Team-BHP > Travelogues > Route / Travel Queries


Reply
  Search this Thread
1,046,638 views
Old 3rd January 2011, 14:41   #196
BHPian
 
rohitm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 140
Thanked: 43 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Did the Pondy > Chengalpettu > Kanchipuram > Vellore > Krishnagiri > Blore just last week on my Skoda Laura. The road is good throughout. It took me 9 hours with 2 hours break included for the 430 kms door to door distance. I saw a few BHPians mentioning Chengalpettu to Kanchipuram is bad. Honestly it is nothing serious and about 35 kms of State Highway but eminently motorable.

Trust me this is nothing compared to the direct Bangalore to Pondicherry route.
rohitm is offline  
Old 3rd January 2011, 17:39   #197
Newbie
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 13
Thanked: 2 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Quote:
Originally Posted by ampere View Post
Can you explain where is this by-pass. I thought there was no by-pass to this SH. When was this done, as you said its new.
This looks to be very good. The only one, I am aware off is the Giri Valam which would take you to the other side of NH66.
Bypass i meant was entering TV malai from Tirucoilur route not from the chengam side.The girivalam route you are mentioning still holds good.As for the diversions, as you cross Ramana Ashram there is a signal junction(temple junction), where the road splits. If you take right here you go to Tirucoilur via Manalurpet.you will not hit SH.Instead, i suggest you go straight , hit the Temple street, bus stand, take a right there ( not very straightforward, but a few enquiries would lead you thru) and hit the TVmalai-Tirucoilur Bypass road there which directly connects to SH9.
ajithnarasimhan is offline  
Old 4th January 2011, 09:33   #198
Team-BHP Support
 
ampere's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 17,919
Thanked: 12,884 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Quote:
Originally Posted by ajithnarasimhan View Post
Bypass i meant was entering TV malai from Tirucoilur route not from the chengam side.The girivalam route you are mentioning still holds good.As for the diversions, as you cross Ramana Ashram there is a signal junction(temple junction), where the road splits. If you take right here you go to Tirucoilur via Manalurpet.you will not hit SH.Instead, i suggest you go straight , hit the Temple street, bus stand, take a right there ( not very straightforward, but a few enquiries would lead you thru) and hit the TVmalai-Tirucoilur Bypass road there which directly connects to SH9.
You hit the nail on the head. There are multiple SH leaving TVML. Hence the right by-pass is not that easy to find. The first deviation that you spoke, immediately after the ashram will lead you to Sathanur Dam/Kallakkurichi SH.

On top of it there others (Villipuram/Manalurpet SH also). Hence its not that easy to figure out.

Meanwhile going to Sathanur, I saw a board/route saying Dharmapuri. I was aware of only routes to Salem via Attur. Anyone tried this Dharmapuri route? I know there are routes from Uthangarai. Are any routes through the Kalrayan Ghats?

Last edited by ampere : 4th January 2011 at 09:35.
ampere is offline  
Old 25th January 2011, 10:25   #199
J.Ravi
 
Posts: n/a
Bangalore-Pondy-Bangalore in 18 hours

I drove in my Fiat Linea Bangalore-Krishnagiri-Kancheepuram-Chengalpet-Tindivanam-Pondicherry and back [882 km] in 18 hours. This route was the best among the other alternatives, IMO.

Myself and my wife left our Basaveshwaranagar home yesterday [24 Jan 2011 - Monday] at 9 am, took the elevated toll road up to E-city, refuelled at BP COCO retail outlet at Chinnar [petrol costing Rs 63.78/litre] and reached Kancheepuram by 2:30 pm, where I found both the outlets of Hotel Saravana Bhavan [HSB] were jam-packed with a big queue even for car parking! So, we continued our journey to Chengalpet and joined NH 45. We had our late lunch at Hotel Brindavanaa attached to IOCL Jubilee pump somewhere between Chengalpet and Tindivanam. The food was good and the coffee, excellent. The stinking toilet was the sole negative.

I drove on the new Tindivanam bypass. There were no signages to indicate NH 66 turning to Pondicherry. I followed a PY-registered Accent and took the correct exit to Pondicherry! It was a superb 4-lane highway all the way to Pondy, barring a few km in the beginning and the end. No toll collection as of now. The toll plaza construction is in finishing stage.

We reached Manakula Vinayakar temple at 5:30 pm, i.e., after 8.5 hours including two breaks for a distance of 441 km from my home. After darshan, we headed to the nearby BP outlet maintained by Aurobindo Ashram and had tankful of petrol [Rs 56.64/litre - perhaps the lowest in India?].

We reached Hotel Annamalai International, attended a function, dined and left at 8:30 pm. We reached HSB, Kancheepuram at 10:30 pm, had coffee and continued our home-ward journey in the same route. After refuelling at BP Chinnar, we reached home at 3 am today, i.e., after 6.5 hours.

There were some easily manageable bad stretches between Kancheepuram and Chengalpet. Pothole-filling and patch works were in progress. This route is longer by about 120 km, but the drive was pleasant as compared to the shorter, but torturous route via Thiruvannamalai [NH 66]. Now, the mandatory FE figure: 13.5 kmpl from home to home.

I will be taking this route to Pondy for some more time until the shorter route becomes road-worthy!
 
Old 25th January 2011, 12:28   #200
BHPian
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 73
Thanked: 65 Times
Re: Bangalore-Pondy-Bangalore in 18 hours

Hi Ravi,

I was traveling in my linea at the same time in opposite direction ( chengalpet to bangalore ) . I guess seeing your Fox Trote Azure Linea around 3.00 pm between kanchipuram - chengalpet stretch.

OT :-

There are some beautiful ancient temples in this stretch (kanchipuram -chengalpet ) on the main road itself.
Thirumukkudal-02 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Sri Narasimhar Pazhaya Seevaram, Sri Lakshmi, Kanchipuram Temples
Seagull76 is offline  
Old 25th January 2011, 13:01   #201
J.Ravi
 
Posts: n/a
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Thanks, Seagull76. Yes, I too saw your Flemenco Red Linea and flashed my Linea's headlamps!
 
Old 1st February 2011, 13:40   #202
Senior - BHPian
 
Fauji's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 1,471
Thanked: 994 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

How come no one advises to take Arani - Tindivanam - Pondy after Vellore? Is this stretch bad? This seems to be the shortest route on Google
Fauji is offline  
Old 1st February 2011, 13:48   #203
Senior - BHPian
 
hvkumar's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Mumbai
Posts: 7,369
Thanked: 3,454 Times
!!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fauji View Post
How come no one advises to take Arani - Tindivanam - Pondy after Vellore? Is this stretch bad? This seems to be the shortest route on Google
Yes, that also is supposed to have some bad sections.

BTW, a friend of mine is driving the Krishnagiri-Uttangarai-Tiruvannamali road and reports that it has become worse! Some patchwork has been done for all of 1 km!!!!
hvkumar is offline  
Old 7th February 2011, 10:49   #204
Newbie
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 7
Thanked: 0 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Traveled to Pondicherry during the weekend with wife in my Fiat Punto. We started from Domlur around 1:45 p.m. I had gone through this thread to check the road conditions of Pondicherry road before starting the journey. On finding that its in very bad condition, decided on taking NH46 like many of you have advised. The only confusion was whether to take diversion from Vellore or from Kanchipuram towards Tindivanam. Decided to take a chance and take diversion from Vellore.

We reached Vellore around 5:15 p.m after taking a lunch break (the total kms run was 180 and time took was 3 hrs). Checked with some locals about going to Tindivanam through Arani. They helped me with the correct path and also was aided by google maps. The travel through Vellore city towards Arani was really bad. The roads are pretty bad for the first 15 or so minutes and add to that there was heavy traffic (considering we had reached Vellore at around 5:30 on a Friday evening). After the initial 15-20 mins, the road became slightly better and was able to travel at better speeds of 60-70 kmph.Upon reaching Arani the plan was to get to Tindivanam via Chetpat as google maps suggested. But asked the opinion with an auto driver who suggested that it was better to travel via Vandavasi (according to him the road to Tindivanam was 'super') as the road via Chetpet was very bad. So decided to take his advise and that route but was shocked to see the road condition initially. There were big potholes and it was already
dark. Was wondering whether it was a very bad decision, but decided to carry on. But to my absolute relief (and the auto driver was right, after all) after traveling for 10 mins or so, the road got better. In fact it was pretty good and seemed like it was asphalted recently. My wife was a bit worried as there was hardly anyone on the road and felt like we were going through a jungle. She was hoping that the car would run smoothly without any issues as she badly wanted not to spend the night in that path Reached Tindivanam cruising and saw a PY registration vehicle and decided to follow it. But... the guy took a turn towards Chennai from the Tindivanam bridge instead of towards Pondy,like expected, which we didn't notice. We noticed only when we saw the Chennai highway and not the Pondy NH66. So went back and took the correct route to Pondi. The travel via NH66 was really nice. The roads were almost perfect, apart from few areas where one side work was still going on. The toll plaza is almost done, but no toll collection has started. Reached our Hotel at Pondicherry by 9:45 p.m.

So this is the route that we took
Bangalore - Krishnagiri - Vellore - Arani - Vandavasi - Tindivanam - Pondy (total kms traveled 385, time taken 7 hrs 45 mins running and mileage of 17.4 kmpl, pretty good for a 1.4l petrol vehicle).

We started our return journey to Bangalore on Sunday around 10:30 a.m. Filled tankful of petrol for Rs 55 and change/litre (how cool is that? )compared to Rs 65 plus change in Bangalore and headed towards Tindivanam via SH66. We had decided that we won't be taking the route via Arani which we had taken during our onward journey to Pondy. Instead, decided to take Chennai road (NH45) to Chengalpet and then head to Kanchipuram(thanks to J.Ravi for that update). Reached Chengalpet in 2 hrs and asked for best direction towards Kanchipuram from an auto driver. He told us to take the SH58 to Kanchi. The road initially was pretty bad (as has been the case with almost all the state highways taken in this trip). Afterwards it got better and the journey till Walajabad was decent. From Walajabad onwards the roads were not so good and again traffic was pretty bad till Kanchipuram. Took the road to NH4 without much difficulty(thanks to google maps) and afterwards the journey till Bangalore was a breeze.

This was the return trip route

Pondicherry - Tindivanam - Chengalpet - Kanchipuram - Krishanagiri - Bangalore
Total kms - 425, Time taken - 7 hrs, Mileage - exactly 17.0 kmpl.

Key things learned from this trip

* Google maps is awesome, but there is no substitute to proper directions and road conditions given by real human beings
* Carry food with you if traveling in this route especially since there are hardly any good restaurants on NH46.
* Android phone's battery discharges faster than the speed of your car. Get a second battery or a car charger (still to find one with a USB port)
* People help you even more if you can speak their mother tongue. I can speak Tamil to some extent and now it's time to improve Kannada (reading and writing)
* Like many people have mentioned before, better late than never. Saw atleast couple of accidents on the return journey one of which involved a new Ford Figo.

Finally thanks to all for regularly updating this thread. It was of real help while planning for the trip. Thank you all for reading my bit and off I go now to polish my Kannada.
ash_g is offline  
Old 7th February 2011, 19:05   #205
BHPian
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 65
Thanked: 20 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

How are the road conditions from Krishnagiri now, any improvement?
I am planning to drive from Bangalore to Pondi this Thursday,
Also as I am driving i10 and with a family is it better not to drive from
Krishnagiri to Tiiruvannamalai?

I will stat from Basweshwernagar, Banglaore around 12 noon so expect to drive thru that stretch between 3 to 5.

TIA

Last edited by DoNotHorn : 7th February 2011 at 19:25.
DoNotHorn is offline  
Old 7th February 2011, 21:43   #206
Newbie
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 7
Thanked: 0 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Not very sure about the road condition from Krishnagiri to Tiruvanamalai. Reading from previous posts, I'm positive that it still would be bad. If you take the road though, you'd save around 70-100 kms (depending on the other route you take).

The road from Tiruvanamalai to Tindivanam should be better as I had touched that road while traveling through Vandavasi.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DoNotHorn View Post
How are the road conditions from Krishnagiri now, any improvement?
I am planning to drive from Bangalore to Pondi this Thursday,
Also as I am driving i10 and with a family is it better not to drive from
Krishnagiri to Tiiruvannamalai?

I will stat from Basweshwernagar, Banglaore around 12 noon so expect to drive thru that stretch between 3 to 5.

TIA
ash_g is offline  
Old 8th February 2011, 08:27   #207
J.Ravi
 
Posts: n/a
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Quote:
Originally Posted by DoNotHorn View Post
How are the road conditions from Krishnagiri now, any improvement?
Avoid Krishnagiri-Thiruvannamalai route at any cost. Ditto for Vellore-Arani-Chetpet route. I tried these routes and finally settled for Kanchipuram-Chengalpet-Tindivanam-Pondy [NH 7/46-SH 58-NH 45/66] route. Your Hyundai i10 will be thankful to you for saving the damsel from the distress!
 
Old 15th February 2011, 17:08   #208
BHPian
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: bangalore
Posts: 47
Thanked: 33 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

We just completed a trip to pondy, last week, to participate in the auroville marathon. Four of our runner friends started from Bangalore, to be precise at 6:10 am from IIM, Bannerghata Road.

Having heard about the bad road conditions between Krishnagiri and Tiruvannmalai, we chose to drive to Vellore. We reached vellore at 8:55 am, halted for break fast, it was a long break of 1 hour at a relatives place and then left for POndy via arni-chetpet-gingee. The road condition between Vellore and Arni was good but it was worst between Arni and Chetpet especially, for a distance of 10-12 kms. Otherwise, the rest of the section was really good.

To summarize, we took the following route Bangalore - Vellore (NH7/NH46) - Arni - Chetpet - Gingee (Joined NH66 here) - Tindivanam - Pondy. We reached Pody exactly at 12:55 pm, distance of 369 kms in a running time of 5 hours and 50 minutes. The car used was CEDIA sports

As we found Vellore a strategic mid point, we chose to drive back the same route. The return journey took about 6 hours.

I noticed that after the toll booth at Pallikonda (just before vellore), one can take a U Turn, proceed to SRIPURAM TEmple and from there a link road connects to the Vellore ARNI road. WE did not experiment this road but it appears one can save about 15-20 minutes, given the traffic situation inside vellore town.
karanp23 is offline  
Old 15th February 2011, 18:49   #209
Team-BHP Support
 
ampere's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Bangalore
Posts: 17,919
Thanked: 12,884 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Thanks. Thats a good info. Esp the point that the U is after the Pallikonda Toll Plaza.

Next time a drive to Pondy would include this visit as well!

Last edited by ampere : 15th February 2011 at 18:51.
ampere is offline  
Old 21st February 2011, 12:16   #210
BHPian
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Chennai
Posts: 591
Thanked: 288 Times
re: Bangalore - Pondicherry : Route Queries

Quote:
Originally Posted by ampere View Post
Thanks. Thats a good info. Esp the point that the U is after the Pallikonda Toll Plaza.

Next time a drive to Pondy would include this visit as well!
Hi Ampere,

That pallikonda to arani road is really a good scenic one. I had been in that route in 2007 when I went to Padavedu from Bangalore. You save a good 25 to 30 kms and also the Vellore traffic. Google map does not show that unfortunately. While going from bangalore take the first right after the pallikonda toll gate to reach this road. It goes by the side of that hillock and all the way till vellore-arani road. You might have to cross a railway line in the end.
prabhuferrari is offline  
Reply

Most Viewed
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Team-BHP.com
Proudly powered by E2E Networks