[Selective]

Originally Posted by Dhanasekaran

Chitradurga-Davengere-Haveri-Ranebennur-Nightmare (Worst stretch)

What is the total distance of this worst stretch? And how worst the roads are? Any chance this stretch being improved now? I am travelling to Belgaum on 22nd in my Swift. Do you think Swift can handle this stretch?

[Vid6639]

lol. Selective, pls. do have a look at this thread:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...bangalore.html

The bad stretch is for around 150kms. But it's not all bad. There are few 100 metres stretches with no existence of road. The swift can handle it easily.

[condor]

Chitradurga - Davangere is good. 4 lane highway

A short stretch before Chitradurga & Chitradurga by-pass is bad. About 8 km.

The 140 km stretch between Davangere to Hubli is incomplete. Sections of the road is 4 lane. This is the stretch you may complain about when you compare it with the rest of the route.

[viveklk]

Originally Posted by Dhanasekaran

Route from Blr-Chitradurga is excellent.

Chitradurga-Davengere-Haveri-Ranebennur-Nightmare (Worst stretch)

Ranebennur-Hubli Roads are OK and some stretches excellent

Hubli-Dharwad - Single lane stretch, but the road is good

Dharwad-Belagavi-Kolhapur - Best in class road and very aweful

Kolhapur-Satara-Pune - Excellent stretch. Roads are good (I propose stay @ Hotel Sarang in the inner town of Satara. Newly constructed , Cheap an very neat)

Pune-Kalamboli-Mumbai - Excellent (Expressway or NH4 both are very good)

Remember lot of toll plaza's enroute and Option of Reliance A1 and other food malls are also on the entire highway.

Stretch between Chitradurga - Hubli remeber no foodjoints on the highway.

Anything more letme know.

Hey Dhanasekaran,

Thanks for the details. This is good. Unfortunately, I'll miss the good stretch from Belgaum since I'll be stopping at Belgaum as all my cousins decided to come to Belgaum in stead of Pune.

I heard that Davangere by pass is good, is that true?

-Vivek

[viveklk]

Thank you very much friends

Overall it looks like this bad stretch of about 140Kms will kill the overall average speed from Bangalore to Belgaum.

How bad is this stretch in terms of average speed? Can one decent driver drive at 40 kmph average speed on this bad stretch?

[condor]

Dhanasekaran : Stretch between Chitradurga - Hubli remeber no foodjoints on the highway.

There's a Reliance + A1 Plaza at Ranebennur.

viveklk : I heard that Davangere by pass is good, is that true?

Davangere by-pass is bad. Esp near Davangere. 1st gear, single digit speeds in some sections.


40 kmph average is achieavble.

It is not a continuous bad stretch. The 4 laning is not complete, so most of the time one side of the road (2 lanes) is good & available. You will have to keep switching between the two sides of the divider (the divider between the 2 + 2 lanes).

Check this recent thread. http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...bangalore.html

Have copied three photos from that thread to here, to give you a better idea.

One hand, some of the bridges at villages are not complete. So you will get a short section like this:


At other times you will need to switch between the left & right sides. These are sections where only one side of the divided road is complete, so all traffic (to & fro) will be on the same side. But which ever side the traffic will be on, will be good. And this is what you will be doing:


At other times you will have old highway like this - no divider, nothing.


And, at the other extreme, you will find sections like this:


This was shot a couple of months back, between Haveri & Hubli.

[viveklk]

Cool. thanks for the pictures friend, they are self explainatory

[viveklk]

Hi Guys,
I just drove to Belgaum on 20th Dec & drove back to bangalore on 30th Dec. Awesome experience. I want to thank you all for informative replies, believe me, it helped me a lot.

I started in Bangalore (C V Raman Nagar) at 6:30am, on the way in Indiranagar...withdrew money, had express breakfast & filled the car tank with Indian oil extra premium (forgot to check tyre pressure ), by the time I was at toll gate in Nelmangala it was almost 7:15am.
Nelmangala to Chitradurga --> painless journey, I maintained almost 120kmph (max 140kmph) & hit Reliance A1 plaza at 9:10am, where I took a break of 1 hour, as my little daughter woke up & it took time for me & my wife to get her to non-crying mode
After this not so good road started, just before chitradurga, the road is in bad shape. As told by some of you, I had decided to skip Davanagere bypass, so I asked couple of roadsiders about the route to get into Davangere city & got into Davangere--> harihar & then met the NH4 again after Harihar. Then I stopped at Reliance A1 plaza near Ranibennur, where I met two of my friends who came in Scorpio taking Davangere by pass they told me that the by pass is horrible & there are deep potholes on the way. I stopped here for about 45mins chatting with friends.
The road from Ranibennur (rather Haveri) to Belgaum is smoother again, NO diversions & again the speed of 120kmph. The only thing that strike me was Hubli-Dharwad bypass should have been with the divider. This bypass is done much before but surprisingly without a divier & single lane on both directions. This limited by overall speed as sometimes you need to go quite behind trucks as there will be vehicles coming on the other side. But after this bypass the road till Belgaum again is too good. I reached home at 4pm.
From Belgaum I drove to Goa for 2 days, this drive through ghats was amazing
I returned back to Bangalore, pretty same way except that I missed to get into Harihar & ended up taking the Davangere bypass. My goodness, the first pothole was almost 2 feet deep in the middle of the road, when I was at 100Kmph, I almost hit rear of my car. This is the time when I realized that I have missed Harihar Then I drove carefuly at low speed as the strech is really bad (but frankly speaking not as bad as I had thought). Again, it took much less time by this bypass than it had takenn by avoiding this by pass. I had left Belgaum at 7:30am & reached Tumkur at 2pm .
Overall, I loved the drive, SX4 is awesome, it is so stable even at 150Kmph! I loved it. The auto climate control works too good. Truly masculine car.
Thank you again guys, let me know if anybody wants any specific info, I would love to share it

Cheers,
Vivek

[deepakchiniwal]

hello,

Anyone who did the bangalore pune stretch recently.

Please update. Thanks

[hondadude]

Originally Posted by deepakchiniwal

hello,

Anyone who did the bangalore pune stretch recently.

Please update. Thanks

See post number 261 (third from last) in this thread.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/route-...adtrip-18.html

[hrag]

Originally Posted by deepakchiniwal

hello,

Anyone who did the bangalore pune stretch recently.

Please update. Thanks

The same old story: mix of superb & not-so-good between Bangalore & Haveri bypass. Haveri bypass until Pune is superb. Work is happening though and one can spot traces of new roads unlike in the past.

Trip done on August 1st. With a 6:30 am start from Hebbal flyover, Bangalore, I reached Chandini Chowk, Pune at 5:15 pm. This included 2 short stops and 1 lunch break (45 min.) at McDonald's Kolhapur. And the multiple refueling halts. Car was a Ford Fiesta 1.4 DURATEC with ~27K on the clock.

[KALSANKRPAI]

How is the road condition between SATARA AND POONA? Also I would like to know is there any alternate route to Mumbai from Pune other than YASHWANT RAO CHAVAN MAHA MARG { aka EXPRESS HIGHWY }

[ampere]

Originally Posted by KALSANKRPAI

How is the road condition between SATARA AND POONA? Also I would like to know is there any alternate route to Mumbai from Pune other than YASHWANT RAO CHAVAN MAHA MARG { aka EXPRESS HIGHWY }

Many updates are available here. Thats the more active thread on this topic.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/route-...teries-76.html

[ranjitp1]

Originally Posted by KALSANKRPAI

How is the road condition between SATARA AND POONA? Also I would like to know is there any alternate route to Mumbai from Pune other than YASHWANT RAO CHAVAN MAHA MARG { aka EXPRESS HIGHWY }

Road is good,should take you around 90mins-120mins to cover the distance from Satara to Pune Bypass on nH4.

The alternate route is to go via NH4 till Panvel but not reccomended as facilities are poor.

https://maps.google.co.in/maps?saddr...,8,10&t=m&z=12

[amit_purohit20]

I did Bangalore- Poona in one day. Started at 7:30 in the morning from bangalore. Took a hell lot of time to come out of Bangalore as I dont know the roads. I reached Pune at 1:00 pm in the night. Bcoz while entering Pune I missed the Katraj Bridge bypass because of which additional 1 hour were added.Also I dozed of nearly 1 plus hour.
The problem comes when you are coming from Bangalore to Pune and not when you go from Pune to Bangalore. The reason - Maharashtra roads are bad, full of local villages traffic and people do not follow traffic rules whereas in Karnatak the roads are excellent and it hardly passes through any villages, so no local traffic.
To compare I started from Pune at 5:30am and reached Nel Mangala at 8:15pm. I was in hotel room at 10:15 pm in Kemp Fort.Air port road.

Rules:
1) Leave early in morning not later than 5:30 am.
2) Dont keep your stomach heavy or you will doze off.
3) Take a nap in between. Even half hour of sound sleep will refresh you enough to drive to Mumbai.
4) Fill your petrol tank full because there are less petrol bunks which are road touch on the Karnataka Highway.
5) Check your tyre pressures when they are cold (driven less than 5 kms). Low tyre pressures cause tyre bursts.
6) Beware of lane changing cars and trucks.
7) Beware of speed breakers on highway.
8) Again the moment you feel sleepy pull your car aside and doze off. It really works trust me.
9) Take sufficient breaks.
10) Keep a torch handy and some spares.
11) Be confident you can easily do it in one day.If I can yes you can too, but know your limits, dont overstretch it.
12) Have a good nights sleep the day before.
13) While entering Pune if you want to enter by Katraj route dont miss the small bypass below the bridge or it will be a long route to enter Pune.