Groverwhelmed Sunday: The roadtrip that went wrong (Part 2 of 4)

One-line recap of Part 1:?

A group of 7 friends (all under 25 years and in their 1st or 2nd trip outside India) have finally reached their hotel in Malaysia after their 7 hours see-saw at the Singapore-Malaysia border.?

Part 2:

While the start of our roadtrip was draining and quite gloomy, our age and just being surrounded by each others company helped us get back on the horse. We were positive and enthusiastic, hopeful that the next set of days were going to be super fun and perhaps even more adventurous!

Day 1 in Kuala?Lumpur went as planned - great food, street shopping amongst other things

Day 2 we decided to get back to roadtrip mode - take a drive to Genting HIghlands (approximately 60 kms away from KL; a hill station famous for its casinos and theme parks).?

This time we?did not want any surprises so we checked all the paperwork and also filled our fuel tank, got the air in the tires checked and most importantly fed ourselves well before hitting the road #WeLearned

We were cruising! Stopping every now and again to take scenic pit stops. The last few kms of the drive was a climb to the top of the hill. The sun had set, the?road was empty, our windows were down and we were blasting music from our car and singing along.?

Out of the blue we heard a car honking from the back. The driver was signalling something with?his hand; we thought he wanted to overtake so?gave?him way and went back to singing at the top of our voices. A couple of minutes later, another car from the back honked repeatedly;?I looked back saw he was making a weird?gesture from his hand - it seemed like a waterfall (??)

I told my friends: I think he is signalling to us that there is a waterfall approaching. We were excited: wow, more pictures :)?

His honking did not stop, and this time he signaled to look towards the back of our car. As I took my head out - I saw fuel from our tank oozing out like a waterfall. I was shocked and so was everyone else in the car. We were in a hilly?terrain with a very narrow?road. The second we found a safe corner, we parked our car to understand what was happening. The guy behind us, who gave us the signal also stopped. As we thanked him, he introduced himself and shared that he was a mechanic on the move: the climb to Genting is tricky with no garage?on the way and even on the top he said.

It was pitch dark by then and using our phone torches we helped him inspect the various parts of our car. His prelim diagnosis indicated that there was an issue with the tank and we should not drive any further.?

To fix the tank he needed tools and some helping hands; since it was too late he would need some extra time and money to fix it. He would have to drive towards?KL and get the right set of tools and team.?

We were neither convinced by his diagnosis nor his recommendation. Looking at our dismissive faces, the mechanic started scaring us: he shared that if we drove any further and the tank kept leaking our car could explode.?

The word: EXPLODE had a dramatic impact - while some of us felt very scared, others were still not convinced. I decided to go to the most experienced of the drivers of the group - and while the inspected the car thoroughly they seemed to not find any visible glitch in the fuel tank.?

Manju was a Mechanical Engineer working in the Oil & Gas industry - he said there that there was a high chance that we overfilled our fuel tank and since we were gaining elevation in our drive at a high speed -?we were seeing this fuel leakage. He mentioned he didnt visibly see any damage from below, didnt smell fuel from anywhere else besides the back portion of the car either. He even emphasized: Look, our car has been still for a while now - there is no fuel leakage internally or from the bottom. Even from the back the leakage has stopped.?If we drive slowly and gain elevation at a gradual pace we might not have this issue - was what he concluded?

The mechanic, seeing Manju was convincing?us with logic and realising that the scared people in our group were now more confident, suddenly came forward and made a hand gesture of explosion. This visual - hands spreading apart like a huge nasty explosion had the same impact as before - some of us just didn't want to get back into the car!

We were 6 kms from Genting and 54 Kms from KL. I thought of a workaround: why don't we drive very slowly to Genting. We ask the mechanic to follow us and closely observe our fuel tank - whenever he notices anything fishy he simply honks and indicates to us to stop. We pay him for his support and that would be the end of that.?

I went to him and shared my plan negotiating a price for his service and gave my friends an option to sit in either of the two cars: Car likely to explode and car unlikely to explode - and we started off again, 2 of us in the explosive car - driving very slowly this time, paying attention to the back of the car.

After 20 mins of ascent, we again started hearing loud honks from the mechanic. I was looking out and had not noticed any leakage - I shouted out of my window: why are you honking?'' He responded, you guys are driving too slow, I need to get back home. Please drive a little fast :)?

We reached our Hotel, parked our car and were safe and sound - there was no explosion. We thanked the mechanic for his support and paid him for his services and crashed eager for what the next day would bring us!

The next two days were peaceful but the last day was the most action packed - I will share the adventures of our last day in my two articles (Part 3 and Part 4). This roadtrip is turning our to be a 4 part story :)