Road trip to Alappuzha from Bangalore: All the latest route updates

We also had visits to our family deities near Alathur and Palakkad on our minds, so I came up with a plan to make Kochi and Palakkad as base.

BHPian NPV recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

We travelled recently to Kerala, this time we had a visit planned in Alappuzha so decided to also visit the Ambalapuzha Sree Krishna temple. We also had visits to our family deities near Alathur and Palakkad on our minds, so I came up with a plan to make Kochi and Palakkad as base and start on 28 Dec and return on 31 Dec which would hopefully help in avoiding the Christmas rush in to Kerala and the New year rush in to Bangalore and this plan was quite fine, but road conditions did trouble our drives, details here:

Onward Bangalore-Kochi:

• Started around 4:45am, reached Sree Saravana Bhavan Vaigundam around 8:45am for breakfast. The new normal to Salem is now about 3.5+ hours given that there are multiple flyovers being constructed between Hosur and Krishnagiri
• Beyond Salem also there are flyovers before and after Perundurai being constructed, getting to the 6 lane section near Tiruppur is quite a challenge
• Same story after Palakkad as well since flyovers are under construction, then the traffic lights slow you down
• We stopped for lunch around 1:45pm at Chennai Ananda Bhavan near Nadathara after Mannuthy
• By the time we reached our hotel in Kochi it was 4:45pm, 12 hour drive for 550 odd Km

Onward Kochi-Ambalapuzha:

• Started at 8am from Kochi after breakfast. Once you cross Vytilla, keep your speeds to about 30-35kmp at the entry and exit ramp of every flyover/bridge, the incline angle of the upward and downward joints can make your car fly or hurtle downwards!
• After the Kundanoor bridge, there is NH 66 road widening activity which will slow you down because some sections of the highway are getting an elevated section and the old highway will eventually become the "service" road. Work is progressing at a faster pace now as compared with what I saw in July 2023
• Without any breaks en route, we reached the Ambalapuzha Sree Krishna temple at 10:40am, that is 2h:40m for about 80km on a Sunday!

Return Alappuzha-Kochi:

• After completing our visit at Alappuzha, we started around 3pm and reached Kochi around 6pm, another slow drive enduring the construction zone craziness

Return Kochi-Alathur-Palakkad:

• Started around 8:30am from Kochi and reached the temple near Alathur at 10:45am
• After darshan at the temple we headed to Palakkad and got there around 12:30pm

Return Palakkad-Bangalore:

• Started at 9am and it took us more than 2.5 hours to just exit the L&T coimbatore bypass, crazy road manners of drivers and totally mismanaged and badly designed tolls and traffic lights. Very short 25 second green lights at the Trichy road junction and at couple of tolls, though the boom barrier opened up, traffic was backed up from the traffic light about 200m ahead of the toll. Bangalore drivers went hyper and started going off road or doing crazy overtake maneuvers to get ahead
• I made a blunder by entering Salem for lunch, wasted 30 minutes due to traffic and not finding parking and eventually got out, crossed Thoppur ghat easily and drove to Sai Sangeet Thoppur for lunch at 2pm.
• Took the NH 844 and joined Hosur ESI Ring Road near Chennai Silks and even managed to cross Attibele quite easily
• The Bangalore traffic slowed us down from Attibele and eventually got home by 6:15pm

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