Bengaluru to Kollam in my Hyundai Alcazar: Trip and route updates

Had a little tiresome drive to Kollam from Bengaluru on Saturday. Overall took 12:38hrs drive time for 661Kms and the remaining time of 1:22hrs for 3 breaks

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Route taken was as below.

Blr (Old Airport Road) - Hosur - Rayakottai - Palacode - Dharmapuri - Salem - Dindigul - Tirumangalam - Rajapalayam - Shenkottai - Thenmala - Punalur - Kottarakara - Kollam.

Took 14 hours door to door including breaks for breakfast, lunch and one short one for tea/coffee. Started at 5:35AM and reached Kollam at 7:44PM. The last stretch from Kottarakara - Kollam of 25Kms took more than 1hr due to long weekend traffic. This was the most tiresome stretch.

Got stuck in Thoppur ghat for some 20 mins, near Salem (bypass construction) for another 20 mins, crossing Salem itself took some good amount of time due to traffic, got stuck near Thenmala Eco Resort due to some road blocks for 15 mins and then crawled all the way from Kottarakara to Kollam.

Hosur to Salem via Rayakottai was a good drive due to less traffic and some newly opened 4 lane highway.

Drove 207Kms from home to A2B at Rasipuram for breakfast break. This took around 4 hours.

Next 226Kms from A2B to Temple City Restaurant (for lunch) at Triumangalam - Rajapalyam road took around 2:45hrs. This was the fastest stretch.

From here to Puliyarai in Shenkottai (TN-KL border) around 143Kms took 2:43 hours.

And the last stretch from Puliyarai to my home in Kollam city, 85Kms took 3:10 hours. The slowest and the most tiresome.

Am able to provide this exact time due to the Bluelink app of Hyundai. It shows the drive time, idle time, Kms driven and the avg speed for each stretch.

Roads are good from Blr to Salem, but some roadworks and flyover constructions happening, that will slow you down. Excellent drive from Salem to Tirumangalam, roads are good throughout. From Tirumangalam to Rajapalyam, road widening happening big time, some small stretches are open and overall you cant speed here.

Roads are good from Puliyarai to Kollam, but the traffic is very heavy from Punalur to Kollam.
Only good thing was able to cross all toll booths pretty fast.

My feeling is drive in this stretch is never going to be easy for the rate at which the vehicles on the road is increasing to the rate at which the infra developments are happening. I always used to think when this stretch becomes 4/6 lane it would be faster, but I never see that happening as Blr to Salem is now choked, crossing Salem is a nightmare despite many flyovers, and the very heavy truck traffic. Hopefully Tirumangalam - Rajapalyam will become 4 laned in couple of years, but by that time I believe Salem Tirumanagalam stretch will become choked . Hopefully Ernakulam to Trivandrum 4 lane will open as in due time, but Thrissur - Ernakulam is already choking.

Overall took 12:38hrs drive time for 661Kms and the remaining time of 1:22hrs for 3 breaks. Its still a very time consuming drive and one needs lot of patience and time to drive. I still venture out driving this stretch due to the passion, but its slowly diminishing after every one of those.

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