Nothing catches my imagination or fires me up as much as taking a road trip. Add to that the excitement of doing my first long trip in my Tata Safari and you have my mouth watering. The vacation was a long one with three serious drives – Hyderabad-Aluva, Aluva-Patinem, Goa, Patinem-Hyderabad.
The first leg was a massive 1085 km drive from Hyderabad to Aluva (http://goo.gl/maps/8ZHhS).
Our journey took us from Hyderabad to the outskirts of Bangalore, where you can take the road via Hoskote to Hosur. This adds a few kilometers, but saves you the time and effort of driving through and negotiating the Bangalore traffic. The road from Hyderabad to Bangalore is awesome and you can easily cover this distance in 5-6 hours depending on how fast you drive and how many stops you take along the way. Food maybe a problem. I seriously suggest Ravi Teja hotel which is almost exactly half way between Hyderabad and Bangalore.
The road via Hoskote isnt the most easy to drive on, but it is still better that driving through Bangalore.
From Hosur to Krishnagiri and on to Salem is a good road but drive with caution. The drivers on this road seem hell bent on killing someone and they dont seem very particular that it should be someone else. They seem perfectly content with putting themselves in harm’s way.
Just before you reach Salem, you get a cut-off to Erode via Mettur. Take this if you want to save distance. Otherwise stick to the normal route which is Salem-Erode-Tirrupur-Coimbatore. There are bypasses along the way which may make it faster. Unfortunately I took the Mettur route and found the roads to be narrow and filled with danger from other drivers and pedestrians.
From Coimbatore, you get on the Pallakkad highway. This road is bad all the way till Trissur. But from Trissur onwards the road is fantastic all the way to Aluva.
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