Current Condition of Road To kerala

[mogambo]

Is NH47 via Salem a better route or the Thoppur Bhavani route?

[speedzak]

Thoppur-Mettur-Bhavani.
Twenty characters!

[rex_varghese]

Salem route has four-laning work going on on NH-7 and there are few patches which are not very good. But, overall it's a decent drive.

Thoppur-Mecheri-Bhavani road surface is good, though roads are narrower. You can get pretty bad truck traffic on this road and you may get stuck sometime. During our trip in late Oct/07 we had tough time passing trucks on this route.

Regards
Rex

Originally Posted by mogambo

Is NH47 via Salem a better route or the Thoppur Bhavani route?

[vish_120]

I will be driving from Varkala to Bangalore next week ( 25th Dec )
Anyone has the latest information on the route that I should take.

I will be driving Innova and wish to complete the journey in 14hrs ( max )

[BMW-X5]

Guys,

I'm planning to drive down to my home town on 19th. Any idea hows the strech between Gundal Pet to Gudallur?
If this stretch is still bad i'm planning to take Gundalpet - Battery.

[mjothi]

How long does it take to reach Cumbum from Bang? I wanted to go but afraid if that would be tooo long

I guess it is theni and then cumbum. Right?

Originally Posted by hellstar

I did the Bangalore - Salem - Dindigul - CUMBUM - Theni - Thekkady route in Sep'07 and the roads were amazing..

[govigov]

Originally Posted by rippergeo

[/b]

do you think i'll be better off on the trichur-ottapalam-shornur-palakkad-cbe route?
is that route still good?
seeing the speed at which the palakkad-trichur section deteriorated, I'm worried about the T-O-S-P section.
anyone else has updates on this route?

sorry for the late reply, the entry to plkd from walayar is the one that is bad.
plkd-tcr-ekm is ok.

[rex_varghese]

A week back we did a Kodai trip and we could hit Ganguvarapatti (Kodai turn point on Cumbum-Theni route from Dindigul) in 7.5 hrs.

Kambam is around 80 kms from Ganguvarapatti. You can take a rough estimate of 3 hours for this, if not more.

Yes. It's Theni first and them Kambam.

Regards
Rex

Originally Posted by mjothi

How long does it take to reach Cumbum from Bang? I wanted to go but afraid if that would be tooo long

I guess it is theni and then cumbum. Right?

[rex_varghese]

Gundalpet-Bandipur is the stretch which is bad. But, manageable. Bandipur to outskirts of Gudalur is excellent road. In and around Gudalur the roads are worse. Around 10 kms. That too is manageable. When you've your home in your head and heart, you can drive even through hell

If you need to go down to central or south Kerala, taking S. Battery route will be a waste of time and effort. We did that once and decided to never do it again.

Regards
Rex

Originally Posted by BMW-X5

Guys,

I'm planning to drive down to my home town on 19th. Any idea hows the strech between Gundal Pet to Gudallur?
If this stretch is still bad i'm planning to take Gundalpet - Battery.

[rex_varghese]

Take Trichur-Nilambur-Gudalur-Mysore-Bangalore route. We generally do this route from Cochin to Bangalore in approx 10-11 hrs with stops for B/F, Lunch, misc stops, etc.

Regards
Rex

Originally Posted by vish_120

I will be driving from Varkala to Bangalore next week ( 25th Dec )
Anyone has the latest information on the route that I should take.

I will be driving Innova and wish to complete the journey in 14hrs ( max )

[BMW-X5]

Originally Posted by rex_varghese

Take Trichur-Nilambur-Gudalur-Mysore-Bangalore route. We generally do this route from Cochin to Bangalore in approx 10-11 hrs with stops for B/F, Lunch, misc stops, etc.

Regards
Rex

Rex,

Even i used to take this route only.
Itz been six months since i travelled.And road from bandipur to gudallur was kind of ok except for some bad stretches around gudallur.But i was pretty sure that monsoon would have effected this roads badly.

I planned to take the other route only because i love my car too much.But happy to know that the gudallur strtch is okay now.

[jkdas]

Originally Posted by vish_120

I will be driving from Varkala to Bangalore next week ( 25th Dec )
Anyone has the latest information on the route that I should take.

I will be driving Innova and wish to complete the journey in 14hrs ( max )

interesting, start early, say by 4am,

[rex_varghese]

Onward: Bangalore-Cochin
Date: 20th Dec 07
Start time: 5.30am
End time: 8.30 pm (exceeding our normal drive time of 11-12 hrs by ~3 hrs)
Distance: 545 kms

Bangalore-Krishnagiri: Same state as my previous report from Kodai trip (9-12, Dec/07).
Krishnagiri-Salem: Four laning work in progress all over. Road conditions have worsened severely in 10 days time. We travelled Salem-Krishnagiri stretch on 12th Dec. Now on 20th, roads look so bad. I think the recent rains had a very bad impact on the roads.

Badly stuck at Dharmapuri for 2 hours (from 7.30 hrs to 9.30 hrs). Unusual/horrible truck traffic. Lost all the advantages of starting at 5.30 am :-(

Salem-Coimbatore: Four laning in progress. Roads are relatively better on this leg.
Coimbatore-Walayar: Roads are pretty decent on this stretch.
Walayar-Cochin: Good roads. Almost all potholes have been patched and the work appears decent. Except the bumpy ride, roads are good. We could cover the Walayar-Cochin stretch in 4.5 hrs.

We're planning to return via Nilambur-Gudalur. Will update on the state of affairs once we're done with it.

Regards
Rex

[stevie]

guys

im leaving on the 28th to palakkad. any improvement on the road conditions. my ride in an opel corsa sail and the last time (one month ago) i drove to kerala, I had to get my alignment and balancing done, my A/C stopped working for some strange reason and my rear alpine coax slipped out of its 'twist & lock' position and the system began to give trouble on the way. Blame it all on bad roads!!!

I want to be sure before i travel this time. If anyone have driven recently, please give me some valuable feedback
Thanks

[rex_varghese]

I would suggest to avoid Dharmapuri-Salem/Mettur-Coimbatore stretch, if possible.

Try out Chamarajnagar-Sathy-Coimbatore route. The route is given in detail in few threads on this forum.

You can even try Mysore-Gudalore-Nilambur-Palakkad. Much better option.

Regards
Rex

Originally Posted by stevie

guys

im leaving on the 28th to palakkad. any improvement on the road conditions.

I want to be sure before i travel this time. If anyone have driven recently, please give me some valuable feedback
Thanks