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SH88 ,Hunsur to Kushalnagar .Awesome road.One has to watch out for new speadbreakers that crop up every now and then.Night driving with stock 55/60W headlights can be tricky.

We did 297kms from Virajpet to Bangalore in about 4 hours and 20 mins .

Best road to drive on for the scenic beauty is Munnar to Top station, though small its was one of the best ones i have driven on.

The other stretch is from Masinagudi to Ooty, those 36 hairpins are delicious :D

As they say, pictures speak louder than words,
somewhere between Siliguri & Darjeeling.
^^The earlier thread was closed, hence posted here:)

Is that a rail line running parallel to the road? Rail line is still being used for traffic?

It is the famous 'toy-train' which chugs along the road, bifurcating it many times.
Runs between Siliguri & Darjeeling.

i've lived and travelled in the 3 distinct parts of india, read : north, central and south..
up north, the delhi-jaipur and delhi-jaipur highways were a bliss to drive on.. i had driven my corsa 1.4 on both these highways back in 2008 first..
the roads were smooth as butter and they were amazingly banked on turns.. so in a corsa with a thick tyre base, 120km/hr on a turn was without moving the water in the stomach..
however now, both these roads are in shambles.. potholes galore and they are filled up only at that spot making it an ricketing drive.. also, the truck traffic on these roads has grown exponentially..
coming to the pt, here r the rds i love driving on :

- mumbai-pune expressway... but again, can get boring unless in rainy..
- baroda-ahmedabad.. i drove on this highway during my pune-gurgaon trip.. n it is an absolute pleasure to drive on this one.. its called a superway.. its a 4-lane, tar highway.. but really smooth and scenic..
- bangalore-chennai.. the blr-chennai highway passing thru HOSUR is again a pleasure.. theres another one taking a longer route thru AP.. but the one thru hosur is well made.. its a 4-lane one.. and u can continously drive at 100km/hr (even +) barring the few km where it passes thru towns..
- udupi (near mangalore, karnataka) to kudremukh.. kudremukh was one of indias leading iron ore plants.. the rd leading there is one anyone would want to keep driving on.. mostly thru winding hills and lush green valleys, tis blissful to drive there during the monsoon..

from the safety, road quality and general driveability aspect I would rate the Bombay-Pune Expressway as the best. The main thing is that no strays (human, vehicular as well as animal) are allowed onto it by virtue of the excellent fencing along both sides.

There are some fabulous roads in East and North-East India.

Try the stretch between Paikan (Assam) to Tura (in Meghalaya)...i forget the NH number - i think its NH-51.....this road is reasonably wide, winding, dips, crests, off-camber bends and butter smooth tarmac. hardly any traffic. it will test the mettle of any person and machine...yes...you need a GOOD car for this road !

Bhpians abroad : could you please provide a quick comparison (tarred roads only !) on the quality of city roads in terms of undulations / bumpiness and general feel ?

While the arterial roads within Bangalore are fairly smooth, the interior lanes and streets leave a lot to be desired, in my opinion.

I do Pune-Mumbai almost every weekend in my Swift. Used to enjoy it alot hitting 180 KPh at a point on the e-way. Now its boring. I would rather love to drive on the Old Pune-Mumbai highway NH4 :P

But my favourite of all is the NH17. Specially during monsoons!!!

Also enjoy driving on NH4 to Konkan via Phonda Ghat.

Regards,
Sameer.

Am rather surprised that senior members have ranked Mumbai Pune Expressway so high on their list. Best road to me means - smooth tarmac, less traffic, less town crossings, no or minimal danger zones (accident prone areas), ample amenities along the highway. Mumbai Pune Expressway ranks low on the first two parameters. I would rather rank NH-8 frm Baroda to Udaipur and NH-79 thereon to Bhilwara much higher. NH-11 from Sikar to Bikaner also is a pleasure to drive.

i have been on the baroda-udaipur highway.. i agree its quite good.. but the baroda-ahmedabad superway is even better!

NH7 sir is awesome at just the outset of monsoon.. after that, the potholes there are huge! i was in pune until a few years ago and studied in manipal, karnataka.. so took the NH17 each time I travelled to and fro. NH17 is good till maharashtra.. the moment you enter karnataka, the condition deteriorates.. the condition a few years ago was so bad that truck drivers actually conducted a rasta-rooko to get the NHAI chief to visit..

Sorry for my going OT here, but the people of Karnataka are suffering on National Highway maintenance works over the past several years.

Wonder if this is because we always seem to have opposite political parties in the State and Centre for several years at a stretch now !

Maybe also explains the lackadaisical approach to NH 48 road widening and the Shiradi ghat road mess on NH 48 !

Wish the Karnataka Government could do an excellent and high quality job on SH 57 and SH 58 instead, which is entirely within the State Government's control, so that we get an excellent road from Bangalore to Mangalore via Charmadi Ghat, instead of forever waiting for its opposite number in the Centre to improve the condition of the National Highways.

This could then turn out to be one of the top roads in India, going by the scenic photographs posted in the thread "Scenic Charmadi".

oh well, tell me about it!
i travelled 6-7 times a year on NH17.. i remember after monsoon 2007, things were so bad, they stopped Volvos on that road coz they broke down every day..
even blore-mlore.. Volvos were not operational coz the charmadi ghats were undriveable..

i had once gone on a bike ride from manipal-bekal fort (near kasargod, kerala).. n the change in road condition was so stark the moment we entered kerala territory..

roads in karnataka = cwg in delhi..

it happens!

here is my list in no particular order, to name a few and based on purely my experience and exposure levels:

1. Delhi - Jaipur express highway
2. Bangalore - Chennai express highway
3. Hassan - Belur
4. Mumbai - Pune express highway
5. Bangalore - Mysore
6. Mysore - Kushalnagar
7. Chennai - Pondicherry