[vnabhi]

Hi guys,
I could be making a trip to Mumbai from Hyd on Dec 21st. I also have Chennai as an alternate destination.
Just wanted an update on the latest condition of the road from Hyd to Bombay. If the roads are bad, I may drop Mumbai altogether, and go to Chennai.
My kids would have loved to go to Vizag, but the highway to Vijaywada from Hyd is pathetic, I am told. So Vizag has to wait for a year at least.

[condor]

Mumbai-Pune, you know it.
Pune-Hyd should be good. Only thing about this stretch is it is a 2 lane, un-divided road.

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by stallion

I plan to go to hyderabad this weekend. I will leave bombay at 2:00 A.M. Is it the correct time to leave keeping in view traffic from Pune and by what time should i reach.

I suggest you leave from Mumbai (be at the Vashi bridge) by 6.00am and you should be in Hyderabad at around 6pm with enough breaks. Leaving at 2.00am will give you a lot of truck traffic on NH9 which will slow you down, leaving at 6am in the morning means you hit NH9 at around 9am by which most of the truckers would halt for food/sleep etc. I have done Mumbai-Hyderabad stretch atleast 6 times to and fro, and prefer the 6am starting time.

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by condor

Mumbai-Pune, you know it.
Pune-Hyd should be good. Only thing about this stretch is it is a 2 lane, un-divided road.

good thing about NH-9 is its almost straight horizon to horizon for the 550km stretch from pune to hyd. So you can keep at 90-100kmph speed, although this is seasonal. During harvesting season expect to be stuck behind bullock carts/tractors pulling sugarcane harvests.

[nitindangoria]

The stretch of about 50 kms between Humnabad and Zahirabad is just terrible. The "highway" will suddenly materialise into a "lunar" surface. So watch out for those nasty craters.
I did, though, see some topping activity but the speed at which the R & B guys work is pathetic, to say the least.
Hope you will be travelling in a mid-size or an SUV.

[hvkumar]

NH4 (Bombay-Pune) and NH9 (Pune-Hyderabad) are in good condition except for a few kms in and around Homnabad town. Go for it.

[Dhanasekaran]

I have a detailed experience in this route. It will take more than 1 hr to corss Pune city from NH4 to catch NH9 at Hadapsar signal.

Route upto 40 Kms from Hadapsar is divided and excellent. Route slowly changes as you travel further.

Routes between Bigwan,Indapur and till Solapur is just OK a traditional undivided road. Be anytime you travel on this, you are sure shot be in between heavy truck traffic. Never take any risk of taking this route for night driving.

Route aftr Solapur upto 40 ~ 50 Kms is good. You encounter a small ghat section and be careful here as you may suddenly encounter vehicles coming other side of the road. You will cross towns like Naldurg, Umerga and Homnabad.

The entire stretch in KA you will find the roads are horrible and in tolerable.

Roads in AP is a pleasant and breeze. You will reach RC Puram in Hyd followed by Kukatpally.

I came across lot of guidance that the route from Pune-Solapur-Hyderabad is a breeze and excellent.

It is really not so. Perhaps, you will encouter some of the strectches which are sure shot rim breakers.

[vnabhi]

Thanks Danasekaran and others. I finally did it last weekend. I started from Hyd at 630 am and reached Mumbai at 830 pm, with an hour and half of rest for breakfast, lunch, tea, pee, etc.
The stretch of road as soon as you enter Karnataka after Zaheerabad is bad for about 20 kms---cannot exceed 40 to 50 on that stretch.
What delayed us the most were several groups of 8 to 10 trucks on the Solapur-Pune stretch. It takes quite a while to get past them due to opposite direction traffic.
This apart, it takes an hour and a quarter to get past Pune, and an hour to reach Bombay after the expressway ends.

[mobike008]

Oh boy, Vnabhi, you surely make use of your weekends, don't you? Last weekend mumbai and before that i think you made a trip to srisailam and sagar.

Way to go

[vnabhi]

Originally Posted by mobike008

Oh boy, Vnabhi, you surely make use of your weekends, don't you? Last weekend mumbai and before that i think you made a trip to srisailam and sagar.

Way to go

Yup, mobike008, you sure are darn right! I've had my fill of outings in the last 2 weeks. It sure helped me clear all my backlogs for outstation trips that I always long for.

[pbp0us]

Hi guys, i recently did hyderabad-mumbai trip in my 'newly acquired' OHC 1.5. I researched for this route on the forum and found this wonderful thread so thought of updating it with my experience.

We left hyderabad at around 2.30 am in the night and reached mumbai (sion) at about 5 pm with a break of about 1 hour in pune and few 10 min stops in between. Most of the route is still the same as people described it earlier in this thread. The road till Zaheerabad is pretty good but then as you enter Karnataka the road is really bad. It is still in the same condition as it was a year back as mentioned in some of the earlier posts. Guess some things never change in our country !

The roads are absolutely straight and you can easily hit 140 kmph sometimes when the traffic is less. I would like to mention the route which we took to bypass pune. About 50 kms before pune, we turned from NH9 and went to saswad. The road to Saswad is ok and the traffic is usually very less compared to NH9. From Saswad we hit the old mumbai-bangalore highway. After some time, there is a lot of traffic on this road and it is very difficult to see the signboards for direction to bombay. We had to go back and forth on certain stretches before we hit the expressway. Not sure if this is better than Swargate route, but i feel that we saved some time by taking this route.

The route is very scenic and you will get lot of opportunities to take fantastic photographs (esp when the sun is rising and you are on the dead straight road of NH9).

My OHC gave an average of around 15 (not bad, given that I drove it really hard and not in a fuel eff manner). One other thing, I noticed that Petrol is cheaper in some places after Solapur (diff was around 2.5-3 rs when compared to hyd city prices), so its a good idea to get ur tank filled there.

[hvkumar]

Originally Posted by pbp0us

y straight and you can easily hit 140 kmph sometimes when the traffic is less. I would like to mention the route which we took to bypass pune. About 50 kms before pune, we turned from NH9 and went to saswad. The road to Saswad is ok and the traffic is usually very less compared to NH9. From Saswad we hit the old mumbai-bangalore highway. After some time, there is a lot of traffic on this road and it is very difficult to see the signboards for direction to bombay. We had to go back and forth on certain stretches before we hit the expressway. Not sure if this is better than Swargate route, but i feel that we saved some time by taking this route.

Good idea. How long did the drive from NH9 to NH4 take, and how many kilometres was it? Condition of the road was good?

[pbp0us]

Originally Posted by hvkumar

Good idea. How long did the drive from NH9 to NH4 take, and how many kilometres was it? Condition of the road was good?

I think it took me around 1.5 hr to reach NH4 from NH9 (distance of about 60-70kms)..reason was that we stopped a lot along the way just to confirm that we were on the correct route. Road is pretty good, similar to NH9 in condition. The road to saswad comes about 60 odd kms before Pune on NH9. HTH.

[mehrotrarohit]

Dear All

Its great to be a part of this forum!

I am planning to go to Hyderabad (from Mumbai) and be back. I have a lovely swift Vdi (have done 24000 kms in 14 months). Any suggestions would be welcome please

Some details:

1. Me and my better half are going to be there
2. We have an option of going by bus/train as well
3. I have driven my car for a strech of 180 kms max (one way) and 380 kms in total in one day (this was when I drove to singhad from Mumbai)

help everyone

Best regards
Rohit

[Rajesh Rawal]

Originally Posted by mehrotrarohit

Some details:

1. Me and my better half are going to be there
2. We have an option of going by bus/train as well
3. I have driven my car for a strech of 180 kms max (one way) and 380 kms in total in one day (this was when I drove to singhad from Mumbai)

Ok Rohit so if i take que from point # 3 ( your min and max kms travelled by you ) i would sincerely suggest you take the train..

mumbai -hyderabad is 720 kms and it is very much doable in a day ( you need to start around 6am from mumbai and should be in hyderabad around 8pm) this including your breakfast ,lunch and evening tea breaks..

the roads are good and i was managing an average of 110-120 on my santro automatic.

but as i said if 380km is the max you did in a day then buddy take the train...or maybe you want to break that record then its your call

there is an overnight train(starts at 9.50pm from cst ,will reach hyd around noon next day)