Target: Pune(Maharashtra)-Tellicherry (Kerala) & return.
Distance: Approx 1100 KMs (Not the shortest)
Route: Pune >Kohlapur>Nippani >Sawantwadi> Panji >Madgaon> Karwar >Udupi >Mangalore>Kannur >Tellicherry
This is not the first time that I managed to go for a long drive. This is also not the first time my Scorp was going for a long drive either. However, this is the first time and kept some time apart to write a travelogue, specifically in T-BHP. I’m glad I could make it finally. Nevertheless, every such drives have something new in there, certainly something afresh! I wanted to take a break for sometime, from an extremely busy schedule and I’ve always found that long road trips lets one do that. Mobile phone and blackberry will rest in peace inside the dashboard as I have an excuse to not to use them , as I don’t use either of them while driving
The opportunity came this time as my Wify and Kido were in Kerala, enjoying the summar vacation and I had to go and bring them back. My friend and neighbour who had to do a similar exercise agreed to join me.
After some discussions, planning and few phone calls, we decided the route and finalized the plan. Though I have driven around these areas often, we had to do this every time, as the conditions of roads often changes in India and you will be hit by surprises of vanishing acts by the roads on the way . I must say, a GPS navigation device is a must on such trips, and it is in my list of things to buy.
Day 1
We decided to take Kohlapur-Nipani-Savantwadi-Panji-Madgaon-Karwar-Udupi-Mangalore-Kannur with two nights halt on the way(though it was possible to reach the whole distance in a day), at the matter of leisure. So the plan was to leave Pune by Friday evening, the 15th of May and stay at Kohlapur after a 3 hrs drive on NH4. The original plan was to leave by 6:00 PM, but by the time we could finally start it was past 7:30 PM. The beast needed fuel, so filled up tank full at the nearby HPCL outlet and continued. It took little more than an hour to beat the evening peak traffic and enter NH4 from the via duct, an example of engineering excellence. Talking about NH4, for those who do not know, it was built part of the golden quadrilateral project and the stretch that I’m talking about connects Panvel(Outskirts of Mumbai) to Bangalore and includes the 80 KMs stretch of Mumbai-Pune expressway . The road is pretty well built, all the way to Bangalore(an exception of ~60 KMs, an example of pathetic governance in India) in with two lanes either side with an occasional third one. Normally one can easily keep an average of 100 KM/h, in most areas, irrespective of the type of car.
The drive was fine and the beast was happy to cruise at 100-120, and occasional 140s though we had to often deal with erratic truck drivers, who would drive extremely slow on the right most lane and never give way for speeding vehicles. The only other thing that slowed us down was the frequent toll booths that exist frequently on NH4. I had done Pune-Kolhalapur in the past in 3 hrs(230 KMs), both in my old WagonR and Scorp, so I was confident that I could reach well on time, even though we started late. We had stopped for a quick dinner on the way and this place was an average kind, but the food in fact tasted great. The only funny thing was the name boards of the hotel, with all spelling mistakes. I will post the pics on this soon.
We were in Kohlapur city by 12:00AM, that was 3 hrs from Pune, considering a 30 min dinner break we had. It took us some time for us to figure out the hotel location, especially since most roads in the city were dug up and they were on a massive concretisation drive of internal roads.
Day 2
Though the original plan was to leave as early as possible the next day, we finally left by 9:15 AM, as the main objective of the next day was to reach Goa for lunch.
There are at least two (there are certainly more) routes from NH4 to NH17, to reach Goa. We decided to take the Nippani-Ajra-Amboli-Savantwadi (The exit at Kaveri hotel in Nippani, as suggested by many fellow T-BHPans). We exited NH4 at Nipani at 10 AM and as mentioned by many others on different T-BHP threads, this route was comparatively better than the Sankeswar- Gadhinglaj and was newly resurfaced in most areas. There were
gulmohar trees all the way and overall the entire route was very scenic. Here are some pics to start with: