

You need to do these steps in parallel with the next one which is veggie saute, but you can start this one so rice keeps cooking when we do the veggies. For this we begin doing as below

• one cup basmati rice filled to brim is to be washed in water and all the dust to be removed
• Put 3-4 teaspoons of oil in a vessel and add spices to the oil once its warm
• Add 1/2 handful shahi jeera, 3-4 cloves, 2-3 bay leaves, 2 cinnamon bark pieces, 3-4 elaichi and nicely fry in oil
• Once you smell the aroma and its sufficiently fried, add the washed rice into the vessel and 2.5 cups of water (using the same cup as the rice was measured in) to the vessel
• Add one spoon of salt and keep the flame low to cook the rice, vessel can be kept open as this will give time for you to do step 2 below

Veggie saute – Parallel step 2

• Take 4-6 teaspoons of oil in a vessel and heat it. Add 4-6 elaichi, 3-4 cloves, 3 bay leaves, half a handful shahi jeera, and 2-3 cinnamon bark pieces to the hot oil. You can feel the aroma as you gently turn them around in the oil. Always keep the heat at medium or low. Never on the high side as it can burn the vessel and the food inside leaving it utterly distasteful.

• Add the chillies and stir

• Add the shahi jeera and stir

• Add 2/3rds of the uncaramelized onions and continue stirring.

• Add 1.5 spoons of salt, 1/2 spoon turmeric, 1/2 spoon red chilli powder, 1 spoon cumin powder, 1 spoon biriyani masala, 1/2 spoon garam masala

• Potatoes naturally have water content in them which is needed while stirring when oil content goes low, so add these first along with the ingredients already added so far. Stir these potatoes nicely into the spicy mixture until the absorb all the spices well. At this stage the potatoes will begin to let out the water they have so we need to continue with others

• Add the carrots next, and add 1/2 spoon salt more and stir

• Next is Beans and green peas – add these and continue stirring

• Add 1/2 spoon turmeric, 2 spoons garlic ginger paste, 1/2 spoon of garam masala, 1/2 spoon biryani masala, 1/2 spoon red chilli powder, 1/2 spoon cumin powder and saute the vegetables well.

Tip: If you find vessel is losing water and oil content and going dry, take some water into your palm and sprinkle it into vessel. Max only 2 times in one go, and continue stirring. You can do this sprinkling water two times, again a total of only two times. Only to ensure that vessel is never dry.

Bonus tip : never keep stove in high it will burn the vessel and burn your food. The last thing you need is this.
You need to keep the vessel oiled and moist at all times until the veggies consume all the spices.

Bringing everything together

• Once the veggies are prepared, switch off the flame, it will remain warm (dont close the veggies)
• At this stage the carrots and potatoes will feel undercooked. To check spice content, eat a cooked carrot piece and if you feel ok, then nothing more to add. It is ok for it to be little salty and if you need more spice add chilli powder and saute it with a spoon of oil and half a handful of water until the spices merge to the preparation

Getting the Biryani together

• Take a fresh cast iron vessel, into this pour all the veggies prepared and form a bed of veggies
• Next put the semi cooked rice and form a bed of rice on the veggies
• Add 3 teaspoon of melted ghee to the top all around
• On this rice, put coriander and mint leaves all over and add caramelized onions as well
• Next put more rice on top of that and again form a bed of rice
• Add more mint and coriander leaves and the rest of the onions on top
• You can add ghevar water and saffron to this on top if you want it, I did not use both
• Add 2-3 teaspoon ghee again on top
• Now put this whole thing on low flame, close the top of the vessel and let the mixture cook for 5 minutes (not more than this because everything is already cooked and just needs to finish)
• After 5 mins, sprinkle half a handful of water into the container at top, close the vessel again for 5 minutes
• Turn off the stove and wait another 5-10 minutes as the remaining heat will let the veggies cook fully underneath as well as allow rice to be fully cooked state (you can break the rice with your fingers to see if its cooked)

Serving suggestion

Take a tablespoon and go from top all the way until the end of the vessel to pick rice, veggies everything in one go, and serve onto the plate for eating. Biryani can be served with curd raitha to make it tasty for your guests.

This set of measures are such that the Biryani made would be suitable for two to four people.
Enjoy your meal and let me know if you got the taste right in the comments !

Written with StackEdit.

Introduction

As I was headed to Malaysia for a trip for 10 days, I needed an option to commute within the country. While renting cabs with drivers was definitely an option, there was no privacy enough, and there was no way to make my own decisions on where I wished to go when. I was not so keen to rent a cab outside of KL city.

We had plans to visit multiple places such as Cameron, Penang, Langkawi so I needed a vehicle which I was willing to drive myself. It was the best option as it would give me the convenience without burning a hole in my pocket. The trip itself was turning out to be expensive and I wanted a good option for inside the country travel.

Things that I was looking for

As any first time car rental customer, I had some concerns, so I needed these

• Easy rental mechanism, including driver sign up and validation of
  license
• Preferably use local Karnataka (state license from india) – without the need for IDP
• App based car handling
• Easy fueling
• Easy breakdown service if needed anywhere within the country

Options available

Based on the market services available in Malaysia, two common providers of cars had their apps listed – GoCar and SoCar. The former had tie ups with Renault and had new cars such as Captur and Almera (Sunny) while the latter had tie ups with Perodua and Toyota to a large extent and had more exotic cars if required.

While GoCar did not cover fuel for their rental rate, SoCar did. However the story did not end there. In this review, since I rented SoCar, I will talk about only that service. Maybe the next time I would try out GoCar although I do not expect any major differences in terms of what you basically get for your money.

SoCar

There is something you need to know during your registration on both the apps. You need mainly three things.

1. Your passport copy

2. Your driving license copy

3. Your own selfie of you holding your driving license

Please bear in mind that item 3 should be taken in such a way that you stand far away with the license in your hand. If you take a photo too close to you, that would be rejected. I faced multiple rejections before I got it quite right. If you face a rejection its only because both you and you holding the license is not clearly visible. Correct it and you should be through.

Some things about the app

The app is well defined. You find the common options that you expect to see. You can choose source and destination options, timings and even use the map to find where you want the car from. There are also some options for home delivery of the car for some extra money which can be a boon at times.

The makers of the software have ensured finer options such as clock entry, drop downs, display of car choices are perfectly available on the screen making the app good enough to use to get the job done.

Car control

This is the best part of the app. You can control the car directly from the app. You can unlock or lock the car from the app itself.

Other than lock and unlock there are also buttons for horn, and hazard lights in case you need the support of these means to locate your car. There are also two icons for roadside assistance and support call if you would need those. Personally I would say that this is the most important screen as far as driving the car around is concerned. I undertook a trip spanning Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Penang, Kuala Perlis and back – which was almost 1500kms and never once did I feel anything in this screen did not work properly.

Profile section

The profile section of the app provides options to refer and earn, details on your reservations, payment options, promotions, notices from SoCar and help topics. It also provides an option for contacting support where you can “ASK” questions. You must be aware that the replies take typically a few hours to a few days so it is not that straightforward from the app. Better thing to do will be to call SoCar support if need be.

Promos

The last screen of the app provides promos as per the season and the occassion. These are either discounts or referral based bonuses as seen below. It is upto you whether or not you wish to use these and sometimes there are good deals in terms of discounts.

GoCar

The GoCar app is similar to the SoCar one, but GoCar has aligned with the Renault Nissan alliance in Malaysia so they have more Almera (Sunny) cars and Renault Captur besides the usual local brands and others like Toyota. These cars have rates that do not include fuel rates so its only the rental rate per day. But the car choices are good here as well.

The app is a bit basic compared to SoCar, and since I did not hail a car, I am not sure if the car can be remotely controlled from the app for lock/unlock etc. However I did notice that there were options to look for cars and call their support staff, besides options for making and viewing reservations, payment options, and promotions and deals.

In a later post I will talk about a few nuances of driving rental cars, but for this post I will leave you here with these details so you can take your pick of which car rental service you wish to rent while in Malaysia. Let me know your comments.

Some history

Ever since 2016 my wife and I decided that we want to do one international trip (though not necessarily one country) every year. We made it to Singapore in 2016, and Dubai in 2017. It was time to explore and take my family to Malaysia this time around in 2018.

The fact that I was working in Malaysia in 2002 and could not get time in the short one year that I stayed there to see many places only meant the urge to go there was pretty strong in order that I could get another chance to cover all the places I did not see this time around.

Also 15 years down the line with a lot of instrastructure and convenience improvements happening around the world, surely the trip would seemingly put me at more ease than earlier on. So it was time to decide how to plan the trip.

My logic for planning trips

I usually do my own booking and planning for everything for my trip. I look through places to visit, I look through multiple sources of reviews, I look through the best times to travel to maximise effeciency and minimize costs at the same time.

Based on these criteria I then use some of my favourite apps to look for flights or hotels and go on with the booking part. Let me share with you how I managed to do that for Malaysia. One of the questions I wanted to answer before I flew there was whether I just wanted to visit Kuala Lumpur (KL) or something more than that which everyone does in a packaged deal – such as Cameron (like our Ooty), or Penang/Langkawi types of ventures. This is when my friend suggested to me that I could not cover all places for just 10 days. I still wanted to be a bit ambitious.

Flights

For flights my preferred destination is Cleartrip portal/app. I am a man of simple UI designs and those kinds of apps that get job done rather than confusing people. Cleartrip has been my favourite for many years and also somewhat the cheapest even though only by a few hundreds of bucks. Still, search is simple, user interface is intuitive, they remember all my values I filled in for previous trips, so booking as such is a breeze. I would still prefer that these sites show the total amount upfront to avoid any confusions but Cleartrip adds the convenience fee only at the end. I believe so also MMT and other sites do the same thing.

The logic for flights is simple. If X is the cost of the flight, X will again be the cost of airport taxes, then about Rs.500 more than 2X would be the insurance cost per passenger, and about another Rs.300 would be the convenience fee. Since we are four of us in my family, I would always be scouting around for deals worth about 15000 Rs. all inclusive for a person. If I am able to get it lower, all the more merrier. Also you need to start at least 2 months prior to the date of travel. Especially so if your travel is on the week during the year end. This is exactly what I did. I booked my travel during September-October for a travel in December.

There are lots of factors which determine what price is shown to you, so be aware of them

• how many times did you access that app using your own phone?
• are you accessing the app over multiple networks or only at home?
• did you also access the portal on the same wifi network or not?
• did you try booking via portal or via app (the discounts are more on the app sometimes)
• did you access the app continuously with your login ID every day of the week for a week or so
• how desperate you are on those dates you want to travel, were you looking for same dates each time or different dates to find it cheaper
• are you trying to book all four people at once or only one person at a time

These are some of the things that determine pricing to a large extent. So it is upto you how to outsmart the app. Use different phones or PCs, use office PC / home PC combination, use different locatios, etc. Beyond all this the price won’t vary too much until you start reaching the deadline for booking itself. So you need to be careful of that.

Sometimes the pricing also varies based on location. It is always better to board the journey from a smaller civil airport than a place where the transit passenger density is too high such as metros. But you must also bear in mind that if you want to board at a smaller airport, then it also means if you are living in a metro you need to first go upto the smaller airport by car or train or bus or air, which will set you back by 5000 to 10000 Rs. more. It is important to understand the cost addition to make your decision.

I booked my trip from Trichy to KL just because the trip from Bangalore to KL was 90k and the one from Trichy to KL was 53k. But I also ended up spending about 10k more to go to Trichy and back which you need to understand. This is because you need fuel for driving upto there, some place to stay, food costs, etc. But this time it was still lesser by 30000 Rs. to do this journey. The 30k saved is better spent on the journey elsewhere while in Malaysia. However if you frequently get tired of driving, then this option should not be chosen.

Hotels

For hotels, I believe in booking hotels where Indian restaurants are nearby if possible. I am particular about food and hence this mode of booking. Also among the multiple options that I have tried with respect to hotel bookings (booking.com, trivago.com, tripadvisor.com, makemytrip.com, etc) – I was most comfortable with booking.com for the following reasons. Now before you read below, you may say after reading that some other portal provides you with same or similar options which I will not deny. For me it is about ease of booking that helps me go forward with the portal more than the cost of the hotel itself. The whole experience has to be seamless.

Booking.com provides me with photos of the hotel. The way it would be when I land there. Nothing more, nothing less. It provides the full inclusive prices except the taxes which also it prints an approximate of below the full price just so that I get an idea how much extra it would work out to. It also shows rooms that are going to house two semi-adult kids and two adults in comfort and in line with the policies of the hotel which would not throw a surprise on me when I reach there.

The good thing about booking.com is that it also provides me with passes to attractions which help me skip the line and go into the priority queue at different places. I tried this out at the KL tower, and it was pretty useful although the queue itself was not so much. If it were Petronas towers or for example the Burj Khalifa, then the real benefit of these passes would be well understood. I decided to visit four places on my travel, KL City, Cameron Highlands, Penang Island and Langkawi Island. Based on these choices, I booked the available hotels by either giving my credit card details and in some instances, paying a nominal fee to ensure my booking held good.

You need to be tactical about these bookings and must surely make the trip to ensure best price and avaiability. In the event that you feel you are not going to make the trip, be aware of the last possible date on which you would be able to cancel and always have a reminder around those dates to help you cancel. You will mostly be charged only when you land up at the hotel or a day or two earlier to that depending on the hotel policy. So no worries there.

Visa (Entri Malaysia)

Once you have your air travel and hotels secured, it is time to make the visa. For Malaysia, the visa is called Entri visa and you can choose tourist type and either single or multiple entry based on how your planning has been done. If you plan to say go to Singapore and enter Malaysia again on non transit mode, you will need the multiple entry visa, else a single entry visa would suffice. For the most part, it was a breeze to get the visa, sitting at home, filling in a few details online, paying the visa fee online and taking a print of the resulting visa grant form.

Visa and fees

• paying online is safe no issues with that
• indicate your travel date properly so that the visa would be granted for a month from there for tourist option
• choose the visa type properly (single or multiple entry visa)
• always ensure, double check, proof read and ask others to read all the fields you enter properly for correctness, a little time spent on this will save you lots of trouble at the immigration counter
• if any data is filled wrongly then you may face rejection when you enter malaysia and this can put you into lots of trouble, so take care of this.

The visa fee was about Rs.1500/- per head, so for a family of four 6000 in total. Be advised about this additional cost in addition to flight charges.

Luggage fee

You must also be aware that all flights do not offer the standard free 7kg cabin and 20kg check in luggage options free. In fact some flight costs do not even allow one cabin bag. In my case I opted for standard 7kg for each of us as cabin luggage, and additionally paid for 20kg x 2 suitcases for check in. It was a deliberate choice since I knew I will be carrying that much of weight already.

For all you know you will return with an additional 20kg over and above this, so bear these in mind. The charges were about 700-1000 extra per 20kg baggage, so depending on your plan you will need to pay accordingly at the time of flight booking.

Given you completed until this step, the only other things pending are to plan what you want to visit while in the country, and how you are going to travel there. I will cover more on this in my next post.

It is inspiring to believe a company like Tata have undergone a thorough transformation whose outcome is visible in a product such as the Nexon

Introduction

I finally had a chance to test drive the Tata Nexon top end diesel AMT mini SUV. Yes, the same one that has been making waves before and after its launch. If you know me well, I am a guy who would base reviews on everyday usability of the products that I test, and here it is no exception.
It is really inspiring to see how far Tata Motors have come in terms of being able to design a radically different type of product in their portfolio. Ever since sometime now they have set sights on good designs all the way from the Tiago to the Tigor and to the Hexa. The Nexon is the cream on the cake if I were to genuinely say so. So you do want to hear about what the car has to offer and I am going to take you right into that part of the review.
There have been many reviews written on this car and even videographed for the viewers by now. Yet they all lack in some part of the articulation in its truest sense.

Design elements

More than speaking about the exact nature of the design elements of the car, what I would like to point out here is more that the entire design is a refreshing change in the history of Tata cars. Every element of the design is chosen to make the car look unique within the portfolio. To say more about this I have to start somewhere among all the great bits. What made me fall in love with the car is its day time running lamps. For a car worth a little over 10L price bracket, the DRLs were in the league of cars more than double that price. For me I do not appreciate DRLs by merely looking at them standing in front of the car. What would more matter to me is if the car announces its presence in the rear view mirror of the car I am driving. In that sense, the Nexon makes all the right visual cues in a bold and deterministic manner.

Exterior

The grille in the front is crafted very well and is very different from the typical tata cars we are used to. All the way from the front, this vehicle is SUV-ish be in looks or the way the pieces are put together. That said, the bumper, the bonnet, wheel arches – everything looks macho. Being in Bengaluru, one would know that for the rainy season where there is no differentiation between what is a road and what isn’t the need of the hour would be a vehicle with sufficient ground clearance to wade clear of that water and tyres to support that kind of driving.
The 16″ alloys make and imposing statement about the car and are available in two varieties the meek 195/60 and the more meatier 215/60 which blows competition out of the water. The tyres are safe and secure and would eat up anything thrown at it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But how do we know unless we put that to test, right ? So let us come back to more of those later. The sloping roofline to the back, the stright lines on the doors just make the car look gorgeous. The projector headlamps add to the glory during the night. The unladen ground clearance of 209mm is more than enough to not kiss every part of the road a sedan would otherwise. The laden clearance would obviously be lower, and the suspension should appropriately take care of that even if the car is laden with adults and luggages to the max capacity in real life.

The ground clearance clearly puts it into SUV category and makes the car look all the more imposing. The plastic handles blend well with the overall scheme and does not make the car look out of place. Single tone and dual tone colours add more options and the colour choices themselves are smashing to say the least. I test drove the etna orange, but personal favourites on the roads are generally the moroccan blue, vermont red and even calgary white. I have never seen a silver so far, but sure have seen the glasgow grey which is also a looker. The red is my favourite though.

Interior

Step into the car and you would expect typical tata fare of the same old boring dashboard with addition of clock and the some dials. But let me tell you again just in case you did not read earlier – Tata has paid a lot of attention and has completely revamped the interior to an extent that you would not believe what you are seeing. The three tone interiors are soothing and are not contrasty like the Kraz edition. The AC vents are normal ones you see on any other car, and there is a harman floating console in the middle. The steering has been carried over from Tiago and Tigor, but for those who only know the indica, this steering is miles apart from the old Indica’s and by a very large margin. I will talk about this more when we cover the drive.

The seats were not leather, but were cushy by tata standards, and I did feel that the thigh support could have been slightly better. It is not unmanageable but I do feel that over longer distances there can be some discomfort for those with legs longer than rest of their body – like me (the unfortunate bunch). There is a dial with different modes (eco, city and sport) which you can change on the fly and it mainly affects the gear change timings which are crucial for the experience of the said modes. Obviously the eco mode is tuned for mileage and the sport mode for driveability and power.
For safety you do get two airbags, ABS and EBD and a super rigid body structure. Just to drive home the point I have heard of Nexon’s having overturned on accidents on highways and everyone just walked out the door like nothing happened. You can be rest assured that Tata is among some of the companies whose main focus is on safety and reliability of the tensile structure of the body if not necessarily the parts.
The car has a generous amount of bottle and knickknack holders on doors and on the center of the front seats. I like the fact they have sliding doors to open up to the concealed storage areas. It is almost Civic-ish if I should point out. And that’s a good thing. It is like getting 20L premiumness in 10L. The central floating console is from Harman and there are 8 speakers, with Android auto and Apple car play – thereby finishing the exact need for an average user who wants music options. For more seasoned audiophiles an ICE would add more options to the experience.
Some nitty gritties – the door mats were looking a bit flimsy and I am a big fan of 3D or 4D door mats which keep all the dirt within and can be easily cleaned and disposed of. But maybe its just my nitpicking for some thing which is not such a big concern on the Nexon. I did find the rear view mirror a tad bit too small and the rear visibility is actually an issue considering the sloping roofline. It is slightly more claustrophobic at the back as well. The space in the front is good with height adjust and recline options for seats. The rear seat can fit 3 kids and one adult or 3 adults rather comfortably – and I mean realistically so. It is not an Innova, but it is not an Alto either.

The boot is large and very reasonable for any weekend drive or airport luggage even, and it should not present any problem as far as Nexon is concerned. It is surely not a Duster in terms of boot space, but its not bad either! There is also push button start which is a welcome move.

Engines

Enough about the interiors, can we move to the engine now? The car comes with turbo charged petrols and diesels, one with 1.2, 3 cyl, turbocharged petrol with 110 bhp power and 170Nm torque – and the other 1.5 4 cyl, turbocharged diesel with 110 bhp power and an insane 260Nm torque at 1500 rpm. What this means in simple english is brutal power, extreme driveability due to torque levels whether you are talking about petrol or diesel variants.

Gearbox

Since I took a drive of the AMT, there are a few things to talk about this version. I was particularly interested to understand how Tata has worked on the AMT gear box, the AMT gear lever and the likes of design elements. The gear level was small and looked awesome. It surely looks and feels like a 20L car here as well. The slotting is perfect and without a fuss.
If I had to nitpick about this a bit I was NOT a big fan of pushing up for manual gear up (in manual mode). I am so used to pulling it down for gear up in my celerio and this kind of feels counter intuitive for me and would also be similarly annoying for many other people. The thing is this for a pull down you activate only your hand, for push up you have to lift your arm from the arm rest. Again not a big grouse. Just a small one 🙂

Driving characterisitics

I would like to jot a disclaimer here that I did not try eco mode since I did not have the time or opportunity on the road to check it, but my guess is that since it is going to be tuned for mileage, the power will be reduced and upshifts would be common. Having put that out of the way let us focus on the remaining two modes, the City mode and Sport mode.
When you hear about these modes, the first thing that comes to you mind is that Sport would obviously be more zippy and more enthusiastic to use and the city mode would not be. Well that is the case almost but we need to consider a lot of other parameters such as the traffic on that road, the speed with which you are driving, the throttle inputs, how many potholes on the road, whether it is a linear road or not, and so on. Every person’s test drive experience will be different so I am trying to give you a fair picture of how the car behaves on a general test drive.

City mode

First off city mode – there is no lag on acceleration from first gear. The gear shifts after sufficient amount of acceleration happens about where you expect it. No much head nod for the passengers if you are reasonably gentle with the throttle. Breeze to drive it and wade through the traffic, no major issues and the car stays put exactly the way you expect it to. The light steering is a boon in city traffic and is easy to maneuver the vehicle. I did find one problem though – the steering is slightly tilted to one side at its normal position and it feels a bit odd. But that maybe just a one off case with this test drive vehicle and may not manifest on other cars. Time will tell.
The car does not downshift as well too soon and holds up being a diesel with enormous amount of torque (260Nm). This is sweet and even if it was a manual it would have felt very good needless to say. The 110bhp of power coupled with 260Nm of torque at as low as 1500 rpm has put the Nexon in a really sweet spot as far as driveability goes. Default rpm for idling is between 700-900 and just putting your foot on the pedal makes this figure jump to almost 1200 rpm which is just pretty shy of the 1500 rpm necessary for the torque to show.

Sport mode

As usual enthusiasts who want sport mode for the adrenalin rush would think this mode will really make you feel like god. On the contrary it isn’t so. All it does is hold a gear for as long as you really push it hard and the engine sometimes sounds harsh until it goes to the next gear. Since this is the first iteration of the Nexon, future tuning could make this mode more enjoyable in the longer run. That said, there is enough grunt in any gear for the car to sail through in sport mode. After using the sport mode and not finding an opportunity inside the crowded road to revv up substantially I had to switch back to city mode which left me at ease. City mode I would say is the default sport mode within the city. The sport mode thus may make sense on the highway to hold to fourth and fifth gears at low and high speeds completing the overall drivability quotient to a decent level.

Tyres

A word about the tyres. For me tyres make a huge difference in the way a car handles almost as much as the chassis/frame. As I said before, the Nexon top end has 215/60 tyres which are really enough to handle Bangalore’s potholed road surfaces with utmost ease. Rains, water, mud, potholes, bumps – you throw anything at these tyres and they eat it with aplomb. You are safe rest assured with this kind of tyre profile. The occupants had very less notion of how many potholes I was passing over on an internal locality road.

Suspension

Just like the chassis, and tyres one another important aspect about any car’s drivability is the suspension setup. For a car like Nexon I did expect something like duster’s suspension, but unfortunately its not the case. Do not get me wrong, it is not bad, but its not the best either. It sure is not mediocre and does well in isolating road undulations to a large level and like I said before the occupants barely will feel anything at all. It is only if you push the car too much on undulated surfaces some bounce is felt.
The suspension is not a hit or miss, but Tata can work on this to make it more sturdier nevertheless. As such the car handles well on broken roads which is the worst nightmare for any passenger.

Variants

Click the brochure to know more about the variants of nexon and what you will get or not get in each version.

Niggles

Every car has niggles and they just cannot get away with them due to persisting quality issues. The Nexon being the first of its kind is surely a batch meant for testing on guinea pigs and only future versions will bring about quality on the faulty parts.
A few things I noticed which fall into minor niggles category

• Doors bit flimsy – European level thud not present
• Rear visibility is poor but that is by design – there is nothing much that can be done about this
• AMT could have had lever down for gear up – though counter intuitive for some people
• Door mats could be of 3D or 4D variety

Conclusion

The pricing of the nexon in Bangalore is pretty competitive to say the Ford Ecosport or the Honda WRV. You can check the pricing of each version below

The Tata Nexon is a genuine attempt by Tata Motors to bring a car that looks very upmarket to its customers at a value for money price range with substantial exterior and interior design elements and surprisingly low amount of visible niggles. This would mean that the engineering and design of the vehicle was well thought over and brilliantly executed. Pitting it right where the Brezza, Ford and Honda WRV is the Nexon sure has the necessary character and demeanor to march past its rivals with a class leading engine, good ground clearance and visibility, excellent space and a punchy drive. If you are looking for genuine value for money – this is the car to go for while at the same time keeping in mind that there is not much parts reliability information available yet. The safety of this car is well designed and is surely going to keep occupants protected in all situations on the road.
Good luck Tata Motors to set sales charts on fire and the numbers cannot be wrong!

Written with StackEdit.

It has been a horrid wait. Honestly Apple’s own maps has never launched in India yet. Even in other countries Apple maps never used to show things properly and they had made a fool of themselves royally. The company even fired two of its iOS executives Scott Forstall and John Browett when they refused to acknowledge the poor performance of Apple maps.

Well since those learnings Apple has been steadily trying to improve its maps division specifically for India. We do already know they are adding more and more data points day by day. They also said they are looking at about 5000 employees for their Hyderabad division since 2016.

During all this time, users of Apple iPhones readily and steadily switched back to Google Maps, and have been conveniently using it since sometime now. Of late there are lots of cars that sport either as inbuilt or custom build ICE or in car entertainment units which support Google Play and Apple Car Play like the Sony XAV which I have reviewed earlier on this blog.

With increasingly more and more people linking their iPhones to their car units, it was now important to have navigation on Apple Car Play. With neither Apple introducing their maps nor allowing Google maps app, this was simply not going anywhere in terms of a choice. Until now.

With the release of iOS 12 and Google immediately releasing their own update for Google Maps, all Car Play users can now rejoice to see their favorite navigation app on their car units. I will cover some details of the same in the sections below.

User Interface

I must say the first time I installed and started using the maps interface on Car Play I was pleasantly surprised at how well Google maps displays on the car unit. It is sort of smaller that I would have liked it and also has a bit of candy-ish looks as compared to say its counterpart of Google maps on Android Auto, but nevertheless it is well implemented.

A simple tap on the screen brings up “Add Destination”, or “Exit” or the alerts button depending on whether navigation is not yet started or already going on. The whole thing is so non intrusive. There are six options displayed under destinations

• Recent searches
• saved places
• your home and work
• it also shows petrol pumps nearby (smartly since you may need it)
• and you can use a search option if all else fails

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhgPJ4WuVVTvkVaN8

The search option brings up a keyboard with which you can type out few characters of your destination and the list of matching results is shown from where you can choose to start your navigation with one of them.

Rest of the navigation is as usual, it shows you the route from where you can begin to navigate at actual and it will zoom in to street level directions. At any point you can exit the navigation by touching the screen and choosing exit option. You can also move the map and bring it back to center point by choosing recenter option. There is also a settings button with which you can access settings such as avoiding tollways, etc while asking for navigation help.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CUv5F9CHgDogxFrMA

I have also tried a few other things with this app on Car play which I wish to share with you. If you unplug the phone the navigation still continues with the phone and if you plug the phone back in, the car play automatically takes you to map app assuming it was the last app open. If you choose to dial out someone or receive a phone call during navigation voice guidance will still remain but the map is out of the screen. You need to bring back maps app during a call if you wish to see the map again.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KvjJFVffBgT7HJkLA

The icon to access maps sits vertically on the left bar along with other icons such as music, and phone.

With this inclusion from Google, and allowance from Apple of the google maps app, Apple has finally plugged a missing piece which was necessary for using Apple car play properly – the Navigation aspect. Hopefully when Apple release their own version of maps, in the near future or so, users can get to experience the best of both worlds. Until then, its going to be Google Maps on Apple Car Play for me and I am not one bit disappointed at all.

It has been a horrid wait. Honestly Apple’s own maps has never launched in India yet. Even in other countries Apple maps never used to show things properly and they had made a fool of themselves royally. The company even fired two of its iOS executives Scott Forstall and John Browett when they refused to acknowledge the poor performance of Apple maps.

Well since those learnings Apple has been steadily trying to improve its maps division specifically for India. We do already know they are adding more and more data points day by day. They also said they are looking at about 5000 employees for their Hyderabad division since 2016.

During all this time, users of Apple iPhones readily and steadily switched back to Google Maps, and have been conveniently using it since sometime now. Of late there are lots of cars that sport either as inbuilt or custom build ICE or in car entertainment units which support Google Play and Apple Car Play like the Sony XAV which I have reviewed earlier on this blog.

With increasingly more and more people linking their iPhones to their car units, it was now important to have navigation on Apple Car Play. With neither Apple introducing their maps nor allowing Google maps app, this was simply not going anywhere in terms of a choice. Until now.

With the release of iOS 12 and Google immediately releasing their own update for Google Maps, all Car Play users can now rejoice to see their favorite navigation app on their car units. I will cover some details of the same in the sections below.

User Interface

I must say the first time I installed and started using the maps interface on Car Play I was pleasantly surprised at how well Google maps displays on the car unit. It is sort of smaller that I would have liked it and also has a bit of candy-ish looks as compared to say its counterpart of Google maps on Android Auto, but nevertheless it is well implemented.

A simple tap on the screen brings up “Add Destination”, or “Exit” or the alerts button depending on whether navigation is not yet started or already going on. The whole thing is so non intrusive. There are six options displayed under destinations

• Recent searches
• saved places
• your home and work
• it also shows petrol pumps nearby (smartly since you may need it)
• and you can use a search option if all else fails

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhgPJ4WuVVTvkVaN8

The search option brings up a keyboard with which you can type out few characters of your destination and the list of matching results is shown from where you can choose to start your navigation with one of them.

Rest of the navigation is as usual, it shows you the route from where you can begin to navigate at actual and it will zoom in to street level directions. At any point you can exit the navigation by touching the screen and choosing exit option. You can also move the map and bring it back to center point by choosing recenter option. There is also a settings button with which you can access settings such as avoiding tollways, etc while asking for navigation help.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CUv5F9CHgDogxFrMA

I have also tried a few other things with this app on Car play which I wish to share with you. If you unplug the phone the navigation still continues with the phone and if you plug the phone back in, the car play automatically takes you to map app assuming it was the last app open. If you choose to dial out someone or receive a phone call during navigation voice guidance will still remain but the map is out of the screen. You need to bring back maps app during a call if you wish to see the map again.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KvjJFVffBgT7HJkLA

The icon to access maps sits vertically on the left bar along with other icons such as music, and phone.

With this inclusion from Google, and allowance from Apple of the google maps app, Apple has finally plugged a missing piece which was necessary for using Apple car play properly – the Navigation aspect. Hopefully when Apple release their own version of maps, in the near future or so, users can get to experience the best of both worlds. Until then, its going to be Google Maps on Apple Car Play for me and I am not one bit disappointed at all.